The Postmodern Spirit

The Postmodern Spirit is an essay collection edited by David Ray Griffin, a leading figure of constructive postmodernism and director of the Center for a Postmodern World in the United States. Originally titled Spirituality and Society: Postmodern Visions, the book explores the postmodern spirit and its full unfolding in modern society, offering a panoramic account of postmodern society across politics, economics, culture, spirituality, agriculture, science and technology, international relations, ethics, gender relations, and social policy. The authors argue that postmodern thinkers are no mere textual gamers: they clearly perceive the twin "world-destroying problems" of nuclear weapons and the environment, and, tracing matters to their roots, find that modernity is chiefly to blame for humanity's present predicament. Challenging and critiquing modernity, and on that basis rebuilding the relationships between humans and nature, humans and others, and humans and themselves, thus becomes the book's main thread. It distinguishes modern from postmodern spirit in worldview, science, and ethics, and discusses steady-state economics, regenerative agriculture, postmodern science and technology, post-patriarchal gender relations, and a peace paradigm, and is regarded as a collective manifesto of constructive postmodernism. The chapters are written by different scholars, with Griffin contributing the introduction and several chapters; the book combines theoretical exposition with practical proposals and can be read alongside The Reenchantment of Science.