Word: priori
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...belief would require heroic generosity from theologians, he admits. Not only must they be ecumenical, willing to examine and learn from other traditions, but they should also be thoroughly objective with regard to their own faith, winnowing the wheat from the chaff without worrying about the chaff. All a priori assumptions must thus be avoided, even so basic an assumption as one that places Christ at the starting point of its theology before examining Christian tradition in the light of other intellectual disciplines. "Theology," insists Berger, "must begin and end with the question of truth...
Without making any claims that this is a rigid a priori formula it would seem that there has to be first, a dramatically interesting story that occurs at a human level, a story resonant with analogies so complex and yet, at moments, instantly and strikingly identifiable, that it fleshes out the political fact. The turbulence of war, the patterns of black-white intimacies, the historically right setting, all these are fit ingredients for such a story. And finally, most important, the touches of unstammering, heroic rhetoric to scald the benches into the grip of the ultimate social and political meanings...
...this leads to the point that the issues must be seen on their intrinsic merits. This surely will not mean a total retreat from the world, that enchanting idyll of no known past. But here and there disengagements from some present undertakings should not a priori be foreclosed. On the other hand, reconsiderations may issue in more strenuous efforts at openness, particularly in the policy sciences and their research centers. Conscious receptivity to destructive criticism of conventionally accepted limits n policy can after all well be defended on both intellectual and pragmatic grounds...
...detrimental to the Summer School to condescend either on an academic or social level toward its summer guests. Simply because they don't go to Harvard or Radcliffe is no reason to convict them a priori of stupidity or irresponsibility...
...distinction between the "warm" "democratic" "people loving" "New" left and the cold calculating "Old" left is a cry that has been heard over and over again--most recently in an article appearing in an August issue of Mr. Buckley's National Review. Again Mr. Hessler adopts this a-priori assertion rather than an argument, that somehow providing an intellectual framework which we think clarifies action makes us "cold hearted...