THE QUEST FOR BEING (254 pp.)Sidney HookSt. Martin's ($6).
In an age when brisk, jet-borne academic types whisk in and out of Washington, the legendary absent-minded professor is an anachronism. But New York University Philosopher Sidney Hook still conforms to that older, homelier image; he has been known to enter the shower wearing pajamas, and he once absently rejected the Oedipus Complex as a tool of philosophy by exclaiming: "I learned that stuff at my mother's knee!"
In several other ways, Hook is oldfashioned. Unlike the predominant neo-positivists, who believe that philosophy is only semantics...