Participants and Frontiers of Democracy 2023

register and propose sessions for Frontiers of Democracy 2024

Dates: June 13 (5pm) until June 15 (1 pm) at Tufts University in Medford, MA Please hold the dates (June 13-15), register and purchase tickets at the “early bird” discount rate until March 29, and consider proposing one or more sessions for the conference by April 16. This year’s special theme is “Violence, Nonviolence, and Robust Democracy.” We anticipate robust conversations […]

“The world wants the humanities”

In his 2023 MLA Presidential Address (“Criticism After This Crisis: Toward a National Strategy for Literary and Cultural Study”), Christopher Newfield argues that the humanities must stop trying to preserve their meagre support and instead win major new investments to “allow our fields to reach their intellectual potential, to help solve global society’s hardest cultural […]

philosophy and self-help

I recommend Kieran Setiya’s article “Is Philosophy Self-Help?” in The Point. Setiya has written serious philosophy that I have found helpful psychologically, and he has looked at the self-help business, starting with Samuel Smiles’ 1859 bestseller, Self-Help: With Illustrations of Character and Conduct. Based partly on his article, I would emphasize these differences: I’m in a […]

Max Weber on institutional neutrality

In a recent open letter, the Academic Freedom Alliance, Heterodox Academy, and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression say: In recent years, colleges and universities have increasingly weighed in on social and political issues. This has led our institutions of higher education to become politicized and has created an untenable situation whereby they are […]

Pagels, the Gnostic Gospels

Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels (1979) hardly needs a review from me. It won the National Book Award and has been listed among the 100 most influential works of the 20th century. However, I hadn’t read it until lately, and I can recommend it with the following summary. Pagels classifies early Christians into two large […]