Politically Incorrect Dialogues: Topics Not Discussed in Polite Circles: 82 (Value Inquiry Book Series) - Softcover

This book is about questions that one would hesitate to ask in certain groups, because the questioning itself would mark him or her as an outsider, or a liberal, or a conservative, or a reactionary interested in resurrecting issues which have been satisfactorily settled. But Western philosophy, jump-started by the Socratic dialogues memorialized by Plato, has traditionally concerned itself with reexamining meanings and values that many thought settled once and for all. In this book the interlocutors, who disagree about almost everything, nevertheless search for areas of agreement as they continue in this Socratic tradition.

Howard Kainz has been a professor at Marquette University, Milwaukee, since 1967. He was a recipient of an National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship for 1977-1978, and Fulbright fellowships in Germany for 1980-1981 and 1987-1988. His major publications include Hegel's Phenomenology, Part I: Analysis and Commentary (1976); Ethica Dialectica: A Study of Ethical Oppositions (1979); The Philosophy of Man (1981); Hegel's Phenomenology, Part II: The Evolution of Ethical and Religious Consciousness to the Absolute Standpoint (1983); Philosophical Perspectives on Peace (1987); Ethics in Context: Toward the Definition and Differentation of the Morally Good (1988); Paradox, Dialectic, and System: A Reconstruction of the Hegelian Problematic (1988); Democracy and the "Kingdom of God" (1993); Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: Selections Translated and Annotated by Howard P. Kainz (1994); and GWF Hegel: The Philosophical System (1996). His Paradox, Dialectic, and System received the Choice Distinguished Scholarly Book award for 1988. He plays the piano and raquet ball and surfs the Internet, being an occasional participant in the Hegel newsgroup.