The seven contributors present the reader with a set of perspectives on the subsequent histories of the central ideas of these great thinkers. The essays focus on the ways in which these ideas were caught up in social movements and had been taken up by others who used them to support programs for radical historical changes, thereby subjecting them to distortions and perversions. The whole book reflects the feeling that history itself has purged away the dross which lay within the (...) original ideas, and that what now remains is either pure gold or later perversions illicitly smuggled in under the cover of various "isms."--K. P. F. (shrink)

This provocative, if sketchy, essay develops the theme that, although thought and reality are ultimately distinct, both are elements of one and the same reality--"a communion of living and interacting forces." The presentation recognizes a dialectical character to reality, in the form of opposing thrusts and tendencies, and a plurality of foci of demands to be met, all operating through and partially constituting history. It fails, however, to explicate the movement in the dialectic of reality and to explore the possibility (...) and value of dialectic as a cognitive process.--K. P. F. (shrink)