Book Review of Encyclopedia Britannica Great Ideas Volume 1 & 2
1952
Review by
Bill Schaeffer
copyright (c) 2014
William Schaeffer
*****
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Volume 1, p. 112
Chapter 6: Beauty
Truth, goodness, and beauty form a triad of terms which have been discussed together throughout the tradition of western thought.
They have been called "transcendental" on the ground that everything which IS is in some measure or manner subject to denomination as true or false, good or evil, beautiful or ugly. But they have also been assigned to special spheres of being or subject matter -- the true to thought and logic, the good to action and morals, the beautiful to enjoyment and aesthetics.
They have been called "the three fundamental values" with the implication that the worth of anything can be exhaustively judged by reference to these three standards- and no others."
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Volume 1, pp.252
Chapter 13: Courage
The heoes of history and poetry may be cruel, violent, self-seeking, ruthless, intemperate, and unjust, but they are never cowards. They do not falter or give way. They do not despair in the face of almost hopeless odds. They have strength and stamina to achieve whatever they set their minds and wills to do. They would not be heroes if they were not men of courage."
****
Volume 1, pp. 715-716
Chapter 34: History
""The whole of mankind," Engels writes in his preface to The Communist Manifesto, "since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership, has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; the history of these class struggles forms a series of evolutions in which, now a days, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class, the proletariat, cannot attain emancipation from the sway of the exploiting ruling class, the bourgeoisie, without, at the same time, and once and for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class-distinction and class-struggle." The four great economic systems- the system of slave labor, feudal serfdom, industrial capitalism, and the communistic or classless society -- are thus seen as the stages of progress toward an ultimate perfection in which history comes to rest because it has at last fully realized its controlling tendency."
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Volume 2, p. 347
Chapter 66: Philosophy
"What is the use of philosophy, especially in its theoretic branches, if, unlike science it cannot be applied to the mastery of physical nature and the production of utilities, whether bridges or bombs? What, finally, at the end of its long history, does philosophy come to if, in such marked contrast to the continuously accelerated progress of the sciences, it cannot claim any signal advance on which all philosophers are agreed, but instead must admit that most of its problems seem to be perennially debated, now as in every preceding century?"
****
Volume 2, p.1038
Chapter 99: Wealth
"If the only questions about wealth concerned the means of getting and keeping it, the causes of its increase and decrease, the idea of wealth would be confined to economics. "The end of the medical are is health," writes Aristotle in the Ethics, and "that of economics, wealth." But as the Ethics indicates, the moralist and the statesman are also concerned with health and wealth..."
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