Word: humanists
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...conception of Judas as hero evolves, moreover, with what used to be called a fruitful ambiguity, leaving the reader to ponder the author's real intent. For while Judas begins as a humanist hero and Della Paresi is clearly a villain, it becomes progressively clear just how much Judas, the political revolutionary, and this unscrupulous priest resemble each other. They are both, in fact, unpleasant Ubermen-schen who see themselves as saviors of mankind but scorn all other men and other men's laws. Judas and Della Paresi agree that the meek will never inherit the earth...
Stoppard pushes this and related theses with antic wordplay, inspired zaniness and crackerjack wit. The evening would sag in spots if it were not for Hordern. What might have been simply a caricature of an absent-minded professor emerges as a warmly affectionate portrait of the last living humanist. And Rigg is lovely to look at, especially in the nude, and to listen to as she delivers her lines with a resolute intelligence that seems to unbend the pretzel twists of thought...
...Dickens and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In this, he took what critics have called a "strict constructionist" view of the humanities, saying the endowment should refuse to finance "Classic Comics-culture simplified and castrated." Declared Berman: "I'm a professional scholar and naturally want to preserve the best in our humanist traditions...
...vision and rebellious despair was what made Goodman one of the most elusive and yet most challenging talents of his generation. Poet, psychologist, anarchist, teacher, novelist, propounder of extreme solutions to mundane problems, he could never see why conventional critics often dismissed him as a gadfly. "I am a humanist," he said, "and everything I do has exactly the same subject-the organism and the environment. Anything I write is pragmatic-it aims to accomplish something...
Complex Scenario. Ellsberg even contemplates the possibility that he is a war criminal similar to Albert Speer, the intelligent, cultivated humanist who was Hitler's architect. He recalls attending a seminar on war crimes and thinking "that I was the only person present who was a potential defendant." It is difficult to take this possibility seriously. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon papers for what he feels is the good of the country; he may also have been trying to rid himself of what he sees as a damned spot. But his view is too schematic and bears the cold stamp...