Abstract

This book makes a contribution to the growing literature on philosophy of culture and cultural criticism, an area of philosophy that has typically attracted less attention in the Anglo-American philosophical world than in Europe. In sections of varying length and quality, Jay Newman analyzes the cultural criticism of Plato, Augustine, Erasmus, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Thorstein Veblen, and Allan Bloom. The discussion of Plato is the lengthiest one, while Augustine, Erasmus, and Voltaire receive rather cursory treatment; Newman’s treatment of Nietzsche is especially fair and nuanced. The inquiry is interestingly interdisciplinary, and, as the author discusses a number of diverse thinkers from philosophy and the social sciences as well as theology, this book should be of interest to students from a number of disciplines. In a closing chapter on the contemporary relevance of the ideas discussed, Newman analyzes the roles of television and professional public relations and of the academy and religion.