Word: tenderness
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...group. This was Lincoln's genius. Today's Americans, enmeshed in community, can only wish for Lincoln's qualities?he was politic without being unprincipled, patient without being resigned, flexible without being opportunistic, tough-minded without being brutal, determined without being fanatical, religious without being dogmatic or unworldly, tender without being sentimental, and devoted to man without worshiping...
Differences of temperament among philosophers greatly interested James and he viewed his pragmatism as a method for mediating between contradictory philosophical styles. The history of philosophy, he believes, can be seen as an interminable battle between the "tender-minded" and the "tough-minded" types of philosopher. Of the numerous Jamesian dichotomies this the most famous. it is best represented in tabular form...
...Tender-minded Tough-minded Rationalities Empirisist Intellectualistic Sensationalistic Idealists Materialists Optimistic Pessimistic Religious Irreligious Free-willist Fatalletis Menistis Pluralistis Degmatis Skeptieal...
...tender-minded individual seeks to live by principles; the tough- minded, by facts. "Clearness and simplicity thus set up rival claims," according to James, "and make a real dilemma for the thinker. A man's philosophic attitude is determined by the balance in him of these two cravings. No system of philosophy can hope to be universally accepted among men which grossly violates either need, or entirely subordinates the one to the other. The fate of Spinoza, with his barren union of all things in one substance, on the one hand; that of Hume, with his equally barren 'looseness...
...fairness that James exhibited a manic-depressive tendency. But, as his biographer Ralph Barton Perry notes, a potentially dangerous proclivity became transformed into a benign trait in the total, integrated personality. The extreme variability of moods gave James a quick sympathy for both tough-minded physicists and tender-minded religionists, guilt-ridden prophets and buoyant natural...