November 19, 2016 at 12:14 pm
Montaigne is perhaps the most widely celebrated essayist in the Western Canon. And it is his essays that have also elevated him to classic status not only in literature but also philosophy. The two are often thought to go together harmoniously, yet literature shows a tact which philosophy often brusques aside for concatenation. Montaigne is […]
November 13, 2016 at 4:05 pm
In his first hundred days as President, Donald Trumps plans to shutter the Department of Education. Top legal scholar, Laurence Tribe, has regrettably affirmed that there is no constitutional limitation against such an action. Assuming that Congress will give its consent, and that we make it past the first 100 days, this seems dangerously likely. […]
November 10, 2016 at 9:05 am
Documenta 14 is a series of art exhibitions, hosted every five years to commemorate the values of democracy and freedom of expression–hard-won, but too easily taken for granted. Behind the exhibit is Marta Minujin, who sought inspiration for the exhibit from one of her earlier works. In 1983, after the dissolution of dictatorship in Argentina, […]
November 6, 2016 at 11:42 am
As much as it helps to attend lectures, heed instruction, and explore themes we have not discovered ourselves but of whose salience we are assured nonetheless, the most enjoyment that Shakespeare has to offer can only be tapped through self-struggle. A kind in which the self not only struggles to develop with the help of […]
November 3, 2016 at 1:38 pm
Jame Doubek at NPR aptly begins the title of his article with ‘Attention, Students,’ since that is what his subject primarily concerns. Why are some students more easily able to recall lecture material than others? It is tempting to think this might have something to do with anal-retention; that students who fastidiously take notes like […]
October 31, 2016 at 12:52 am
It is wrongly supposed that the Dark Ages were a period of stunted growth for the arts and sciences, until civilization received another growth spurt starting the Renaissance, and came fully within the limelight during the Enlightenment. That some of our candidates’ candidly brusque remarks are often derogated as medieval is evidence that we may […]
October 27, 2016 at 11:27 pm
It’s too easily supposed, after having heard their names used so often in sources not their own, that the enlightenment thinkers, and philosophers generally, have bequeathed to us all they have to say. That philosophy is a done deal, whose original enterprise is now more seriously undertaken by the natural sciences, or theology- kidding about […]
October 25, 2016 at 12:33 am
It seems like a rite of passage for any book aspiring to achieve classic status that it must endurea period of resistance fromthe culture in which it first appears, and from which it is conceived. Midwifing is the author’s own genius, which itself resists a clean conception and, finding flaws, exposing the eccentricities of the […]
October 20, 2016 at 2:41 pm
A visionary trinity. ProfesSir Christopher Ricks is one of the most energetic octogenarians we have on the literary scene. Age has clearly not impaired his hearing, which has been and remains so keenly attune to the sounds and subtleties of (among others) Milton and Tennyson, that it has served as an aid for our own. […]
