大学英语精读 U5 The One Against the Many

1、The One Against the Many,Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,2,About author:,Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.(1917-2007) : one of Americas most eminent and controversial historians. He was a former Harvard professor and special assistant to President Kennedy. The historian whose more than 20 books shaped discussio

2、ns for two generations about Americas past, and who himself was a provocative(煽动性的), unabashedly(不加掩饰的， 公然的) liberal partisan, most notably in serving in the Kennedy White House, His books, includes The Age of Roosevelt, volumes I, II and III; 小阿瑟施莱辛格,美国著名历史学家和政治评论家。哈佛毕业，曾任美国总统肯尼迪的白宫特别助理，被称为“最了解罗斯福和

3、肯尼迪时代的人”，他支持自由主义，是“美国人争取民主行动”组织的创始人之一。,3,About author:,一千天肯尼迪在白宫 小阿瑟施莱辛格,4,Para 2：The country was blessed by notable advantagesabove all, by the fact that population was scarce in relation to available resources.,Then we can get that as the population spread across the country, the percentage of ara

4、ble land in counties closest to the densest populations declined.,5,Para 3: One factor was the deep faith in education. The historical reason: The first settlers of America is a group of Puritans. They were men of letters, had attended Oxford or Cambridge, and communicated with intellectuals over Eu

5、rope. 据记载，早期移民到马萨诸塞州的人当中，有超过一百个牛津、剑桥的毕业生。在到达新大陆仅仅六年之后，虽然清教徒们还在为基本的生存条件而奋斗，但是他们却克服了重重困难建立了哈佛学院。清教徒期望教会的传道人有高等的学历。 今天的美国人毫无疑问地坚持了清教祖先的优良传统，非常地重视教育。所以可以说清教主义促进了最初美国教育的发展，对美国的教育产生了很大的影响。,6,Para 5： Self-government：It is the principle that the people are the ultimate source of governing authority and thei

6、r general welfare is the only legitimate purpose of government. Representative institutions: It is a system of government institutions that give citizens the opportunity to vote for representatives who will work on their behalf.,7,Para 7：hedgehog empiricists may argue however that traditions (or cus

7、toms) arise due to relations of previous sense experiences.,Empiricism 经验论,Rationalism 理性主义,rationalism is the view that regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge or any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification. More formally, rationalism is defined as a meth

8、odology or a theory in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive. Rationalists believe reality has an intrinsically logical structure. Because of this, rationalists argue that certain truths exist and that the intellect can directly grasp these truths. That is to

9、 say, rationalists assert that certain rational principles exist in logic, mathematics, ethics, and metaphysics that are so fundamentally true that denying them causes one to fall into contradiction. Rationalists have such a high confidence in reason that proof and physical evidence are unnecessary

10、to ascertain truth in other words, there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. Because of this belief, empiricism is one of rationalisms greatest rivals.,A priori 先验的,“A priori” is a Latin term used to identify a type of knowledge whic

11、h is obtained independently of experience. A proposition is known a priori if when judged true or false one does not refer to experience.,Pragmatism 实用主义,Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that began in the United States around 1870.1 Pragmatism is a rejection of the idea that the function of t

12、hought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. Instead, pragmatists develop their philosophy around the idea that the function of thought is as an instrument or tool for prediction, action, and problem solving. Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topicssuch as the nature of knowledge,

13、language, concepts, meaning, belief, and scienceare all best viewed in terms of their practical uses and successes rather than in terms of representative accuracy.,Charles Sanders Peirce (and his pragmatic maxim) deserves much of the credit for pragmatism, along with later twentieth century contribu

14、tors, William James and John Dewey. Pragmatism enjoyed renewed attention after Willard Van Orman Quine and Wilfrid Sellars used a revised pragmatism to criticize logical positivism in the 1960s. Inspired by the work of Quine and Sellars, a brand of pragmatism known sometimes as neopragmatism gained

15、influence through Richard Rorty, the most influential of the late twentieth century pragmatists along with Hilary Putnam and Robert Brandom. Contemporary pragmatism may be broadly divided into a strict analytic tradition and a neo-classical pragmatism (such as Susan Haack) that adheres to the work o

16、f Peirce, James, and Dewey.,William James(1842-1910),William James was an original thinker in the disciplines of physiology, psychology and philosophy. He studied and later taught at Harvard. His 1200-page masterwork, The Principles of Psychology, is a rich blend of physiology, psychology, philosoph

17、y, and personal reflection. It contains seeds of pragmatism and influenced generations of thinkers in Europe and America. In 1907 he published Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, the culminating expression of a set of views permeating his writings.,Absolutism 专制主义,The belief that t

18、here is one and only one truth. Those who espouse absolutism usually also believe they know or have access to what this absolute truth is.,Determinism 决定论,Determinism is the philosophical position that for every event, including human action, exist conditions that could cause no other event. There are many determinisms, depending upon what pre-conditions are considered to be determinative of an event. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have sprung from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations