Word: rationalist
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...legitimate goal, but Benedict's narrow definition of European identity is deeply troubling and potentially dangerous. This is what Muslims must respond to: the tendency of Westerners to ignore the critical role that Muslims played in the development of Western thought. Those who "forget" the decisive contributions of rationalist Muslim thinkers like al-Farabi (10th century), Avicenna (11th century), Averroes (12th century), al-Ghazali (12th century), Ash-Shatibi (13th century) and Ibn Khaldun (14th century) are reconstructing a Europe that is not only an illusion but also self-deceptive about its past...
...Moral Level. Ironically, some of the loudest cries that the H-bomb should be abandoned on moral grounds, that even experiments with it should be stopped, came from those groups most affected by the rationalist or scientific-as distinguished from the traditional and religious-viewpoint. The basis of modern rationalist morality is largely statistical (see Dr. Kinsey), and the difference between the effect of the H-bomb and other weapons is also statistical, quantitative...
...rationalist system of social thought is the most elaborate and methodical in the contemporary world, which is why he is often cited as a sage by people who would rather chew glass than read his lumbering prose. But it is the awesome yet careful architecture of Jurgen Habermas' lifetime of scholarship that undergirds his reputation as an independent commentator on most of the ills of the contemporary world. Reason, for this 74-year-old German philosopher-sociologist, is practical, and reason is rooted in the ability to communicate clearly with one another. When people of different cultures come together...
...become a familiar problem: How to explain that the irrational, risk-taking Hefnerian who went to bed with the girlfriend of the Mafia boss of Chicago, who routinely lied about his disastrous health and had himself dosed periodically with amphetamine cocktails was, at the same time, that self-possessed rationalist-idealist, the Apollo who demanded, on that bright morning of the age of celebrity, "Ask not what your country can do for you..."? How do the elements of John Kennedy's myth and life compose themselves into a real human being...
...most Londoners are by now keenly aware, Livingstone does not drive. So he did not seem too distraught when he conceded that the first days of the congestion charge "will clearly be bloody." If it works, London could pave the road to the future of cities everywhere. The rationalist's dream is one day to make drivers pay for exactly the amount they contribute to traffic jams: the more they drive, the bigger their car, the closer to rush hour, the higher the price. For half a century, economists and engineers have insisted that this strategy - "congestion charging...