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The critical narrative of this interdisciplinary book offers a first-time look at the interrelationship between biology, mythology and philosophy in human development. Its daring premise follows the trajectory of human thought, starting with the biological roots of fear and the original need for religion, truth-seeking, and myth-making. The narrative then innovatively links a number of maverick philosophical teachings over the centuries, from pre-Buddhist times to the Buddha, from Epicurus and Pyrrho to Lucretius, and eventually to the seminal poetry of Omar Khayyam. These emergent philosophies exemplified liberation from the grasp of mythical and religious thinking and instead espoused an empirical and joyful mind. The narrative concludes with a look at the emancipating philosophical movement that resulted in the European Enlightenment, and it suggests that the philosophical teachings explored in the book may offer the potential for a second, broader Enlightenment.
About the author
Mostafa Vaziri, physician and anthropologist, is currently a lecturer at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and formerly fellow of Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Rumi and Shams' Silent Rebellion: Parallels with Vedanta, Buddhism and Shaivism (NY & London: Palgrave Macmillan 2015), Buddhism in Iran: An Anthropological Approach to Traces and Influences (NY & London: Palgrave Macmillan 2012), including several other academic works.
