Mr. Runciman is a Fellow at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. The jacket photo gives Mr. Runciman the appearance of a rather austere even intimidating person, but his book filled with a sense of the joy and exaltation in the act of critical inquiry, a very rare occurrence. Although only 127 pages long it is a challenging, revelatory experience. The point of this tart polemic,he even engages in the use of mild profanity, seems to me to be that he challenges the status of these three philosophical texts and by definition the notion of sacred texts, generally. There can be no text that cannot and must not be subject to deep searching critical scrutiny, and that the notion of classic or sacred texts that have reached the status of an unquestioned reception is antithetic to the project of free critical examination. Mr. Runciman's writing is both elegant and spare and is not concerned with critical fads or an addiction to any critical theory, but is based in a concern with the critical examination of the arguments of the books under review. It is all very straight forward and refreshing for that very reason.
Stephen