The third book in Morris Berman's much acclaimed trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness, Wandering God continues his earlier work which garnered such praise as "solid lessons in the history of ideas" (KIRKUS Reviews), "filled with piquant details" (Common Boundary), and "an informative synthesis and a remarkably friendly, good-natured jeremiad" (The Village Voice). Here, in a remarkable discussion of our hunter-gatherer ancestry and the "paradoxical" mode of perception that it involved, Berman shows how a sense of alertness, or secular/sacred immediacy, subsequently got buried by the rise of sedentary civilization, religion, and vertical power relationships.

In an integrated tour de force, Wandering God explores the meaning of Paleolithic art, the origins of social inequality, the nature of cross-cultural child rearing, the relationship between women and agriculture, and the world view of present-day nomadic peoples, as well as the emergence of "paradoxical" consciousness in the philosophical writings of the twentieth century.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Note to the Reader

Introduction: The Experience of Paradox

1. The Writing on the Wall

2. Politics and Power

3. As the Soul Is Bent: The Psycho-Religious Roots of Social Inequality

4. Agriculture, Religion, and the Great Mother

5. The Zone of Flux

6. Wandering God: The Recovery of Paradox in the Twentieth Century

7. The Other Voice

Notes

Selected Bibliography

About the Author

Index