Dartmouth Authors
Morris B. Storer '26, ed., Humanist Ethics: Dialogue on Basics. Prometheus, 1980. 303 pp. "Basics" indeed! Upwards of 30 million Americans and as many as one billion persons worldwide the editor estimates, are humanists, whether they call themselves such or not. "In the basic deliberations and action decisions of their lives," that is, "they have set aside faith in revelation and dogmatic authority (if they ever had it) and have settled for human experience and reason as grounds for belief and action. . . ." The ethical implications of the humanist metaphysic are of course enormous, and in this remarkable book 20 distinguished humanist-philosophers from around the world address themselves to such ethical questions as these: "Is an individual simply free to follow his own subjective desires when there is no fear of penalties in eternity? Or are there ethical principles discoverable in the human situation that make demands on us? Do we have definable obligations that appear unavoidably with the new rights and freedoms? And, in the light of science, are we actually free to choose?" The format is that of a symposium: Each contributor not only argues his own position but also responds to articles by other contributors and, in turn, replies to their comments on his article. The dialogue is mannerly, as becomes philosophers, but for all the lack of heat perhaps because of it it sheds a great deal of light.
John M. Danford '69, Wittgenstein andPolitical Philosophy: A Reexamination of theFoundations of Social Science. University of Chicago, 1978. 280 pp. A scholarly recon- sideration of the philosophical foundations of modern political science in light of Wittgenstein's conclusions that much of the language on which contemporary political science is based is profoundly suspect. The book challenges the fundamental underpinnings not only of political science but, by extension, of other social science disciplines as well.
Lipowski, Z.J., professor of psychiatry. Delirium: Acute Brain Failure in Man. Charles C. Thomas, 1980. 576 pp. Dr. Lipowski explores in this lengthy monograph, part of the American Lectures in Living Chemistry series, both the physical and psychobiological causes, of delirium, its diagnosis, the medical and surgical context in which delirium occurs, and management of this common yet little-understood condition.
