Abstract

This book can be useful in a number of ways to teachers and students in social philosophy and allied fields despite the frustrating brevity of the selections, most of which average five pages. Purchased with this severe economy is the advantage of a wide span of selections, starting with Plato and Aristotle, and including those as recent as the 1960s. The selections are comprehensive in viewpoints presented. In addition to professional philosophers we are given the work of theologians, jurists, political theorists, even excerpts from Dante and Camus. Beck follows six problems: man and society, values, authority, law, obligation, and justice, through nine major philosophical "perspectives," an attempt to show the interconnection of philosophic concepts both with each other, and with the methods and presuppositions whereby they were reached. Each section begins with a page or two of introduction in which the editor gives historical background, and perspicuous definitions and analysis of the central ideas. The sections are: Classical Realism, Positivism, Liberalism, Utilitarianism, Idealism, Communism, Pragmatism, Existentialism, and Analytic Philosophy. There is a bibliographical essay which covers secondary material, primary sources not excerpted in the text, and references on special topics. Taken together with fuller use of the sources represented in the editor's selections, this book could be a text for a course in social philosophy, taken alone it is an attractively presented introduction or good browsing for the professional.—M. B. M.