Morris Berman Explained

Morris Berman
Birth Date:3 August 1944
Birth Place:Rochester, New York, U.S.
Occupation:Educator, scholar, writer
Language:English, Spanish
Nationality:American
Citizenship:US (born); Mexico (resides)
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Awards:Rollo May Center Grant (1992) Neil Postman Award (2013)
Website:Dark Ages America

Morris Berman (born August 3, 1944)[1] is an American historian and social critic. He earned a BA in mathematics at Cornell University in 1966 and a PhD in the history of science at Johns Hopkins University in 1971.[2] Berman is an academic humanist cultural critic who specializes in Western cultural and intellectual history.

Life and work

Berman has served on the faculties of a number of universities in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Berman emigrated from the U.S. to Mexico in 2006, where he was a visiting professor at the Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico City from 2008 to 2009. During this period he continued writing for various publications including Parteaguas, a quarterly magazine.[3]

Berman has written several books for a general audience.[4] They deal with the state of Western civilization and with an ethical, historically responsible, or enlightened approach to living within it. His work emphasizes the legacies of the European Enlightenment and the historical place of present-day American culture, in particular “exploring the corrosion of American society and the decline of the American empire.”[5]

He wrote a trilogy on consciousness and spirituality, published between 1981 and 2000, and another trilogy on the American decline, published between 2000 and 2011. Book reviewer George Scialabba commented:

Participating consciousness

The term participating consciousness was introduced by Berman in The Re-enchantment of the World (1981)[6] [7] expanding on Owen Barfield's concept of "original participation," to describe an ancient mode of human thinking that does not separate the perceiver from the world he or she perceives. Berman says that this original world view has been replaced during the past 400 years with the modern paradigm called Cartesian, Newtonian, or scientific, which depends on an isolated observer, proposing that we can understand the world only by distancing ourselves from it.

Max Weber, early 20th-century German sociologist, was concerned with the "disenchantment" he associated with the rise of modernity, capitalism, and scientific consciousness. Berman traces the history of this disenchantment. He argues that the modern consciousness is destructive to both the human psyche and the planetary environment. Berman challenges the supremacy of the modern world view and argues for some new form of the older holistic tradition, which he describes as follows:

Recognition

In 1990, Berman received the Governor's Writers Award (Washington State) for his book Coming to Our Senses.[8] In 1992, he was the recipient of the first annual Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies. In 2000, Berman's book The Twilight of American Culture received critical acclaim.[5] It was named one of the ten most recommended books of the year by the Christian Science Monitor[9] and was named a "Notable Book" by The New York Times.[10] In 2013 he received the "Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity" from the Media Ecology Association.[11] Berman moved to Mexico in 2006 where he continues to reside .

Selected bibliography

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Berman, Morris, 1944- - LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies | Library of Congress, from LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies (Library of Congress). The Library of. Congress. id.loc.gov.
  2. Web site: Berman. Morris. The Denial of Death. DARK AGES AMERICA. 29 September 2017. I was Ph.D. from Hopkins in 1971 as well. All my bios, including Wikipedia, have it as 1972, but in fact it was 15 Feb 1971. Go figure..
  3. Web site: Blogger: User Profile: Morris Berman. blogger.com.
  4. Web site: Prins. Nomi. America the Material. 22 July 2016. 2010-11-25.
  5. Web site: The Artist and the Book | Vincent Valdez in Conversation with Morris Berman | The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. May 31, 2024. https://web.archive.org/web/20240531052118/https://www.mfah.org/calendar/artist-book-vincent-valdez-morris-berman . 2024-05-31 .
  6. Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World, Cornell University Press, 1981
  7. Morris Berman, Excerpts from The Reenchantment of the World,
  8. Web site: Washington State Book Award Winners. spl.org. 2015-03-08. https://web.archive.org/web/20150514164356/http://www.spl.org/audiences/adults/washington-state-book-awards/washington-state-book-award-winners. 2015-05-14. dead.
  9. Web site: Recommended Books. The Christian Science Monitor. 22 July 2016. 2000-11-16.
  10. News: Notable Books . 23 February 2021 . New York Times . 3 December 2000.
  11. Web site: Past MEA Award Recipients. Media Ecology Association. 8 March 2015.
  12. Web site: Coming to Our Senses — Echo Point Books & Media, LLC.. September 24, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230924211712/https://www.echopointbooks.com/philosophy-social-science/coming-to-our-senses . 2023-09-24 .
  13. Why America Failed by Morris Berman (review). Joseph A.. Domino. 28 March 2019. American Studies. 52. 1. 198. Project MUSE. 10.1353/ams.2012.0031. 144332400.
  14. Web site: Spinning Straw Into Gold. Echo Point Books & Media, LLC..
  15. Web site: A Nation Without Qualities. Joseph A.. Domino. 12 May 2016. HuffPost. 2021-02-23.
  16. Web site: Are We There Yet?. Echo Point Books & Media, LLC..
  17. Web site: Genio. Echo Point Books & Media, LLC..
  18. Web site: The Heart of the Matter — Echo Point Books & Media, LLC.. September 24, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230924215835/https://www.echopointbooks.com/fiction-poetry/the-heart-of-the-matter . 2023-09-24 .
  19. Web site: The Soul of Russia. Echo Point Books & Media, LLC..

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