SIDNEY HOOK AND THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

Never has the philosopher breathed who did not consider his speculations, no matter how ethereal they may have been in fact, to be uniquely relevant to contemporary problems. Sidney Hook, as the modern thinker on whose shoulders rests most visibly the mantle of John Dewey, has a more viable claim than most to that distinction; and it is under this aspect that the twenty-four contributors to this Festschrift (published in honor of Hook's sixty-fifth birthday) appraise his thought. The various philosophical fields to which Hook has contributed are all treated in a fairly comprehensive, if somewhat brief, manner: political and social philosophy (with special attention to Marxism), educational theory, ethics, critique of religion, metaphysics both ontological and epistemological. The book is in fact an excellent introduction to the thought of Sidney Hook, rather than, as in most works of this kind, a collection of miscellanea. As such, it will be fine for the student of philosophy, even though the nature of the subject will prevent the book from attaining any appreciable readership beyond that small circle.