A world of ideas : essential readings for college writers / 8th ed.

Table Of Contents:
Preface v
To the Student xiii
EVALUATING IDEAS: An Introduction to Critical Reading 1
PART ONE GOVERNMENT 13

VISUALIZING GOVERNMENT

EUGENE DELACROIX

Liberty Leading the People [IMAGE] 18

LAO-TZU

Thoughts from the Tao-te Ching 21

In recommending that a ruler practice judicious inactivity rather than wasteful busyness, the ancient Chinese philosopher minimizes the power of the state over the individual.

NICCOL脪 MACHIAVELLI

The Qualities of the Prince 37

In this excerpt from the most notorious political treatise of all time, Machiavelli, a veteran of intrigue in Florence's Medici court, recommends unscrupulous tactics for the ruler who wishes to secure power for himself and stability in his domain.

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

The Origin of Civil Society 55

The French philosopher Rousseau speculates that members of a society forfeit individual freedoms for the greater good of all and stresses a revolutionary view鈥攅quality before the law.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

The Declaration of Independence 77

In this primary document of modern democratic government, Jefferson justifies the right of the American colonies to dissolve their bonds with a tyrannical monarchy and to construct a free nation of independent souls in its stead.

JOS脡 ORTEGA Y GASSET

The Greatest Danger, the State 87

One of Ortega's greatest fears is that European democracies in the 1930's had in them the seeds of tyranny. Like other political philosophers, Ortega fears the disorder that results when qualified leaders fail their responsibility and unqualified mobs produce a tyranny of the majority.

CARL BECKER

Ideal Democracy 101

In an essay written in 1932, at democracy's lowest hour in the West, Becker reminds us that "Democracy is in some sense an economic luxury," but that we must nonetheless recognize its value and persist in its defense.

HANNAH ARENDT

Total Domination 121

Arendt, a historian and political theorist, argues that terror is necessary for the state to achieve total domination over the individual and that the concentration camp represents the most intense form of terror a state can exert in modern society.
PART TWO JUSTICE 135

VISUALIZING JUSTICE

LUCA GIORDANO

Justice [IMAGE] 140

MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO

The Defense of Injustice 143

Cicero, the great Roman orator and legendary champion of justice, plays devil's advocate as he powerfully argues that in some circumstances justice is inexpedient and problematic for a state to provide.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

From Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave 157

One of the most eloquent orators of the nineteenth century, Frederick Douglass, reveals how an indomitable spirit reacted to a system of law that sanctioned slavery, treated people as chattel, and denied justice for them and their offspring into perpetuity.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Civil Disobedience 173

A man who lived by his ideals of justice, Thoreau explains how and why it is not only reasonable but also sometimes essential to disobey unjust laws imposed by the state.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON

Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions 201

Stanton draws on her experience as a feminist and on Thomas Jefferson's model to show that, one hundred years after the Declaration of Independence, half of America still waited to be freed from tyranny.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

Letter from Birmingham Jail 211

King, a minister and civil rights leader, advocates nonviolent action as a means of changing the unconscionable practices of racial segregation and of achieving justice for all.

JOHN RAWLS

A Theory of Justice 233

The most distinguished contemporary thinker on the subject of justice, Rawls argues that the essence of justice is fairness and that decisions of governments or institutions should be guided by their effect on the least powerful members of the society or group concerned.
PART THREE THE INDIVIDUAL 245

VISUALIZING THE INDIVIDUAL

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog [IMAGE] 250

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Self-Reliance 255

Emerson elaborates on one of the great American themes of independence and self-reliance. He rails against peer-pressure and conformity.

In this essay he says, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" and in the process condemns conformity and insists you must trust yourself.

EMILE DURKHEIM

Individualism and the Intellectuals 271

The father of modern sociology, Durkheim argues against privileging the institutions of society over the rights of the individual.

His was a time of great intellectual ferment and his argument helped the cause of intellectuals who took a stand against a government that behaved badly.

W.E.B. DU BOIS

Of Our Spiritual Strivings 287

One of the great early African American intellectuals, Du Bois describes his own journey toward becoming an individual in a society that had no ready-made place for him.

He asks in his first words, "How does it feel to be a problem?"

Then he goes on to offer an answer.

RUTH BENEDICT The Individual and the Pattern of Culture 301

A distinguished anthropologist, Benedict explores the position of the individual in several cultures, including the Northwest Kwakiutl Indians, the Plains Indians, the Zuni, and others.

She describes what happens when society is intolerant of individual behavior and the price some must pay for their distinctiveness.

ERICH FROMM

The Individual in the Chains of Illusion 325

In the shadow of the atomic age, which threatened annihilation as he wrote, Fromm hopes for the appearance of the One Man who, like Buddha, will be totally individual and help us move onward toward enlightenment.

As he says of hierarchical organizations, "the great danger, as with all institutions, is that the individual has the illusion of being an individual."
PART FOUR WEALTH AND POVERTY 339

VISUALIZING WEALTH AND POVERTY

HENRY O. TANNER

The Thankful Poor [IMAGE] 344

ADAM SMITH

Of the Natural Progress of Opulence 347

This excerpt from the classic work on modern capitalism The Wealth of Nations explores the economic relationship between rural areas and cities in an attempt to understand the "natural" steps to wealth.

KARL MARX

The Communist Manifesto 359

Marx, the most thorough critic of laissez-faire capitalism, traces the dehumanizing progress of the nineteenth-century bourgeois economic structure and heralds its downfall at the hands of a united international proletariat.

ANDREW CARNEGIE

The Gospel of Wealth 387

The great American industrialist and steel magnate argues that it is not only desirable, but natural that some people in a free society should be enormously wealthy and that most should not.

He also insists that great personal wealth is held in trust for the public and must be given away during one's own lifetime to support worthy causes.

JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH

The Position of Poverty 405

Improving the plight of society's poorest members is a central responsibility of today's wealthy nations, says Galbraith, the most widely read economist of the past four decades.

ROBERT B. REICH

Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer 419

The former secretary of labor talks about the different categories of workers in the United States and the inevitable changes occurring as the U.S. economy is altered by globalization.
PART FIVE MIND 439

VISUALIZING THE MIND

SALVADOR DALI

The Persistence of Memory [IMAGE] 443

PLATO

The Allegory of the Cave 447

Plato, the founder of Western philosophy, talks about the nature of perception and the limits of the human mind, emphasizing the difficulties everyone encounters in discovering the truth about appearances.

REN脡 DESCARTES

Fourth Meditation: Of Truth and Error 461

Descartes, one of the great French philosophers, meditates on the nature of God and how he may learn to distinguish truth from error.

He conducts his inquiry entirely through his reason, with no reference to the physical world of the senses, which, he feels, might introduce error.

SIGMUND FREUD

The Oedipus Complex 475

After Freud posited the existence and functioning of the unconscious mind, one of his most important鈥攁nd controversial鈥攖heories was the assertion that infants went through a stage in which they unconsciously wished to possess their opposite-sex parent all for themselves.

CARL JUNG

The Personal and the Collective Unconscious 487

Jung proposes that as a cultural group we have a collective unconscious鈥攁n unconscious awareness and wishes that transcend the individual and represent the needs of the group to which we belong.

HOWARD GARDNER

A Rounded Version: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences 503

Gardner, a contemporary psychologist, has a novel view of the mind that proposes seven distinct forms of human intelligence: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal.

STEVEN PINKER

Thinking Machines 525

The basic question Pinker asks is, what is intelligence?

Then he proceeds to examine the machines that have acted intelligently by following rules that produce reliable information.

He then outlines his computational theory of intelligence and links it to "thinking machines."

V.S. RAMACHANDRAN

Neuroscience鈥擳he New Philosophy 553

In his quest for insights into the nature of consciousness, Ramachandran examines some of the most unusual disorders of the mind, including syndromes that make one think family members are "imitations" of themselves.

He asks, what is the sense of self, and how does language contribute to producing it?
PART SIX NATURE 571

VISUALIZING NATURE

ASHER B. DURAND,

Kindred Spirits [IMAGE] 576

FRANCIS BACON

The Four Idols 579

A prominent figure in philosophy and politics during the reign of England's Elizabeth I, Bacon describes the obstacles that hinder human beings' efforts to understand the world around them and the mysteries of nature.

CHARLES DARWIN

Natural Selection 597

The scrupulous habits of observation that culminated in the landmark theory of evolution are everywhere evident in Darwin's analysis of the ways species adapt to their natural environments.

RACHEL CARSON

The Sunless Sea 615

For ages, the deepest parts of the sea were thought to be lifeless.

But Carson reviews research into the depths conducted by underwater explorers and describes creatures of astonishing complexity that live in a world of almost unimaginable darkness.

STEPHEN JAY GOULD

Nonmoral Nature 635

Gould, a scientist of diverse experience, warns against assuming that the natural world mirrors our own ideas of good and evil.

MICHIO KAKU

The Mystery of Dark Matter 651

To understand why galaxies do not fly apart, physicists postulate the existence of a form of matter that makes up 90 percent of the universe but that cannot be seen or touched: dark matter.

Eminent physicist Kaku explains the history of the theory of dark matter and reveals the difficulties modern physicists face in describing how the universe works.

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

Genetic Engineering 667

The possibility of engineering our genes to produce taller, smarter, better-looking children has been an ideal for some, and now it seems it could become a reality for many.

The questions involved in such engineering are such that we may be correct in being fearful of the future.
PART SEVEN ETHICS AND MORALITY 683

VISUALIZING ETHICS AND MORALITY

JOSEPH WRIGHT OF DERBY

An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump [IMAGE] 687

ARISTOTLE

The Aim of Man 691

Aristotle describes the search for the highest good, which he defines as happiness.

In the process of defining the good, he relates it to the idea of virtuous behavior, living an ethical and moral life.

For him, the concept of morality is communal, not just individual.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Morality as Anti-Nature 713

Nietzsche, one of modernism's most influential thinkers, argues that rules of morality and ethics set down by religions force individuals to adhere to principles that deny their human nature.

IRIS MURDOCH

Morality and Religion 729

Murdoch, one of the twentieth century's most distinguished authors, questions whether there can be morality without religion and whether if evil is conquered the concept of morality would remain.

ALDO LEOPOLD

The Land Ethic 745

In an effort to extend the concept of ethics beyond human interrelationships, Leopold suggests that when we harm the land we are committing an ethical violation.

The land is not just soil, but all that is supported on it, the entire biota, all of which may be harmed if we do not behave ethically toward it. Leopold was an early conservationist with an ethical and moral purpose.

PETER SINGER AND JIM MASON

The Ethics of Eating Meat 767

Singer and Mason, a philosopher and a journalist, discuss factory farming, in which livestock are herded into tiny spaces and suffer pain until they are slaughtered.

Their purpose is to awaken us to the ethical issues involved in mistreating animals raised for the express purpose of being served on our tables.

They ask us to decide whether it is ethical to eat meat at all.
PART EIGHT GENDER AND CULTURE 791

VISUALIZING GENDER AND CULTURE

MARY STEVENSON CASSATT

In The Loge [IMAGE] 796

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

Of the Pernicious Effects Which Arise from the Unnatural Distinctions Established in Society 799

In this excerpt from one of the first great works of feminism, Wollstonecraft argues that the laws, property rights, and class distinctions of her day are mechanisms of control that deny women their liberty and demean their lives.

JOHN STUART MILL

The Subjection of Women 815

Mill, one of the most distinguished philosophers of his time, the Victorian age, cries out against a social system that denies education and opportunity to women.

He clarifies the subjection of women in marriage and argues against wasting the talent of half of society, talent that he says is in great demand in the modern industrial age.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

Shakespeare's Sister 837

In this excerpt from A Room of One's Own, her book-length essay on the role of women in history and society, Woolf imaginatively reconstructs the environment of Shakespeare's hypothetical sister and demonstrates how little opportunity she would have had in the sixteenth century.

MARGARET MEAD

Sex and Temperament 855

The anthropologist Margaret Mead attacks the idea that there is a biological basis for what we may think of as a masculine or a feminine temperament.

She illustrates her argument with examples from a number of societies whose views about masculinity and femininity are quite at odds with any that we might recognize in our own experience.

CLAUDE L脡VI-STRAUSS

Men, Women, and Chiefs 873

Because he wanted to study society at its most basic level, Levi-Strauss spent almost two years among Brazilian Indians who had little or no contact with Europeans.

He describes their political system and the responsibilities of the chief.

He also describes the gender-specific activities that prevailed in the Nambikwara hunter-gatherer society.

GERMAINE GREER

Masculinity 889

One of the most celebrated of modern feminists, Greer begins by establishing that masculinity is a social, not a biological, construct.

She then offers a careful analysis of the specific qualities of masculinity that, while obviously controversial, can be easily verified or denied by reference to the day-to-day experience of the reader.
WRITING ABOUT IDEAS: An Introduction to Rhetoric 903
INDEX OF RHETORICAL TERMS 929