In Search of Jung: Historical and Philosophical Enquiries

Although Jung has enjoyed wide popularity in recent years, he is still not accorded an appropriately honoured place in the history of modern thought. His interest in Oriental thought, alchemy and astrology has alienated many and he is often marginalized by scholars and academics.
In Search of Jung aims to rectify this state of affairs by showing that Jung is an important thinker in his own right and that his ideas play an important role at the heart of the intellectual debates of our age. The book first sets Jung's thought in the context of the great philosophical tradition stemming from Kant, showing the important connections between his thinking and that of influential philosophers such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and William James, and movements such as phenomenology and existentialism. Second, Clarke argues that, in terms of his method and his close affinity with the approaches and ideas of twentieth-century physics, he is very much a modern thinker and in no way a reactionary seeking to return to outworn creeds. Third, his theories of the psyche, the archetypes and individuation are shown to represent important contributions to the perennial questions about mind, human nature and human destiny, and to contribute to the forging of a new holistic paradigm.