Abstract

Aristotle and Huey P. Newton, Confucius and Abbie Hoffman, Gandhi and Eldridge Cleaver, and Plato and Noam Chomsky are some of the contrasts to be found in the groupings of selections in this unusual book of readings. The editors insist that in choosing "relevant" readings, they are using the same criterion of relevance as applies in logical argumentation, but they explain as follows a special application of this concept: "The material for the readings in this book has been primarily chosen for its emphasis on relevant issues that are outside the traditional area of philosophy." Five topics are covered—education, protest, technology, national liberation, and the good life. The longest section is the one on protest, which includes passages from the writings of Sophocles, Plato, the New Testament, Thoreau, Bobby Seale, and nine others. Authors in the section on the good life range from al-Farabi to Bakunin, Aldous Huxley, Erich Fromm, and Jerry Rubin. Teachers of philosophy, if considering this book as a textbook, may be staggered by the high proportion of radical viewpoints presented in it. Nevertheless, the volume has a number of important merits. The topics treated are at the center of student interest, and the philosophical roots of the topics are displayed, at least in outline, in the range of selections. The readings are spicy, but they agitate the elements of genuinely profound problems.—W. G.