Tallis's claim to have "seriously engaged" with the thinkers he names is presumably supposed to establish his credentials as an expert.
Mr. Bush's aides say they are now doing that -- though Mr. Kerry argued in an interview last month that if the White House had seriously engaged with North Korea early in Mr. Bush's presidency, the North might not have converted its 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods into bomb fuel.
However, in the United States, few political philosophers have seriously engaged Spinoza's work, even while scholarly interest has grown.
Max Planck distrusted left-brain logic left to its own devices: "Anyone who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.' It is a quality which scientists cannot dispense with.
Though the Bush administration has been seriously engaged with the situation in Darfur, it is, after all, supremely preoccupied by Iraq and, more broadly, by the war on terror.
But the Nunes memo is different because it so clearly abandons procedural regularity and any pretense of bipartisanship, and because Chairman Nunes has not seriously engaged with the agencies his committee purports to oversee.
Former Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts liberal who worked with Sanders in the House, said, "Virtually every group I am familiar with that has been seriously engaged in trying to bring about change to the left on any important issue — including health care, including financial reform, including women's rights and L.G.B.T. rights — is either neutral or with Hillary.
"But have they seriously engaged in the real issues?" The Afghan politician had a similar message when he spoke at the Brookings Institution.
India and Pakistani officialdom have never seriously engaged with each other.
"The only way to achieve a Palestinian state and peace is through direct negotiations," says an Israeli official, adding that the Palestinians have not "seriously" engaged in talks for the past three years.
