Description
Book SynopsisFollowing the 1960s, that decade''s focus on consciousness-raising transformed into an array of intellectual projects far afield of movement politics. The mind''s powers came to preoccupy a range of thinkers and writers: ethicists pursuing contractual theories of justice, radical ecologists interested in the paleolithic brain, seventies cultists, and the devout of both evangelical and New Age persuasions. In Ideal Minds, Michael Trask presents a boldly revisionist argument about the revival of subjectivity in postmodern American culture, connecting familiar figures within the seventies intellectual landscape who share a commitment to what he calls neo-idealism as a weapon in the struggle against discredited materialist and behaviorist worldviews.
In a heterodox intellectual and literary history of the 1970s, Ideal Minds mixes ideas from cognitive science, philosophy of mind, moral philosophy, deep ecology, political theory, science fiction, neoclassical ec
Trade Review
[H]is reevaluation of the 1970s' intellectual and cultural currents is remarkable.
* Choice *
A convincing portrait of the zeitgeist. Trask's reevaluation of the 1970's intellectual and cultural currents is remarkable—Highly recommended.
* Choice *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: From Consciousness-Raising to Neo-idealism
1. Artificial Intelligence and the Rise of the Meritocracy
2. Radical Ecology's Mindfulness
3. That Seventies Cult
4. Millennial America and the World to Come
Afterword: The Marketization of Everything
