Rating: 
Summary: Spell of the Sensous is a "Grade A " Intellectual Mythology
Review: Spell of the Sensous is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.David Abram's book The Spell of the Sensuous would not be one of the best books I've read recently; I'm also quiet certain that I don't agree with some of Dr. Abrams' philosophical assertions or hermeneutical views. Both Dr.Abrams' philosophical and ecological visions seem themselves hopelessly rooted in an ancient form of mysticism that curiously resembles the same sort of manmade abstractions that he much maligns throughout the book and that he subsequently blames for our societies current disassociation and estrangement from nature. This "oral culture" sensibility that Dr. Abrams seems so inclined to champion lacks any real world objectivity, instead it relies heavily on the same purely subjective and primitive mental processes that gave us many of the erroneous myths, fables and superstitions that used to plauge early mankind's world view.
On a more positive note, I must however acknowledge the powerful argument he makes for reestablishing a participatory relationship with the "others", and I whole-heartedly endorse the common sense environmental activism that he promotes in his book. Abram's new age sensibility seeks to place humanity firmly enmeshed within a highly complex and mutually reciprocal relationship with the rest of creation.
Dr.Abram's book introduced me to a whole new way of looking at language and especially writing in relation to the sensuous earth, and for that I am grateful (and that is why i rated it a 3 out of 5). I would definitely recommend this book for anyone interested in the study of language, philosophy or the environment.
Rating: 
Summary: Provocative
Review: The best parts are the indigenous stories. I found a lot of Abram's philosophical writing unclear, and as the reviewer in Philosophy and Religion noted, he often presents his beliefs without really supporting them. However, those beliefs are often thought-provoking. And one section (on the future and the past) inspired me to write a poem--I suspect Abram would say that therefore his book succeeded with me at least in part.
Rating: 
Summary: tantilizing
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: The spell of this book will refresh your mind, body and soul
Review: The trite things people say to promote a book, such as, "It will change your life" and "You can't put it down", are amazingly true for a book which takes you to the depths of serious issues of philosophy, language, anthropology and the analysis of empirical scientific methods. Abram is a magnificent writer, carrying you along smoothly with the consistency and clarity of his vision and the perfectly fitting poetic expression of that vision. I bought this book for my son who studies philosophy, read it for myself as a long-time student of language and culture, decided my son the physicist must read it too and kept thinking of more and more people I know who should read it. Abram's ability to connect seemingly all fields of study attests to the depths or heights of his message. He often uses the metaphor of a spider's web which is useful in describing the elegant web he has constructed to rejoin us to our living universe. It is also useful to describe the elimination of cobwebs which clutter our overly abstract, mechanical non-lives and disconnect us from our natural instincts. In the hopes of saving our environment, Abram gives us a world view which can add richness and meaning to our everyday experiences.
Rating:
Summary: The spell of this book will refresh your mind, body and soul
Review: The trite things people say to promote a book, such as, "It will change your life" and "You can't put it down", are amazingly true for a book which takes you to the depths of serious issues of philosophy, language, anthropology and the analysis of empirical scientific methods. Abram is a magnificent writer, carrying you along smoothly with the consistency and clarity of his vision and the perfectly fitting poetic expression of that vision. I bought this book for my son who studies philosophy, read it for myself as a long-time student of language and culture, decided my son the physicist must read it too and kept thinking of more and more people I know who should read it. Abram's ability to connect seemingly all fields of study attests to the depths or heights of his message. He often uses the metaphor of a spider's web which is useful in describing the elegant web he has constructed to rejoin us to our living universe. It is also useful to describe the elimination of cobwebs which clutter our overly abstract, mechanical non-lives and disconnect us from our natural instincts.
In the hopes of saving our environment, Abram gives us a world view which can add richness and meaning to our everyday experiences.
Rating:
Summary: The most profound book I've ever read
Review: There is much talk these days about a paradigm shift. I certainly hope that this is true. We really need one. And if there is, I am convinced that this book will be looked back on in the years to come as the most significant book of our times. It will be viewed as the book that cemented the shift. I didn't think I would ever find a book like this. It not only gives beautiful expression to a world and a world of thought that I had come to think as irretrievably extinct, but it does it with so much power and background knowledge drawing with clarity and precision from many fields that are normally viewed as distinct disciplines (Philosophy, Anthropology, History, Linguistics) and puts it all together into a whole that is certainly greater than the sum of it's parts. But it is also far more than an academic tour de force. David Abram is a magician in more than one sense. This book is itself truly a piece of magic. For anyone who cares about planet earth, nature, mankind and our future, this book is an absolute must-read! Sure, some people will misinterpret it or read into it what they want. Maybe even reject it's basic premise outright. But if any book has the power to turn our thinking around (which I believe must happen for us to survive), this is it. Or at least, it's a fabulous start. Good work, David!
Rating:
Summary: Put down your books; learn to read the world around you. . .
Review: This book exposes how our Western worldview has evolved to be based on literacy, abstract thought, and separation from the body. By "the body" I mean not just our individual, animal bodies, but the body of the earth and the material cosmos. By removing ourselves from this sensuous realm, we have lost the connection to "the living dream that we share with the soaring hawk, the spider, and the stone silently sprouting lichens on its coarse surface." There is a paradox here, because this is a book about the drawbacks of literacy and abstract, logical thinking. But it is itself a piece of very well-argued and logical written discourse. However, it works, and not just because Abrams' arguments are so convincing. It works also because Abrams is an artist; he has the gift of using words and imagery that can reach below the logical brain to inspire a more direct way of perceiving the world. The result is a book which is a moving combination of philosophical writing and pure poetry. Abrams works from a phenomenological standpoint, and the beginning of the book includes a very understandable discussion of phenomenology's history and major ideas. This is the most readable introduction to this branch of philosophy that I have found. Abrams explains it in such a way that you want to put the book down and try out this sort of perception for yourself. Abrams then proceeds to show how, starting at the time of alphabetization, the western mind began to grow away from direct physical knowing of the world and toward abstract, conceptual representations. Our language became removed from nature, and helped us remove ourselves from nature. As a counterpoint to the Western use of language, Abrams then goes on to show how indigenous peoples use language as a way to connect with the body and the physical realm. In these oral cultures language "is experienced not as the exclusive property of humankind, but as a property of the sensuous life-world." In other words, the world-the animals, plants, stones, wind-- speaks a language that most of us can no longer hear. Abrams explores indigenous oral poetry and stories to illustrate this entirely other way of experiencing language. My first reading of this book triggered a conversion, in the sense of that word which means "turning." It spun me 180 degrees mentally and spiritually, from the world of concepts to the world of my immediate perception. I'm on my third reading now and still incorporating teachings passed over previously. It is paradoxical, how this book on a return to "the physical" can catalyze spiritual perception so powerfully.
Rating:
Summary: Great book that explains a lot
Review: This book lays out, in a very clear and readable, yet sophisticated, manner something that I have been struggling with for years. When I was younger I spent a lot of time with animals and loved to be in the forest. I learned a lot about human nature by learning about animal nature. Since then, it seems all of my education (a bachelor's, master's, and about to enter a PhD program) has "taught" me that all of that learning I did was useless, illusory. Something in that never quite sat right with me. It seemed, and still seems, arrogant, ignorant, unrealistic, and self-aggrandizing. Abrams does an excellent job of summing up what that feeling was about for me, while also providing a compelling argument for how the state of our (industrialized civilization's) knowledge gaining and knowledge sharing processes came to be what they currently are. He then frames the problems with this state of affairs and suggests, but does not fully outline, a solution.
This book does not espouse that we return to mythologizing as a means of relaying knowledge from one generation to the next. Abrams does not hold that native, oral-based cultures possessed the "truth" in their worldviews, as some other reviewers seem to think he does. (Anyone who is still looking for "the truth" has clearly missed the boat that sailed 100+ years ago with Hume and Nietzsche.) Instead, what he is saying is that in the transition from an oral-based language, one that referred back to the world in its sounds and characters, to a purely written, phonetic language that refers back to nothing but itself, we have lost a vital link with our earth. Losing this vital link via language has led us to be estranged from the places that we live, forever locked into ourselves, in a near-constant internal dialogue about our own beliefs and ideas. If one doubts that this is the case, consider only the view of human nature that philosophers as varied as Descartes and Sartre have held, and even the current "cognitive science" model of human cognition: all are grossly self-involved. Our purely phonetic language encourages us to dwell on our own internal problems and processes, while also not encouraging us to look outward to deal with problems and processes outside of ourselves. I think it is fairly obvious that this has a very real, and very important, applicability to the current crisis we face, especially in industrialized nations, where it seems that all anyone has any interest in is self-realization, self-actualization, and self-fulfillment. What if all that focus on "self" has caused us to forget that our "selves" are really nothing at all without other "selves," including the non-human selves we depend on for oxygen and energy?
Finally, Abrams does not suggest that language alone is responsible for this current state of affairs. For example one other influence he cites is the switch from hunter-gatherer to agricultural society. He mentions this, and others, at the end of the book, noting that the purpose of the book is to speak only to the language piece of the puzzle.
Like Calvin Luther Martin's The Way of the Human Being, this book lays out a vastly different way of seeing the world and interacting with it: both are phenomenologies of our species' place in our world. The work of these two men I think will be crucial to our continued flourishing as a species.
Rating:
Summary: Good Food for Thought
Review: 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
Rating: 
Summary: Interview with the author under "related articles."
Review: This is just to let readers know that there is an interview with Dave Abram, to be accessed by clicking "related articles" in the upper left corner of this book page. In case folks are curious, here are some of the published comments on this book by other authors from various fields: "A truly original work. Abram...puts forth his daring hypothesis with a poetic vigor and argumentative insight that stimulate reconsideration of the technological commonplace. . .With Abram anthropology becomes a bridge between science and its others." ~Science (journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science) "The Spell of the Sensuous does more than place itself on the cutting edge where ecology meets philosophy, psychology, and history. It magically subverts the dichotomies of culture and nature, body and mind, opening a vista of organic being and human possibility that is often imagined but seldom described. Reader beware, the message is spell-binding. One cannot read this book without risk of entering into an altered state of perceptual possibility." ~Max Oelschlager, author of The Idea of Wilderness "A masterpiece - combining poetic passion with intellectual rigor and daring. Electric with energy, it offers us a new approach to scholarly inquiry: as a fully embodied human animal. It opens pathways and vistas that will be fruitfully explored for years, indeed for generations, to come." ~Joanna Macy, Buddhist scholar and activist "Speculative, learned, and always 'lucid and precise' as the eye of the vulture that confronted him once on a cliff ledge, Abram has once of those rare minds which, like the mind of a musician or a great mathematician, fuses dreaminess with smarts." ~The Village Voice "David Abram's passionate knowledge of language, mythology, landscape - and his meditations on the human senses - all make for highly-charged, memorable reading. Without sermon, dogma, or academic bluster, The Spell of the Sensuous deftly tours us through interior and exterior terrains of the spirit, right up to the present. This is a major work of research and intuitive brilliance, an archive of clear ideas. At the end of our century of precarious ecology, the Spell of the Sensuous strikes the deepest notes of celebration and alertness - an indispensible book!" ~Howard Norman, folklorist and novelist, author of The Bird Artist "I am breaking a vow to cease all blurb-writing for three years, but Abram's Spell must be praised. It's so well done, well-written, well thought. I know of no work more valuable for shifting our thinking and feeling about the place of humans in the world. Your children and their children will be grateful to him. The planet itself must be glad." ~James Hillman, author of ReVisioning Psychology and The Soul's Code "Disclosing the sentience of all nature, and revealing the unsuspected effect of the more-than-human on our language and our lives, in unprecedented fashion, Abram generates true philosophy for the twenty-first century." ~Lynn Margulis, co-originator of the Gaia Hypothesis, author of Symbiosis in Cellular Evolution "A tour-de-force of sustained intelligence, broad scholarship, and a graceful prose style that has produced one of the most interesting books about nature published during the past decade." ~ Jack Turner, writing in Terra Nova "When rumor had it that David Abram was writing a book, we expected it to be very special and very powerful. Those expectations were justified. This book has the ability to awaken us. . ." ~Arne Naess, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Oslo; originator of deep ecology "Brilliant in its own field of environmental philosophy, it is destined to change the way we think about linguistics, literature, anthropology, and comparative religion, as well as the living landscape around us. . . . Beautifully written, elegantly argued, immensely original, The Spell of the Sensuous is the kind of book that comes along once in a generation. Like Carson's Silent Spring, it will become the touchstone for environmental literacy in the years to come." ~Christopher Manes, author of Other Creations, writing in Wild Earth "This book by David Abram lights up the landscape of language, flesh, mind, history, mapping us back into the world. . ." ~Gary Snyder "The outer world of nature is what awakens our inner world in all its capacities for understanding, affection and aesthetic appreciation. The wind, the rain, the mountains and rivers, the woodlands and meadows and all their inhabitants; we need these perhaps even more for our psyche than for our physical survival. No one that I know of has presented all this with the literary skill as well as the understanding that we find in this work of David Abram. It should be one of the most widely read and discussed books of these times." ~Thomas Berry, author of The Dream of the Earth "Abram shows that it is possible to reawaken the animistic dimension of perception and feeling without renouncing rationality and intellectual analysis. . . The Spell of the Sensuous is a joy to read and a brilliant gift to our rapidly darkening world." ~Shambhala Sun "Nobody writes about the ecological depths of the human and more-than-human world with more love and lyrical sensitivity than David Abram." ~Theodore Roszak, author of Where the Wasteland Ends "Read it and get your gourd rattled smartly." ~ Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall and Dalva
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