Reductio Ad Absurdum

• Reductio Ad Absurdum

[Latin, Reduction to absurdity.] In logic, a method employed to disprove an argument by illustrating how it leads to an ab...

• West's Encyclopedia of American Law
• Po–San

• Key to the Pearly Gates

To the editor - Regular reading of the Saturday church announcement pages sets me to wondering. If, when I die, I am buried or cremated, and only my soul is left, promises are that when I get to heaven I will be restored. I will have form. It must be that the soul remains viable, else nothing could be restored. (Where and by whom are these souls housed or maintained as they await bodily resurrection?) When I get to the Golden Streets, will I be restored as my old self as when I as a child or an ancient? If I am restored as in the prime of life, will I have the same desires and urges as I had then? Can heaven handle that? If I am of the black, brown, yellow or white color, will my soul reflect that color? If the soul has no color, why is color a problem when it inhabits diverse bodies on...

• Yakima Herald-Republic
• September 26, 2012

• 'Watching Someone Feel'

[Ahmet Ertegun] didn't have many resources, but he did have an ear. And what an ear! He began by finding singers (Ray Charles, the Drifters, Big Joe Turner) who produced some of the best R&B of the 1940s and '50s. They paved the way for rock 'n' roll, and Ertegun was a pioneer in that genre as well. In the 1960s and '70s he gave us Cream, Led Zeppelin and Crosby Stills Nash & Young. And did I mention his later R&B discoveries, including Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin? This documentary is not a dry history lesson. You will be transported (as Ertegun would say) by clips of "Shake, Rattle and Roll," "What'd I Say" and "Respect." Like everyone associated with Ahmet Ertegun, you will have a romping, stomping good time. I'm a huge fan of Bravo's reality competitions for craftspe...

...-centric Shear Genius is the genre's reductio ad absurdum. Bravo opts for the same deeply seriou...

• Isthmus; Madison, Wis.
• August 18, 2009

• PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing, 564 U.S. (2011)

... First,it offers a reductio ad absurdum: If the possibility of FDAapproval of ...

• U.S. Supreme Court

• The Possibility of an Island

Like its acclaimed predecessor The Elementary Particles (1998), Michel Houellebecq'a latest novel projects an evolutionary future in which homo sapiens have been surpassed. The seeds of that future lie in a series of events witnessed by Daniel-a misanthropic, iconoclastic, and world-famous comedian on the brink of old age and sexual decline. As with Houellebecq's other narrators, Daniel's story reads like a reductio ad absurdum of Schopenhauer, Darwin, and Freud.

• Review of Contemporary Fiction
• Vol. 27 Nbr. 1, April 2007

• Bromance Plus ; Two Lifelong Friends Re-Examine Their Man-Love

Humpday" is the reductio ad absurdum of the recent spate of bromance movies - buddy comedies such as "I Love You, Man" and "Superbad" that examine male friendships that are, occasionally, uncomfortably close. It dares to ask what happens when a bromance evolves into a straight-up romance. Ben (Mark Duplass) has a happy home life with his wife, Anna (Alycia Delmore). The pair are perfectly bourgeois: holders of office jobs, owners of a house with a white picket fence, trying to conceive a child. Into this idyll crashes Andrew (Joshua Leonard), a would-be bohemian artist who has spent his post-college life traipsing around the world failing to finish anything he begins.

• The Washington Times
• July 24, 2009

• Doj Sets a Double Standard with Arizona

The Justice Department's latest threat against Arizona is a classic example of reductio ad absurdum. It's constitutional for the federal government to ignore our immigration laws, while it's unconstitutional for the state of Arizona to enforce those same federal laws. It's also constitutional for sanctuary cities such as San Francisco to shield illegal immigrants from federal prosecution. Arizona SB 1070 is a mortal threat to the Obama administration's agenda to flood this nation with millions of illegal immigrants with no little or no consideration for the welfare of unskilled American workers and innocent American taxpayers already here. If the president is successful with his "comprehensive immigration reform" (amnesty) program, 20 years from now we'll have 30 million illegal immigra...

• The Washington Times
• July 14, 2010

• Modernity: Vernunftspaltung

From cosmological mythology to fascism, unitary reason, this essay suggests, occupies a position of power; subjugates all other reasoning processes; assumes the rung of a highest generality; subsumes all other forms of reason; formalizes hierarchical differences; perpetuates its position in time; absorbs redefinitions of and within the hierarchy; ritualizes relations within the hierarchy; opposes competing hierarchies; and imposes sanctions for violations of relations within its order. 40 A modest critique of reason is introduced by Charles Taylor who advocates sensitivity to cultural specificity without giving up on such major Enlightenment principles as the dignity of the rational, disengaged individual; pursuit of happiness through labor, sexuality, marriage, family, and ordinary li...

... of logos and so performed the final reductio ad absurdum for the discipline. Religions, too req...

• Philosophy Today
• Vol. 50 Nbr. 3, October 2006

• Carnal Knowledge: Plastic Surgeon Discovers Inner Feminist

Lucy Ellmann's novel "Mimi" follows the romantic escapades of a New York plastic surgeon who discovers his inner feminist. Mimi. By Lucy Ellmann. 342 pages. Bloomsbury, $16; Pounds 12.99.

... by the ancient rhetorical device of reductio ad absurdum. Ridicule as argumentative accelerant....

• International Herald Tribune
• March 17, 2013

• Corley v. United States, 556 U. S. (2009)

... As it turns out, there is more than reductio ad absurdum and the antisuperfluousness canon to c...

• U.S. Supreme Court