To Be Human

To Be Human's central theme is the identity of the human being. It is underpinned by the conviction that philosophy is a practical, not theoretical, discipline; philosophizing is a human endeavor in which one seeks to find a philosophy which satisfies one's critical sense after careful personal reflection. This work endeavors to engage college students in the reflective process required to attain that end. To Be Human presents the students with the theories of four different contemporary philosophers: Skinner, Sartre, Marx, and Maslow. Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World is used throughout the book both as a means of making palpable that different philosophies have different and very practical consequences, and as a means of furnishing the student with a concrete model to start testing the validity of the particular philosophy he or she feels tempted to adopt. Reprinted from the 1985 Paulist Press edition.