The Genealogies of Modernity Journal
Authority and its Counterfeits: A Conversation with D.C. Schindler, Part I
[A]uthority is concerned with a sphere of existence that far exceeds the merely pragmatic order. It ultimately includes the order of thought, and, ultimately, the order of being simply.
Lucas B. Carroll interviews D. C. Schindler on the crisis of authority
The Return of Enchantment: Relational Reality at the Edge of Modernity
What earlier ages described as communion or participation reappears in a new vocabulary of entanglement and interdependence… The underlying insight is familiar: the world is not a collection of discrete objects but a web of relationships, a reality that becomes understandable only through forms of participation.
Brian M. Ross on the compatibility of religion and science
Worldpicture, Part III: The Cartesian Roots of Quantum Theory and Postmodernism
“We must recognize that the post-Cartesian reductive-materialist frameworks will never be sufficient to support a robust and expansive human flourishing.”
M. G. Scott on re-accessing metastructure
Worldpicture, Part II: The New Quantum Ontology
“The truly strange thing about quantum mechanics is not the content of the theory: it’s the way that quantum mechanics threatens to upend our fundamental relationship to reality itself.”
M. G. Scott on quantum mechanics and truth.
Worldpicture, Part I: Greek Tragedy, Postmodernism, and the Decline of Metastructure
“The opposite of the self-defining subject of the postmodern era is one whose existence is conditioned entirely by realities outside the self. ”
M. G. Scott on the existential comforts of Greek tragedy.
Cruel and Unusual: A Supreme Dilemma of Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence
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
Ordering the World: Trade Catalogs as Symbols of Modernization
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
Is Liberalism Dead? Part II
The convergence of liberalism and gnosticism has fundamentally reshaped our political landscape.
Andrew Latham glimpses a “Gnostic Leviathan”
Is Liberalism Dead? Part I
[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
Ghoulish Genealogies
The genealogical description insists on erasing hundreds of years of Christian life. The writer awkwardly alludes to Christianity but cannot imagine that it has any real importance except as a machine for appropriating pagan practices.
Terence Sweeney critiques pop-genealogies of Halloween
AI, Automatons, and Modern Insanity
[P]roponents of AI argue that as long as we are masters of ourselves, we needn’t worry that AI will master us. But as all the writers of the Romantic era knew, men are helpless when in the thrall of powers greater than themselves.
Elizabeth Stice offers a Romantic reading of AI
Hannah Arendt and The Dream of the 1990s: Part II
[The 1990s] can demonstrate the existence and possibility of the very kind of “miracles” that Arendt encourages us to expect and initiate.
Elizabeth Stice explores glimmers of historical hope
Hannah Arendt and The Dream of the 1990s: Part I
If we want memories of miracles to draw on, we can do worse than to remember the 1990s.
Elizabeth Stice on the human role in history's miracles
What Is The Machine?
The story of modernity is not so much that we have expelled the gods and that their throne sits empty but rather that it has been filled with a new god.
Grant Martsolf and Brandon Daily conclude their series from The Savage Collective
What Is Human Flourishing?
Flourishing consists of the realization of basic, natural goods constitutive of human personhood emerging from our nature as fully embodied souls.
Grant Martsolf sets the scope of The Savage Collective
The Savage Collective
What is Flourishing? What is good work?
Grant Martsolf and Brandon Daily introduce The Savage Collective
Sacrificing Our Youth
Despite the arrogance of modern thinkers and the mountains of data tech companies collect about us, they still fail to know us deeply.
Charles R. Martelle offer a principal’s view on a modern crisis of attention
The Roots of Eugenics and the Hope of Dignity
Either humanity, and thus each and every human, has dignity in its current state, or it, and by extension we, can never claim to have, or give, dignity.
John P. Slattery offers a genealogy of eugenics
Rebellious Space and Radical Movement: The Dil Pickle Club of Tooker Alley
Entering the Pickle was also an unusual experience… a fact that the inscription “Step high, speak low, and leave your dignity behind” emblazoned on its front door… cheekily acknowledged.
Elysia Balavage on a bohemian pillar of the Chicago Renaissance
Against the “Reversal of History” Thesis
McLuhan sees our modern, technologically induced condition as a product of tensions between individualism and tribalism.
Éamon Brennan contests a standard reading of Marshall McLuhan