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| The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World | 
 enlarge | Author: David Abram
Publisher: Vintage Books
Category: Book
List Price: £14.95
Buy New: £5.46
You Save: £9.49 (63%)
New (23) from £5.46
Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 86228
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Vintage Books Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0679776397
Dewey Decimal Number: 128
EAN: 9780679776390
ASIN: 0679776397
Publication Date: March 31, 1997
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New. Shipped from UK Mainland. Delivery is usually 4 - 5 working days from order by Royal Mail, International Delivery is by Airmail.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Work of Heart November 3, 2004
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
For a long time I have suspected that something like this book must exist somewhere, and now I have found it. If like me you have been looking for a healing application of phenomenological insight and spiritual poetics to the world/self divide, then this is definitely my recommendation. Many authors give their promissory introduction and then add nothing to it but (no-doubt well-intentioned yet meaning-impoverished) fluffy new-age babble. In contrast, Spell focuses us on lived experience and the kinship with nature that is already affective, although denied effect, in our leadened hearts. This is a work of art that brings into full view the possibility of a human relationship with nature that overcomes the alienation intrinsic to the historic western human identity. As long as there are people like Abram writing, and people who are alive enough to feel moved by such writing, there is hope of changing a catastrophically anthropocentric future that might otherwise have been bleakly inevitable.
A magical, soulful book February 27, 1999
19 out of 20 found this review helpful
I read this book because I met the author at a magicians' conference and was fascinated by his study of shamanism. When I read it I connected with it totally. I felt that FINALLY someone is talking about the world as something that isn't just about people. I'm very tired of being so human-focused all the time. This book was very refreshing and wonderful.
Good Food for Thought September 3, 1998
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
This book was a pleasure to read. Skillfully written, reading it was a sensuous experience in and of itself. The content and the references are of high quality. On the down side, there are several repetitive passages throughout the book. Nonetheless, I recommend the book wholeheartedly. Also, as a companion piece, consider reading Kieran Egan's "The Educated Mind." Egan writes about the development of intellectual tools--somatic, mythic, romantic, philosophic, and ironic. Abram's covers the somatic and mythic tools quite well. Egan cover's the whole set at a higher level but with less focus. Together, the two books complement each other nicely.D. Wesley
tantilizing July 21, 1998
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
The Spell of the Sensuous has been referred to as interdisciplinary; certainly the voice of the book carries over some linear arguments, some narrative, and then leaves you in the world again, silent and wide-eyed and seeing things just a little more fully than before.I cannot wait for Abrams to write more. Either pure (and brief) philosophy, or an account of his travels, or, should he be so moved, even a novel.
A surprising look at nature and the alphabet June 18, 1998
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
David Abram argues persuasively that the alphabet and written language have alienated us from the world in which we live. He compares our platonism, which imprisons intelligence and subjectivity within humans and denies them to other creatures, to the animism of oral cultures, which regards all beings as intelligent subjects. The alphabet, invented by Semites and perfected by the Greeks, was instrumental in this great change. The knowledge and wisdom that our ancestors learned from other creatures we now find in the printed word. Abram, an ecologist and philosopher now living in New Mexico, says we are intelligent, subjective beings because we are part of an intelligent, subjective universe. The unfinished task he leaves us with is to reconcile the beauty of the written language of books with the living language of our environment.
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