Word: positivistic
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...speculation political philosopher Leo Strauss has laid the groundwork for this re-examination of current fashionable dogmas by re-examining, in the most meticulous and scholarly fashion, the entire tradition of modern philosophy that started with Bacon and Hobbes. Strauss's work has encouraged the reconsideration of the prevailing positivist philosophy which locates the noetic center of gravity in the natural sciences and mathematics and which is therefore "value free," independent of ethics. Such a political science, says Strauss, by refusing to make value judgments and distinguish between "great statesmen, mediocrities, and insane impostors" may be good bibliography...
...Kristol's view, the chief causes of this pervading nihilism have been the spread of higher education and of mass media as well as the long team effect of the secularist, positivist philosophy that emerged in the seventeenth century. Higher education since World War II has created a large class of academics and self-proclaimed intellectuals who readily make authoritative pronouncements in areas of public policy in which they have only marginal competence. This vocal sector has a tendency to judge a specific issue not by its individual merits, but solely in the light of certain fashionable general ideas...
...there is something missing in all our lives, and there is something radically wrong with us as a country. Thus far we have peered somewhat foolishly at America through the positivist telescope that Marx built a century ago rather than analyzing ourselves in a softer, less "scientific" manner. We are, I think, an attentive and sensitive people, needful of homily and love and sense in our dealings with the world of ideas, with which, after so long a battle with material things, we are scarcely accustomed to dealing. It is renewed notions of community and ethics that our generation will...
...Named for the 19th century French Positivist philosopher who added the word "sociology" to the language. * Playboy has itself practiced entrapment at times by hiring private investigators who pretend to be eager Johns and ask club bunnies for a date. If the bunnies are dumb enough to accept, they may get fired...
...mostly with second-order problems of method. The existentialists, on the other hand, continue to ask large-size questions, but because of their man-centered approach they are indifferent to systematic thinking. Thus, for both movements, a question such as "What is truth?" becomes impossible to answer. The logical positivist would say that a particular statement of fact can be declared true or false by empirical evidence; anything else is meaningless. A language philosopher would content himself with analyzing all the ways the word true can be used. The existentialist would emphasize what is true for a person...