Beyond the Post-Modern Mind was published by Crossroad in 1982 (revised and expanded in 1989), and it represents Smith’s most sustained engagement with the intellectual history of the modern West. The book traces the trajectory from the medieval worldview (unified, hierarchical, certain) through the modern worldview (progressive, materialist, confident) to the postmodern worldview (skeptical, deconstructive, ironic) — and argues that all three are inadequate.
Smith’s critique of modernity is familiar from Forgotten Truth: the modern worldview reduces reality to a single material dimension. But his critique of postmodernism is equally sharp: by dissolving all claims to truth into “narratives” and “power relations,” postmodernism leaves no ground on which to stand — it can deconstruct but not construct, criticize but not affirm, question but not answer.
What lies “beyond” the postmodern mind, for Smith, is a recovery of the perennial philosophy — not as a naive return to pre-modern certainties but as a mature integration of scientific knowledge with traditional wisdom. The post-postmodern thinker accepts science’s findings about the physical world while insisting that these findings do not exhaust reality.
Collecting Beyond the Post-Modern Mind
First edition (Crossroad, New York, 1982): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $15–$40
- Revised edition (1989): $8–$20