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

At the end of Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco, one of the characters declares, "Disco was too great and too much fun to be gone forever. It has got to come back someday." That time was 2020.

The man who kept Latin ever new just passed. Requiescat in Pacem.

Want to understand how human rights became so central to contemporary discourse? Well, you’ll have to read the Irish Constitution.

In our heartrending times, perhaps we need some wisdom from George Eliot's knowledge of the human heart.

In the era of global capitalism, imagining the lives of others is a crucial form of solidarity.

The Triumph of the Sexual Revolution Seems Stunningly Swift. But Its Roots Go Back Centuries.

Two great pieces from The Hedgehog Review:

Turns out the man who said the past is not even past was a futurist.

We cannot grow as moral persons unless we hold onto our regret.

And two Church Life Journal articles on Christian genealogy:

Are we all Marcionites now? On diagnosing modernity’s retro heresies.

To learn how to do Christian genealogical thinking well, we need to look back to Augustine and Bartolome de las Casas.