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 October that opened up new vistas on what it means to be modern and how we became that way.

Maybe the most popular book of the Middle Ages should return to the best-seller list in 2020.

“Exceptional importance was attached to the placement of objects on his desk, as if it were a map of the cosmos.”

To understand the contemporary attack on liberalism, we need to look at the historical origins of liberalism, its evolution over the decades, and its limitations as a governing doctrine.

For good governance, we need to look beyond technical expertise to the virtue of statecraft.

Looking for the most interesting Marxist of the 20th century? Well, he wore medieval clothing and mostly wrote about Thomas Aquinas.

For Arendt, the paradox of the origin of totalitarianism is that we are all too lonely and yet never alone.

Sanskrit must be integrated with “modernity”

Do we need an updated Bible? Thomas Jefferson thought so.

To overcome our forgetting of our solidarity, we need a deeper embrace of solitude.

Maria Dahvana Headley’s revisionist translation of Beowulf infuses the Old English poem with feminism and social-media slang.

“I’ve been asking genealogists how their hobby is shaping this particular moment...”

Tired of contemporary politics? Let’s restore dueling to make it more civilized.