The Age of Defeat

The Outsider Cycle #3

by Colin Wilson, Thomas F. Bertonneau (Introduction), Samantha Devin (Editor)

In The Age of Defeat, the third volume of the Outsider Cycle, Colin Wilson introduces his New Existentialism as the basis for the revolution in thought that we need to bring about; a revolt against insignificance and ordinariness. The New Existentialism is a practical and strong-willed philosophy that will renew the concept of Man as hero. It emphasises the extraordinary in us.The Age of Defeat examines the loss of the hero in Western culture and the implications of that loss for humanity. When it was written in the middle of the 20th century, it was the idea of the hero that was endangered. Today it is Man, his identity and his masculinity, who is verging on extinction. The concept of Man is one of the most ambiguous and puzzling in our culture. It might be a good moment to remember what to be a Man used to imply.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology

243 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Colin Henry Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England, U.K. He left school at 16, worked in factories and various occupations, and read in his spare time. When Wilson was 24, Gollancz published The Outsider (1956) which examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. These include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh and Wilson discusses his perception of Social alienation in their work. The book was a best seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain. Critical praise though, was short-lived and Wilson was soon widely criticized.

Wilson's works after The Outsider focused on positive aspects of human psychology, such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness. He admired the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow and corresponded with him. Wilson wrote The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff on the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff and an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic in 1980. He argues throughout his work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality and that there is no particular reason for accepting it. Wilson views normal, everyday consciousness buffeted by the moment, as "blinkered" and argues that it should not be accepted as showing us the truth about reality. This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us from being completely immersed in wonder, or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness. Wilson believes that our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness are as real as our experiences of angst and, since we are more fully alive at these moments, they are more real. These experiences can be cultivated through concentration, paying attention, relaxation and certain types of work.

Reviews

[Paul Ataua · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is built around the thesis that the Inner directed hero, both in literature and society, is dying out and being replaced by the other-directed man. It doesn’t really convince, but as always with Colin Wilson, there are lots of references to literature and philosophy to lengthen your TBR list. Far from his best but still a good read!

[Randy Cauthen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wilson connects postwar sociology about "the organization man" with the essential failing of most 20th Century literature -- that it portrays those living the values of others rather than seeking their own (in the terms of David Reisman's _The Lonely Crowd_, "other-directed" rather than "inner-directed"). Those writers who don't accept "other-directedness" as normative all too often satirize viciously without any notion of ameliorating (The Angry Young Men) or revolt spasmodically, without intellectual content (The Beats).

Wilson's solution is, essentially, a new Existentialism, a new type of hero driven by inner-directed examination of irrational experience to turn back outward, with increased life-force and mental strength, toward increased participation in the world around her.

[Jorrit Van · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reading the premise of the book this immediatly intrigued me. However this was a major dissapointment.

99% of this book consists of the author referencing other books or texts and not in a meaningful way either. He rarely gets around to making any worthwile statement so it really feels like filler. You can turn to any random page in this book and you are garanteed to see texts from other books that serve very little purpose to the bigger picture.

The points the author himself does make are also very scrambled, poorly explained and often just irrational.

Honestly this is borderline plagerism with how little original work there is. I would not recommend this 'book' ( if you can call it that) to anyone.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I generally admire Wilson's serious work, this exercise in social psychology using literary evidence was not very convincing.