Word: edman
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...stars in his eyes. Besides such unsurprising names as Henry A. Wallace and Charles Chaplin, the roster included Physicist Albert Einstein, Novelist Thomas Mann. What was really surprising at this late date was that such supposedly well-informed people as Vassar President Sarah Gibson Blanding and Columbia Philosopher Irwin Edman had agreed to sponsor the Communists' show and ducked out only at the last minute...
This is not philosophy; it is a pleasant defense of urbanity among teachers of philosophy. Edman writes, he says, as he would talk to a friend "over a glass of sherry...
...absence of philosophical thinking in a book by a professional philosopher might seem a damning defect. In Philosopher's Quest, as in its predecessor (the best-selling Philosopher's Holiday), it is meant to be a source of charm. Professor Edman's gift for talking about philosophy has made him one of the prides of Columbia's faculty and a crowd-drawing lecturer. The same gift, at work in his good-humored essays, will endear him to readers who do not wish to put up their hands and ask searching questions...
...chapter, consisting of imaginary interviews with Plato, Marcus Aurelius, St. Paul, Spinoza and Schopenhauer, shows Professor Edman as an eclectic honeybee of philosophy, his nectar sacs full, his buzzing melodious and sunny. His conclusion: ". . . Though the order is not found, the inquiry proves, itself, a goal...
...Irwin Edman says wistfully, and perhaps a little apologetically: "Some day, if I can overcome a sense of humor and a sense of doubt, I shall try to write such a systematic tome as professional philosophers require, or as is expected of a professional thinker by the general public." He is obviously in no hurry...