Word: axioms
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VARIATIONS of this ugly axiom are heard the length of Asia and are as universal as the antagonisms they express. The continent's greatest single cause of turmoil is not the struggle for food or political power but simple-and not so simple-hatred among peoples, classes, races. The U.S. is deeply and rightly troubled by its own problems of racial discrimination. They are mild compared with Asia's endemic and murderous grudges, and America's problems are subject to a system of social and legal redress that, tragically, most of Asia lacks. The Asian paradox...
...widespread use of the cept at Princeton University, which boasts of the small, conversational classes that it calls "precepts." The cept is jokingly defined as "half a concept"-meaning that it is more than a fact but less than a philosophy, more than an epigram but less than an axiom, more than a thesis but less than a synthesis. The Princeton student has it made if he can spot these prized nuggets in rapid reading or sporadic attendance at lectures, spin them out glibly during a precept and, above all, weave them dazzlingly into an exam essay...
Investigated Horrors. Casement's treason occurred in World War I. Like most Irish patriots, he believed the axiom that "England's extremity is Ireland's opportunity." Casement went to Germany and tried to raise an Irish Brigade from among British prisoners-of-war, but could get only 53 volunteers. In April of 1916, Casement and two other Irishmen landed on the Galway coast from a German submarine; they were captured the next day. The result was one of the century's most notorious treason trials. In its mixture of nationalist hate and sexual perversion, it seemed...
...ahead. Many Roman Catholics and Protestants feel that the primary theological task is re-translation of traditional concepts into contemporary accents, and that to toss doctrine overboard is to betray the faith. Yet an influential minority of Christian thinkers is willing to do just that. It is an unarguable axiom for the Marburg Disciples of Germany's Rudolf Bultmann that Christianity must de-mythologize-that is, translate the essential elements of the New Testament proclamation into terms that relate to man's existential conflict today, while doing away with nonessentials as so much historical ballast. Advocates of Paul...
...reign in Spain, postulates the author, is "the cult of virility," and woman's fate is to be "enslaved and betrayed." On the reader's acceptance of this arch axiom teeters this over-suave tale. Its stagy business, and that of the Duchess of Combon de Triton, is to make her "appallingly stupid" cluke the first faithful husband in Spanish history. Her scheme is to win his compassion by feigning illness and his awe by submitting to surgical cures without anesthesia or a whimper. Some 30 agonizing operations later, the duke commits suicide. Now the widow, whose "only...