Word: abyss
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...leaders on both sides, forced to look into the abyss of madness, retreated to sanity. Rabin phoned Arafat in Tunis and said, "I am ashamed as an Israeli that such a horrible incident took place here." That was an astonishing expression from the icily reserved Rabin, especially given his never concealed loathing for the P.L.O. chief. Politicians on the don't-give-the-Arabs-an-inch Israeli right also spoke in tones of sorrow and repentance. "It's a crime, a terrible crime, and I condemn it totally," said Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud party, which has said that...
...writing in response to the guest commentary "Erring in the Name of Multiculturalism" (Feb. 25, 1994). In their editorial Mr. Lanzo and Mr. Sterling claim that the "ethnocentrism" of an Ethnic Studies department "threatens to lead us into an abyss of academic separatism" and that "we should incorporate multiple perspectives into a coherent whole...
...Looking in the Abyss is a trenchant analysis of the postmodern condition and its threat to liberalism and the liberal imagination. The subtitle of Himmelfarb's short book is 'Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society," and she means it. By arguing for the restoration of partial truths and solid standards, Himmelfarb's book is a Modern's response to the postmodern condition. Since Himmelfarb is now a professor emeritus and a historian of nineteenth-century England, one might be tempted to discount her description of the current impoverished state of the humanities. This would be a grave mistake...
Himmelfarb has compiled seven essays and lectures here, forming a sustained and coherent argument against some of the contemporary trends in American higher education and culture. On Looking into the Abyss is one of the most important books young minds (and old ones too, I suppose) should be aware of and reading...
...thank goodness we never actually arrived at this imaginary place beyond good and evil, the place where we would not be able even to mark the 'partial, contingent, incremental truths of Moderns, let alone the truths of the Ancients. On Looking into the Abyss is a lucid explanation to those like Paul De Man who, when they looked into the abyss and walked away smiling, should really have wept...