Word: thinker
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...youthful nihilists denounced the entire span of French history as irrelevant. Their harsh judgment did not surprise him. In five slim volumes of pel lucid, painfully distilled essays, Rumanian-born Philosopher E. M. Cioran, 57, has argued the terrible futility of human history. More originally than any other living thinker, he has defined the case for total pessimism. "Human history is an immense cul-de-sac," he says. "For me, life is a passionate emptiness, an intriguing nothingness...
...young Trudeau-bopper for a kiss, can respond: "Why not? It's spring." A broad-minded and cultured member of academe, he also canoes, exhibits championship-caliber diving, practices yoga, loves driving fast cars and, as a bachelor, can command the company of beautiful women. A serious political thinker with some unusual views of Canada's future, he has nonetheless answered hecklers with an impudent "so's your old man." He dresses with a style and extreme casualness that stands out in Canada. After a trip to India in 1949, Trudeau wore a turban for a while...
Lynd concedes that the ultimate risk of this position invites "generalized disrespect for law," but he slides away from consequences. When in doubt, he radiates an unqualified trust in the natural goodness and perfectibility of man that makes such an early wishful-thinker as Rousseau look like a cynic...
Died. Sir Herbert Read, 74, poet, critic and catholic thinker; of cancer; in Stonegrave, England. An outspoken pacifist prior to World War I, Read nonetheless joined the Royal Army in 1915, won the Distinguished Service Order and Military Cross for heroism in the trenches. He preferred the romantic poets when everyone from Hemingway to T. S. Eliot was joining the Lost Generation, and explained abstract art when its meaning eluded many...
This, in turn, would require sluggish bureaucracies to respond more rapidly to social needs. John W. Gardner put it best at Cornell's commencement earlier this month, when he imagined himself as a 23rd century thinker. He had discovered, he said, that "20th century institutions were caught in a savage crossfire between uncritical lovers and unloving critics. On the one side, those who loved their institutions tended to smother them in an embrace of death, loving their rigidities more than their promise, shielding them from life-giving criticism. On the other side, there arose a breed of critics without...