Charles Freeman makes a spirited case for why we should peer backwards in his sumptuous work ... The Reopening of the Western Mind picks up velocity once Freeman pivots to the Italian Renaissance; and while this is well trampled ground, he lays out his arguments in dazzling detail ... Freeman connects all the dots in The Reopening of the Western Mind, opening many doors, many minds, in this meticulous, illuminating book.
Mr. Freeman’s contention is tendentious. The first problem is that he vastly overstates Augustine’s dependence on Plotinus and Plato ... The larger problem with Mr. Freeman’s account is its epistemological naivete. He seems to believe that the 'Western mind,' informed by the classical authors and particularly by Aristotle, existed in a state of happy neutrality until about the fourth century ... Some readers, especially those who see religious commitments as evidence of a closed mind, will find this thesis attractive.
Besides being hugely thought-provoking, this inquiry is a transparently personal work built around particular geographies, thinkers, and epiphanies that have animated Freeman’s rich intellectual life.
General readers may be overwhelmed by the breadth and depth, but specialists will delight in the considered, comprehensive details of Western European triumphs, discoveries, and setbacks. As ambitious as it is informative, this will have historians of all stripes rapt.
Writing in accessible yet long-winded prose, Freeman takes a broad approach to this 1,200-year period of massive cultural change ... This vast scope makes a convincing case for Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and many other classical thinkers’ wide-ranging cultural impact on medieval and early-modern Europe, but it lacks depth and focus outside of the author’s preoccupation with the city-states of northern Italy and his frequent criticism of the Catholic Church ... The author has an ax to grind, and he does so at the cost of undermining his valid criticism and solid historical research. A knowledgeable historian delivers a book that is ambitious in scale but shallow in execution.
