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

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 November 2024 on our modern life.

[A]n enlarged sense of self in the universe is in demand.

Elizabeth Stice on eating habits in The Broom of the System

How do we stay human in the midst of digital upheaval?

An interview with Peco and Ruth Gaskovski

Announcing free teaching aids and resources for high school and college-level students!

Liberalism is often taken to be essentially about the promotion of radical individual autonomy, but might this understanding of liberalism be only one kind of liberalism?

Beatrice Institute interviews Fred Bauer

The Genealogies of Modernity Substack is now live!