Word: truthful
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...would like to respond directly to two very important questions in your letter--the issue of the scholarly search for "truth" and the broader problem of the complicity of China scholars with the government. Then I will try to explain my personal criticisms of the professional syndrome that has produced such complicity and uncritical acceptance by scholars of near genocide, salvation-by-destruction...
...first point, I am pleased to see that you agree with me generally on the political implications of scholarship and on the emotional, controversial nature of vital political problems. Moreover, I agree completely with your emphasis on accuracy and truth. I have gradually come to accept Noam Chomsky's position on this issue; namely, that truth tends, by definition, to be radical and subversive of the existing order. This may in fact be a rationalization on my part, but it seems to be a reasonable stance. Thus, a political line can never justify the distortion of truth -- I am still...
...pragmatism. If your definition of them somehow extends a blanket approval to current status-quo foreign policy, to the "responsibility of power," and to anti-communist assumptions, then we are not talking about the same animal. For me, reason and rationality are useful intellectual tools for uncovering the truth and for thinking effectively. Reason has never been for me an end-all, be-all sort of thing: when rationality and pragmatism gain too iron a hold over my life, then it's usually time to get a little "irrational" and break their grip. In short, I don't worship "reason...
...Crimean War on the side of Turkey, largely to defend its own imperialistic interests against possible Russian expansion. Two of England's leading generals, Lord Lucan and Lord Cardigan, were quarrelsome brothers-in-law. A purblind aristocrat, Lucan had not commanded troops for 17 years; "the melancholy truth" about Cardigan, as Woodham-Smith put it, "was that his glorious golden head had nothing in it." At the front, battles with the Russians were hardly less bitter than the internecine wrangling between the two commanders. Finally, a stupid order was fatally misinterpreted. As thousands of Russian soldiers watched in disbelief...
...actors and the situations in their true light. On one side are Orgon, his brash young son, and his daughter. On the other, Tartuffe, Orgon's wife Elmire, her brother Cleant, and of course Dorine. It is the forthright servant Dorine who insists on badgering her masters with the truth. And in the final act even Orgon is brought to see the light. (As if to emphasize how important he considers this, Rigault begins the fifth act by having the actors carry in lighted candles. This is also the first time in the play that the actors all appear...