Elie pushes us to reconsider and expand our idea of what counts as religious and/or sacred art, but we should be careful not to collapse the transcendent sphere into the natural world.

Aaron James Weisel reviews Paul Elie’s latest book.

Each month we keep track of the different paths modern life is taking and how writers are keeping up. Here are some routes we recently found on our modern life.

Does the agonistic ritual of the potlatch—identified as “primitive” by some—only belong to the past or does it appear in the so-called modern world?

Carl Friesenhahn looks at three ways of answering this question.

Here in the middle of these muted colors and fantastical plot is an observation straight out of Hannah Arendt.

Elizabeth Stice on philosophy in Wes Anderson

Genealogies of Modernity remembers Alasdair MacIntyre

Each month we keep track of the different paths modern life is taking and how writers are keeping up. Here are some routes we recently found on our modern life.

Reddy’s journey through the afterlife implicitly takes on a deeper question: what makes our modern life—and, by extension, our modern afterlife—different from Dante’s?

What can psychology tell us about human flourishing?

Brent Robbins on the Beatitudes as an answer to the problem of evil

Is the work of the composer and musician a distinctively human act?

A discussion with Maestro Manfred Honeck

Flaubert’s classic speaks not only to the social conditions of 19th century France, but also to the consumerist and media-stimulated dissatisfaction we face in the 21st century.

Elizabeth Stice on Flaubert’s enduring warnings

Evidently, the language which would be assumed under the Eighth Amendment originates from the intent of delegates to secure proper respect for the unalienable rights of all people.

Jackson Jannell on liberty and death

Each month we keep track of the different paths modern life is taking and how writers are keeping up. Here are some routes we found in March 2025 on our modern life.

Newman’s model of liberal arts study provides an ideal roadmap for how to create a program that would encourage focused, meaningful interdisciplinary learning.

Gina Elia on the application of Newman’s ideals

To showcase the ongoing relevance of a liberal arts education to students, programs should emphasize the roles of generalists, as opposed to specialists, in a society’s infrastructure.

Gina Elia on the ongoing urgency of John Henry Newman

The popularity of Hacks speaks to our moment, in which adult child estrangement is fairly common.

Elizabeth Stice on modern intergenerational humor

Each month we keep track of the different paths modern life is taking and how writers are keeping up. Here are some routes we found in early 2025 on our modern life.

The posters on my wall are meant to evoke a vintage style, but they are really artistic echoes of centuries of attempts to catalog the world, from book lists to agricultural pictures to Sears’s grandiosity.

Carl Friesenhahn on trade catalogs as maps of modernity

Genealogies of Modernity’s Best of 2024

The convergence of liberalism and gnosticism has fundamentally reshaped our political landscape.

Andrew Latham glimpses a “Gnostic Leviathan”

[T]he particular form of liberalism we see today is influenced by what can be described as a contemporary form of gnosticism.

Andrew Latham on the myth of post-liberalism