Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century provided some intellectual underpinning, with its thesis that a rawer, 19th-century version of capitalism was reasserting itself.
This is a plausible thesis, for intellectual sentiment diffuses itself like dew in the night, and democratic ideas are not the only ones to achieve resurrection because later thinkers reversed their predecessors' judgments.
He acknowledges that seniors who receive Social Security have paid for it throughout their working lives, and this intellectual honesty undercuts his thesis.
Voegelin's thesis excited intellectuals at National Review.
Critics of Houellebecq say his novel lends intellectual credibility to the theses of Mr Zemmour and other "neo-reactionaries".
Generally speaking, a thesis is an intellectual proposition; an antithesis is a reaction to the proposition that seeks to negate it; and a synthesis is a means of reconciling the thesis and the antithesis with an aim of creating a new -- and presumably a more functional -- thesis.
This claim became the core of the structuralist thesis developed by intellectuals from Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Peru brought together by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA; today known as Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC).
The retrieved thesis nevertheless helped renew intellectual ferment among game-theorists, recalls Peyton Young, now at Oxford University.
He then moved to Princeton University, where, as a second-year student, he wrote the thesis that became the intellectual underpinning of his contributions to game theory.
In putting a cap on the number of students permitted to earn honors, they fretted, they might discourage students from taking intellectual risks like writing a senior thesis or taking a challenging course.
