Feb. 22, 2019 | The continuing uglification of our world. Modernism, with its place-destroying structures, has transformed architecture. It’s time for a return to aesthetics... more »
Feb. 21, 2019 | It’s time for Diderot, long overshadowed by Voltaire and Rousseau, to receive his due: He was not only a founder of modernity; he was the first postmodernist... more »
Feb. 20, 2019 | Artists may pooh-pooh the idea of being cool, but a few of them had it down pat. Consider Warhol’s catatonic effortlessness or Bukowski’s timeless advice: “Don’t try.”... more »
Feb. 19, 2019 | What do almost all ancient myths and folktales have in common? They deal with danger and death and offer highly pragmatic lessons... more »
Feb. 18, 2019 | Revolutions in science, technology, health, and education have reshaped our world. But can things keep getting better?... more »
Feb. 16, 2019 | Look carefully, attend to people and their situations, learn what is right. For Iris Murdoch, morality was grounded in vision and action, not just metaphysics... more »
Feb. 15, 2019 | "It’s on me. I’ve said that again and again. And that is really all I’m gonna say. OK?" Jill Abramson talks with one of the writers she's accused of plagiarizing... more »
Feb. 14, 2019 | Has the internet made us collectively lose our minds? Patricia Lockwood looks at our tweets and gifs and wonders what the absurd avalanche of details was for... more »
Feb. 13, 2019 | For most of history, translating the Bible has been a religious commitment. For Robert Alter, who did it by himself, it's a literary act... more »
Feb. 12, 2019 | In 1994, Sven Birkerts worried that distractedness would win out, that a diminution of reading would diminish our sense of self. Have his fears come to pass?... more »
Feb. 11, 2019 | Since when is reading James Baldwin out loud in class an academic crime? Randall Kennedy on the anti-intellectualism and illiberal conformity ascendant in parts of the academy... more »
Feb. 9, 2019 | Instagram-friendly, immersive art spaces promise to transport to your happy place. But beyond the confetti dome is a bleak, desperate reality... more »
Feb. 8, 2019 | Beware the surveillance capitalists. “Forget the cliché that ‘if it’s free, you are the product.’ You are not the product; you are the abandoned carcass"... more »
Feb. 7, 2019 | What is most remarkable about the opprobrium heaped on Jonathan Franzen is how little it has to do with his actual work... more »
Feb. 6, 2019 | Studying American history used to mean studying the American nation. Then, in the 1970s, national history fell out of favor. Is it too late to restore?... more »
Feb. 5, 2019 | The unlikely return of Eric Hobsbawm to political fashion in the 1980s obscured the sharp-edged qualities that made him so interesting in the first place... more »
Feb. 4, 2019 | An adjunct professor of art tries to make rent. The result: a Thoreauvian quest for radical simplicity — and the birth of America’s tiny-house movement... more »
Feb. 2, 2019 | Lionel Trilling belonged to the last generation of academics who believed that they had something of social importance to communicate... more »
Feb. 1, 2019 | "He who thinks great thoughts often makes great errors," said Heidegger, who would know. How should we read such dangerous thinkers?... more »
Jan. 31, 2019 | The bad behavior of artists is now used to dismiss their work. Who pays for this new puritanism? The arts consumer, says Lionel Shriver... more »
Jan. 30, 2019 | A mathematician tasked with translating Wittgenstein, Frank Ramsey was a crucial link between pragmatism and analytic philosophy... more »
Jan. 29, 2019 | Gregg Easterbrook wants to make optimism “intellectually respectable again.” First step: Don't confuse optimism with complacency... more »
Jan. 28, 2019 | "For God’s sake, for Dartmouth’s sake, and for everyone’s sake, keep the damned women out." Fifty years of coeducation at American colleges... more »
Jan. 26, 2019 | The philosophy of Josiah Royce: When evaluating your life, don’t ask, “How happy am I?” Ask, “How loyal am I, and to what?”... more »
Jan. 25, 2019 | Modern conservatism was shaped by defectors from left to right: Chambers, Burnham, Kristol. Why the shortage in the other direction?... more »