Introducing Chomsky
This book series is part of an alarming trend in higher education?learning through amusement?and an even more alarming new genre?intellectual comic books trafficking as serious learning tools. It is to philosophy what the Classic Comic is to literature and the campaign ad to politics: Cliff Notes meet the sound bite. Short on text and long on large cartoons?emotivism gets 13 lines and four dialog balloons; the Theory of Forms seven lines and two balloons?the texts badly introduce individual thinkers or areas of thought. The sound bite is empty enough when presenting facts, but as a way to get across concepts, positions and arguments, it is self-defeating. These works necessarily emphasize what the thinker thinks, presented informationally, not why or how those conclusions were reached. Thus, even when the texts aren't superficial, the thinkers' claims are utterly obscure. The art work is high quality and witty, and the agenda clearly postmodern?Kant is read as a protodeconstructionist, the universalist enterprise of ethics gets mocked. Thus, their best audience is the opposite of the one intended: not the beginner but the advanced reader of philosophy who can appreciate the fun. At their best, these works belong in Father Guido Sarducci's "Five-Minute College," in which for each course he gives a slogan. At their worst, these books will change remembering a slogan to remembering a picture. Not recommended.?Lee Horvitz, Miami Univ., Middletown, OhioCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.