Word: reductios
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This totally hot guy in my Philosophy tutorial was talking about the categorical imperative and why Kant was wrong to propose its unconditional supremacy over the hypothetical imperative. He attacked the premise of autonomous will in an argument by reductio ad absurdum, taking it to the Objectionist extreme as put forth by Ayn Rand. I was all, like, impressed, and wanted to show him that I was smart too, so I was about to bring up the need for primary AND secondary laws in a society--and then I farted. Everyone heard me, even the proseminar on Hegel next door...
...course, as a practical matter, we have to send people to prison. So the moral imagination, followed to its logical conclusion, short-circuits, becoming its own reductio ad absurdum. It begins by extending our empathy to Clinton but in the end leaves us weighing his fate without dwelling on his frailty, because if human frailty were an excuse, the streets would be full of robbers...
Considering that Auschwitz is the distillation of all that is evil in mankind, the result is a volume of grotesque moral confusion. The very intent of the book--to bring the Holocaust to seven-year-olds without being depressing--is absurd, and so Celebrations becomes the reductio ad absurdum of this genre of young people's realism: at once confused, dishonest, disturbing and false...
...worth 1% to have a Fidelity expert guide me through the financial maze created by Fidelity and its rivals. Nevertheless, the wraparound account is a reductio ad absurdum. "Put Fidelity's Renowned Investment Management Expertise to Work For You," blares the brochure. That is what I thought I was doing when I invested in a Fidelity mutual fund. Now I'm told I must pay someone to tell me which mutual fund I should buy. Then I pay the mutual-fund managers to put me into the right stocks and bonds...
...reductio ad absurdum of right-wing p.c. may be the opposition to Tara J. O'Toole, Clinton's nominee for Assistant Secretary of Energy. O'Toole's nomination has been held up by two Republican Senators because -- and follow this closely, please -- she belongs to a study group that once had the name Marxist Feminist Group. The group, which meets about three times a year, changed its name to Northeast Feminist Scholars years before O'Toole joined it. The Administration wrote the Senate that O'Toole "has never endorsed Marxist theory, nor has she ever had the impression that...