Pathways

Each month we keep track of the different paths modern life is taking right now and how writers are trying to keep up. Here are some routes we found in September that opened up new vistas on what it means to be modern and how we became that way.

Our editor-at-large looks at Christian genealogical thinking in Bartolome de las Casas and Augustine to explore how critique can be part of a deeper history of love working in history.

If this manner of storytelling is a human inevitability, then perhaps we should learn to recognize the ways selective memory shapes so many of the narratives that tell us who we think we are.

The last great philosopher of history? Reinhart Koselleck aimed for a truly secular history, non-providentially rooted in the evidence of past experiences.

What makes Westerners so, so weird? The Catholic Church wouldn't let us marry our cousins.

What economists (think they) know about the Black Death.

Some (dis)enchanted evening.

How can we speed up and also slow down time? Perhaps the answer can reveal sources of meaning.

Is a conservative approach to history the only real way to motivate progress?

And in case you needed reminding, here is an article from the September 2017 on How Air conditioning invented the Modern World.