APA Newsletters
Fall 1999
Volume 99, Number 1

Book Reviews

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Eugene Kelly and Luis E. Navia, eds, The Fundamental Questions: A Selection of Readings in Philosophy
Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt, 2nd ed., 1995).

Reviewed by Haim Marantz
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

All teachers who have been charged with teaching Introduction to Philosophy have to decide what they are going to require their students to read, discuss, and write about. Ideally most teachers would like students to take away from such a course firsthand acquaintance with some of philosophy's classic literature, some general idea of the various types of problems that philosophers deal with, some idea of the history of the subject, as well as some practice in dealing with some of these problems both verbally, and more importantly, in writing. Those teaching introductory courses in philosophy are forced to decide what they will use as texts around which to build their lectures. There are two principal approaches: a teacher may decide on a single classic text such as Plato's Republic, Descartes' Meditations, or Berkeley's Dialogues; or a teacher may decide to tackle various philosophical problems, such as "What is knowledge?" or "Do humans have free will?" Those who choose the latter tack must then choose a text around which to build the course. There are two types of books they can choose: a textbook that outlines problems to be dealt with in clear prose and at an introductory level, or an anthology in which selections from different philosophers address the problems that will make up the content of the course. The book under review, The Fundamental Questions: A Selection of Readings in Philosophy, edited by Eugene Kelly and Luis E. Navia, is an example of this last type of textbook; however, it is different from all the others in this genre that I am familiar with.

The first thing that distinguishes the book under review is its first chapter. In this chapter the authors present to their readers an explanation of what philosophy is via an historical outline of its beginnings in Miletus. The account of Thales' view in this chapter is as good as any that I am familiar with in any general book either on the history of philosophy or even on the history of Greek philosophy. While the editors' treatment of the views of Anaximander and Anaximines is not as full as their account of Thales' view, readers are told enough to enable them to understand what these philosophers are principally remembered for. In this chapter students will also find information about some of the philosophical views of Xenophanes, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Zeno.

The second chapter is devoted to Socrates. The introduction to this chapter is a seven-page essay on Socrates and his work, which, in the words of the editors, is supposed to furnish readers "with an understanding of the overall direction, the method, and the goals of Socrates' philosophical activities" (p. 40). The rest of the chapter is made up of selections from Plato: Theaetetus, Book I of The Republic, a complete version of Apology, and selections from Phaedo. All the selections, not just in this chapter but throughout the book, are accompanied by introductions and are broken up with commentaries which highlight certain views and arguments and connect them to what is to be found elsewhere in the volume. I should point out that apart from the Apology, there are two other complete Platonic dialogues included in the book, Euthyphro and Crito.

The next chapter in the book is entitled "Ethical Values and Right Action." Apart from containing Euthyphro and selections from Ruth Benedict's "Anthropology and the Abnormal," Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, Bentham's An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Kant's Metaphysics of Morals and G. E. Moore's "The Subject-Matter of Ethics," it also contains verses 1-10 of chapter 22 of the Book of Genesis, which tells the story of the binding of Isaac.

Chapter 4 is entitled "Issues in Political Philosophy," and in addition to the full text of the Crito, it includes selections from Locke's Second Treatise of Government, Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, Rawls' A Theory of Justice, and Marcuse's One Dimensional Man.

Chapter 5, the longest chapter in the book, is entitled "The Philosophy of Religion." It contains twenty-two selections. I will not list them all. However, unlike other introductory texts, it includes selections from The Book of Job, The Sermon on the Mount, The Legend of Buddha Shakyamuni, as well as the dialogue on the problem of evil from the chapter titled "Rebellion" in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. This chapter also includes selections to be found in other textbooks, such as two from Kierkegaard (one of which includes his discussion of the binding of Isaac from Fear and Trembling), The Five Ways of St. Thomas Aquinas, the versions of the ontological argument of both St. Anselm and Descartes, and Kant's critique of this argument in his Critique of Pure Reason.

Chapter 6, entitled "The Philosophy of Human Nature," contains selections from The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem, The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, Science and Human Behavior by B. F. Skinner, The Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud, The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, and Man's Place in Nature by Max Scheler. It ends with C. J. Ducasse's essay, "Is Life after Death Possible?" In their final comments to this section and of the book itself, the editors talk about Heidegger's conception of philosophy as the attempt to recover the original meaning of Being. Their final two sentences are: "The time is coming, says Heidegger, when we will learn not to control beings, but to listen for Being Itself, learn to hear the sound of silence, the silence out of which beings appear. Seinlassen! is Heidegger's word to us, which in English became the title of a song by John Lennon and Paul McCartney: 'Let It Be'." If, by working through this book with the help of a teacher, students will be brought to a stage in their education where they will be able to make sense of these two sentences, than undoubtedly their intellectual journey will have been one of enlightenment.

However, even if after working through the book they are unable to make sense of these last two sentences, their journey may still have been worthwhile. The material included in the book is both varied and interesting. It includes selections from nonphilosophers like Stanislaw Lem and from philosophers like Max Scheler, whose writings, to the best of my knowledge, have never been included in introductory textbooks in philosophy. There is, of course, room to grumble over some of the selections. For example, why not include Mill, who is more readable than Bentham, on utilitarianism? Why not Rawls's essay on "Civil Disobedience," which also includes a thumbnail sketch of his general position rather than the selections from A Theory of Justice? And why not Marcuse's essay "A Critique of Pure Tolerance," rather than the turgid selection from One Dimensional Man? But what makes a course based on this book worth attending is its being taught by teachers who will display to their students how they should read the material in it in a sympathetic yet critical manner. Simply listening to a teacher lecturing on the material contained in the book would be insufficient to make a course based on this book worthwhile. Rather, students should be requested to do in their own way what their teacher is doing. In this case, studying philosophy is like learning how to swim-one can only learn how to do it by doing it. This means that teachers must require their students both to talk and to write about the material they read and are lectured to about. And what students say and write must be evaluated by their teachers, who should point out not only what the students are doing wrong but, also, what they are doing right. But this goes for any course based on any textbook. The main advantage to using this textbook is to be found in its interesting first chapter on the beginnings of philosophy and in the slightly unusual selections contained in it, as well as in a few interesting remarks made by the editors in some of their introductions to the various chapters and in their commentaries.