This book provides a concise and very readable summary of John Paul II philosophy of the human person. The main section of the book presents John Paul's philosophy of education by gathering together his many written thoughts on the matter -- works from both before and after becoming pope.
The entire book is very readable and understandable for all, whether or not you have a good grounding in philosophy. It gives some good "food for thought" for all educators.

I watched the movies, the Jack Nicholson one and the made for tv one, then I read the book. Even with watching the movies first the book was excellent. I was scared even though at times I knew what may have happened and there were other surprises. The book was just a simple demonstration of Stephen King's excellent writing. i have recommended this book to all my friends that have not read it and they have loved it too. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys some surprises every once in a while.

Let it be known that I cannot be unbiased when it comes to De Quincey. When browsing aimlessly through my college's library a year ago, I discovered him and have been entranced ever since: with his eloquence, with his brilliantly feverish imagination.

Klosterheim demonstrates the fascination with German themes that one sees in other Romantics and Victorians (Carlyle and Coleridge, for example). De Quincey was a loyal reader of German metaphysics, and perhaps one can see their influence here. One also wonders (and I am no expert, so take this with skepticism) how much Poe read of De Quincey.

John Thomas Menesini's The Last Great Glass Meat Million Is a stunning Collection of Work, JTM is nearly the poetic equivalent of Arthur Rimbaud, While he Focuses On The Depressed Small Towns of Pennsylvania, he darkly Describes The Images And Characters Which inhabit Them, I was blown away by his painterlike attention to detail and his willingness to find the hardest darkest things, a beer can strewn landscape, bums on the corners, "Little Girls With Scraped Knees" which is my favorite poem of the Collection, John Thomas Menesini (Like Rimbaud And Fritz Lang Before Him)Shows us beauty where we thought that only ugliness existed.

I must say that I throughly enjoyed this wonderful book. I wanted to learn Excel because the software was loaded onto the computer that I purchased.

A nice lady recommended the book and I went to purchase it. I must say that I have NEVER been so pleased to get a book and able to put it to use IMMEDIATELY!

What I like most about the book is how it builds on a foundation and moved you from a beginner level to advance. I never dreamed that I would actually learn how to write a macro with so much details given.

I'm telling you. I learned Excel 5 and all its marvelous feature from One book.

Since this was such a delight to learn - I'm about to discover Microsoft Word 6, Lotus 1-2-3, and WordPerfect 6.1 and YES - I will be using the Shelly Cashman Series.

This is it, folks -- the point at which classical and modern liberalism began to diverge. Everybody in either camp is indebted, in one way or another, to the great Thomas Hill Green. And sooner or later, everybody in either camp will have to come to terms with him.

Now, in my own not entirely humble opinion, Green's criticisms of other liberal theorists are well-founded and he himself has gotten the philosophical foundations just about exactly right. Basically, his claim is that (my paraphrase) the source of our rights against one another, as well as the source of the state itself, is our possession of an ideal common end in which the well-being of each of us is coherently included.

He develops this account very painstakingly, and one of the joys of reading it is watching him make sense of Rousseau's tortured notion of the "general will." By the time Green is through rescuing this doctrine from Rousseau, it becomes something altogether respectable: that (my paraphrase again) there is an overarching ideal end at which our actions aim, and it is that end which we _would_ have if all of our present aims were thoroughly modified and informed by reflective reason.

I say "_would_ have" with some reservations, since for Green (as for Bosanquet and Blanshard, who followed him here) there is a clear sense in which we _really_ have this ideal end. But this point takes us afield into Green's metaphysics, which are better covered in his _Prolegomena to Ethics_.

As I said, this volume marks the watershed between classical and modern liberalism. Green is often associated with the "modern" side of the divide, but today's reader will be surprised to see just how "classical liberal" Green was (in, e.g., his opposition to paternalistic government and in a good many other respects). Why, heck, there are passages that could have been lifted from David Conway's _Classical Liberalism: The Unvanquished Ideal_.

It does seem, though, that in allowing a positive role for the governmental institutions of a geographically-demarcated State, he has started down the slippery slope to the modern welfare-warfare state. Like Hegel before him and like Bosanquet after him, Green usually means by "state," not the bureaucratic machinery of a territorial government, but the whole of society including _all_ of its "institutions of governance." But -- also like Hegel and Bosanquet -- he does not always keep these two things firmly distinguished, and at times he is clearly thinking specifically of the governmental institutions of a territorial nation-state rather than what some of us would call the "market."

He is also a bit unclear on the ground of "rights." W.D. Ross rightly takes him to task for this in _The Right and the Good_: Green writes on one page that we have _no_ rights until these are recognized by society, and then turns around and writes as though "society" is recognizing rights we _already_ have. To my mind Ross clearly has the better of the argument here, though the problem is not, I think, terribly hard to fix.

On the whole, then, it is probably no wonder that Green and his crowd set into motion -- whether inadvertently or otherwise -- a stream of "liberalism" that would eventually find a far, far larger role for the State than any that Green himself would have approved. But to my mind, these difficulties are removable excrescences, not the heart of his theory. (And it is also worth bearing in mind that Green provides moral grounds for _resisting_ the State: he acknowledges that no actual State is really ideal and, insofar as it falls short of the ideal, should be brought firmly into the service of our common end.)

The theory itself seems to me to be sound. In fact, despite the aforementioned disagreements and several others, I would nominate this volume as perhaps _the_ single greatest work on liberal political theory.

Again, at some point every "liberal" of any stripe will have to come to terms with Green's ideas (perhaps in highly mutated form). And if, with minor tweezing, Green's basic outlook is sound, it also -- suitably adjusted -- forms the proper basis for the classical-liberal commonwealth.

It therefore behooves classical liberals and libertarians to get the word directly from Green himself. Those other "liberals" aren't _entirely_ wrong.

As the illustrator of the Jefferson building's overview for the book (pp.276-277), I had the rare privilege of walking through many of the areas of the Jefferson building not open to the public. Entering the Great Hall for the first time, I was caught off guard by its extraordinary beauty. Being a native Washingtonian, I was surprised that such a lavishly decorated structure existed here in Washington, D.C. The overall impression of the interior is more that of the Paris Opera House, than a government building. This beautiful book, with its many photographic details of the interior, allows the reader to recreate that sense of awe that I experienced walking through the entrance. With Anne Day's vivid photos, and the Libary's wonderful history, this book should be a welcome addition to anyone's personal library. Once you see the book, I suspect you may modify your itinerary for your next trip to Washington. This gem of a building is definitely worth a visit.

-Doug Stern

Great for people of all ages who are interested in philosophy, especially those interested in debate.

If you are ready to turn your life into a work of art, this is the book for you. This book will help give you a new perspective on the term 'conflict.' It helps you understand that conflict is not a negative thing, it just is...and the sooner we learn what options we have to deal with conflict, the happier and fuller our lives can be.