Scan barcode
ebl_191's review
4.0
If you are a positivist or a mystic, I think maybe these are not books for you. What Jung is looking for is not objective facts about the mind, not a matter of science in the contemporary sense, nor a transcendent subjective experience or revealed truth, in the literary sense. I say that these books are not for mystics or positivists because these ways of seeing the world are both reductive and superstitious, meanwhile, Jung's thought is neither of those (at least in my view). Those closed ways of reading, rather than other perspectives, could lead to a misunderstanding of this work and the autoconfirmation of personal prejudices or common biases about the subjects or the author of these books.
These books part from a personal and psychic experience (or psychedelic, in the etymological sense) but in the path, and in the end, it becomes a dialog with several thinkers, traditions of thought, and the history of eastern and western civilizations; with it, he achieves not only a deep introspection but psychic experimentation, a symbolic journey such as those in the works of Dante or Tolkien, an intrasubjective and intersubjective thought, and, to some extent, he arrives to the borders of a metaphysical conception (that he does not develop because he recognized the limits for his profession and his project; metaphysics is beyond).
I have been reading these books for almost two years, with some pauses, revisions, and re-beginnings. With this, I have grasped some insights about myself, the current disciplines of philosophy and psychology, also about the past, the present, and the possible future of humanity. About Jung, I wouldn't say he is a wise man, a mystic (though he took it seriously this kind of traditions and experience), a (wanna-be) prophet/saint, or, about his work, that it is the discovery of (psychological) truths; I would rather say that he is an important thinker with an important oeuvre yet with the errors and the biases of his own, his society and of the time he lived. The Black Books have helped me to get a wider view of the origin and the core of Jung's project.
If you want to begin to read Jung's works from a psychological view or rather intellectual interest, I suggest looking first for technical or theoric ones.
These books part from a personal and psychic experience (or psychedelic, in the etymological sense) but in the path, and in the end, it becomes a dialog with several thinkers, traditions of thought, and the history of eastern and western civilizations; with it, he achieves not only a deep introspection but psychic experimentation, a symbolic journey such as those in the works of Dante or Tolkien, an intrasubjective and intersubjective thought, and, to some extent, he arrives to the borders of a metaphysical conception (that he does not develop because he recognized the limits for his profession and his project; metaphysics is beyond).
I have been reading these books for almost two years, with some pauses, revisions, and re-beginnings. With this, I have grasped some insights about myself, the current disciplines of philosophy and psychology, also about the past, the present, and the possible future of humanity. About Jung, I wouldn't say he is a wise man, a mystic (though he took it seriously this kind of traditions and experience), a (wanna-be) prophet/saint, or, about his work, that it is the discovery of (psychological) truths; I would rather say that he is an important thinker with an important oeuvre yet with the errors and the biases of his own, his society and of the time he lived. The Black Books have helped me to get a wider view of the origin and the core of Jung's project.
If you want to begin to read Jung's works from a psychological view or rather intellectual interest, I suggest looking first for technical or theoric ones.
More...