Jordi Pigem

The Odyssey of the West

Original title:

La odisea de Occidente. Modernidad y ecosofía

About the book:

The Odyssey of the West

Modernity and Ecosophy

Like Ulysses in the Odyssey, the West has embarked on an eventful journey full of adventures, discoveries, shocks and wonders. For better or for worse, over the last centuries the West has changed the face of the Earth —but we now find ourselves disoriented, in danger of foundering now that we have begun to collide with the ecological limits of the planet and with the very limits of the human condition.

However, like Ulysses, we can still turn our prow homeward, towards our own Ithaca, the Origin that awaits us.

The Odyssey of the West emerges from the awareness that the unfolding of the Western mind, while bringing us many wonders, has taken us into a complex cultural labyrinth. The three parts of the book point to our past, to our present and to a potential future, presenting a genealogy of the modern Western mind, unearthing hidden keys of our contemporary reality and hinting at navigation routes towards a horizon of balance and fulfillment —gathering seeds that can contribute to our reconciliation with nature and with human nature. The last pages present a comparison of the key tenets of the modern mindset and the emerging ecological mindset.

Written in a swift and concise style and integrating a number of registries, The Odyssey of the West is an extraordinary book which deals with the fundamental issues of our time in a rigorous and daring way.

About the author:

Jordi Pigem (Barcelona, 1964), Ph. D., is the author of La odisea de Occidente, Buena crisis and El pensament de Raimon Panikkar and a contributor to written and spoken media in Spanish, Catalan and English. He was a core lecturer of the Masters in Holistic Science at Schumacher College (Devon, England) from 1998 to 2003 and was awarded the Resurgence and Scientific & Medical Network Essay Award in 2006.