Word: rationalists
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...retirement (last autumn) from the editorship of The American Mercury (TIME, Oct. 16). With a sturdy contempt for philosophers, metaphysicians and theologians ("They are specialists in penetrating the impenetrable, or they are nothing"), Mencken tramps into their jealously guarded sanctuaries and lays about him manfully with his 19th Century rationalist flail. Like its predecessor, Treatise on Right & Wrong purports to be an historical and comparative outline of human ethics; as before. Author Mencken is constantly distracted by the red herring of the Christian Churches. "All the branches of Christianity suffer by the fact that they seem to be unable...
National Socialism is a conscious attack on anything that might be conceived as liberalism or rationalist intellectualism. It sternly suppresses all work which is not expressive of German national culture. Liberalistic thought scornfully termed "Intellectualism" modernistic or international art, all expression of an individuality which is not creative in the National Socialist sense are emphatically discouraged...
Maurice Sachs in his "Decade of Illusion" is very much a member of the school he describes. He is an individualist and an intellectual; something of a philosopher, a rationalist, while still an incurable romantic. At times he spoils his impression by unrestrained, uncritical enthusiasms; and he is throughout perhaps too trusting of his demi-gods. But the book pictures a phase of life, of bohemianism, that has never existed before and may never exist again with a certain brilliance and much understanding...
...about. . . . Eddington and Jeans contradict each other, and . . . both contradict the biological theologians, but all agree that in the last resort science should abdicate before what is called the religious consciousness. This attitude is regarded by themselves and by their admirers as more optimistic than that of the uncompromising rationalist. It is, in fact, quite the opposite: it is the outcome of discouragement and loss of faith...