'"The Age of Goethe" is simply the series of literary and intellectual temptations which, as it happens, Goethe resisted.' Not so simply, perhaps; and certainly not just 'as it happens'.
One difference between reformed epistemology and fideism is that the former requires defence against known objections, such as the Argument from Evil, whereas the latter might dismiss such objections as either irrelevant or, worse, intellectual temptations.
For Berman, the contemporary intellectual's temptation is somewhat differently constituted.
This creates a temptation to relax normal intellectual standards and insulate cherished beliefs from criticism — in short, to be irrational.But why are there some areas — like politics and religion — where irrationality seems especially pronounced?
It produces hysteria and intellectual folly, as well as the dreadful temptation to turn to the state as the cure for all ills.
The Chinese intellectual in André Malraux's prescient novel The Temptation of the West (1926) says, "Europe thinks she has conquered all these young men who now wear her garments.
An account of intellectual integrity should recognize other sources of conflict and temptations that impede intellectual integrity, such as the temptations offered by the commercialization of research, self-deception about the nature of one's work, and the conflict between the free pursuit of ideas and responsibility to others.
The temptation was to deride her as anti-intellectual, a philistine, entirely uninterested in the life of the mind.
An evening spent with Channel 4, away from the temptations of ITV, the third channel, is, some claim, almost the intellectual equivalent of reading a book.
The temptation is to treat physical genius in the same way that we treat intellectual genius — to think of it as something that can be ascribed to a single factor, a physical version of I.Q.
