Essay Our worst fears: Conspiratorial fictions and the unremitting assault on democracy September 13, 2020 Two years ago, we put the final revisions on our book about conspiratorial thinking in American politics: A Lot of People are Saying: the New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy. Read More
Essay A look inside Just Giving July 24, 2020 鈥淵our fortune is rolling up, rolling up like an avalanche! You must keep up with it! You must distribute it faster than it grows! If you do not, it will crush you, and your children, and your children鈥檚 children!鈥� So wrote Frederick Gates to sixty-seven-year-old John D. Rockefeller in 1906. Read More
Essay Idleness at a time of crisis May 13, 2020 Most of us probably never realized the speed with which large elements of the familiar world could disappear. Governmental orders have required changes in behaviour, changes that have generated remarkably similar kinds of experience across the globe. Read More
Essay Escape from quarantine May 12, 2020 Like many professional intellectuals, books were my original escape. I was a strange child with abrasive manners, and real life was lonely and chaotic. I read ceaselessly, anything I could get my hands on. Read More
Interview J. David Velleman on On Being Me May 06, 2020 We鈥檝e all had to puzzle over such profound matters as birth, death, regret, free will, agency, and love. How might philosophy help us think through these vital concerns? Read More
Essay The case for hierarchy April 20, 2020 Imagine a country with no social hierarchies: let鈥檚 call it Equality. People in Equality treat each others as equals regardless of age, sex, ethnicity, religion, family background, class, or position in the workplace. Read More
Essay Should an old man engage in politics? April 07, 2020 Around noon on March 5, 2020, Elizabeth Warren suspended her campaign for president of the United States, leaving Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders to run (essentially) a two-man race for the Democratic nomination. Read More
Essay In defense of hierarchy April 06, 2020 The seating arrangements for formal meals in Shandong province鈥攖he home of Confucian culture, with a population of nearly 100 million people鈥攁re rigidly hierarchical. Read More
Essay COVID-19 crisis: What we owe each other March 17, 2020 What do we owe each other in this crisis? Let鈥檚 tackle one aspect of this question. A person might think as follows: If I know I am sick, then I understand why I am obligated to self-quarantine. Read More
Essay A leadership class from the ancient world March 03, 2020 For the ancient Greeks and Romans, leadership was studied through examples.聽One of the best books ever written on the subject, Xenophon鈥檚 Education of Cyrus, appears to be a biography of the Persian king Cyrus the Great.聽In fact, it is a manual of statecraft and strategy.聽 Read More
Essay Soul Searching February 25, 2020 Do you think you have a soul? The modern scientific impulse is to dispense with supposedly occult or 鈥渟pooky鈥� notions like souls and spirits, and to understand ourselves instead as wholly and completely part of the natural world, existing and operating through the same physical, chemical and biological processes that we find anywhere else in the environment. Read More
Essay Philip Freeman on聽Cicero, Star Wars, and the Stoic Idea of God December 13, 2019 Ancient Rome was a wildly diverse and exotic place. As I tell the students in my college classes, if you want to get a feel for what Rome was like, watch Star Wars. Read More
Interview Will AI Become Conscious? A Conversation with Susan Schneider November 04, 2019 Consciousness is the felt quality of experience. When you see a wave cresting on a beach, smell the aroma of freshly baked bread, or feel the pain of stubbing your toe, you are having conscious experience. Read More
Interview First time author spotlight: James Lindley Wilson on Democratic Equality October 22, 2019 Democracy establishes relationships of political equality, ones in which citizens equally share authority over what they do together and respect one another as equals. Read More
Essay In Dialogue with Susan Mattern and Richard Bribiescas: Reframing how we think about aging October 09, 2019 Are we looking at male/female aging all wrong? Susan Mattern and Richard Bribiescas discuss. Read More
