Someone on a gifted adults blog says "Chapter 6 in particular talks about how we need to be alienated from society in order to be truly free. Since the average person lives their life passively, anyone who lives conscientiously will necessarily be alienated from the average person."

I read this book in my late teens. It concisely expressed much of my own thinking at the time. It laid down a gauntlet, so to speak, offered me a challenge. What is justice? Does it have any meaning?

I think it does, and I think Kaufmann is wrong here, wrong especially in not looking at justice as one virtue among many that gained its meaning as a means to reduce conflict in a world where conflict was king, but co-operation always possible.

These are the ideas I grappled with before I settled on my political beliefs. (I found the key to resolving Kaufmann’s anti-justice position while reading the works of Ludwig von Mises.) But this book solidified my commitment to taking seriously value diversity and the nature of conflict of interest - indeed, looking at “interest” in a skeptical way.

I gave away my copy, alas, so I cannot now readily quote from it. It’s worth noting that philosopher Walter Kaufmann has written a philosophical work in the form of a self-help book. It’s an odd achievement, and quite admirable.

His defense of alienation struck me, in the late days of my youth, as spot on, pitch perfect. And every leftist and alleged admirer of po-mo post-Marxian claptrap should read it. ( )