The Enemy of Morality is Not Modernity, It’s Me

The final episode of the Genealogies of Modernity podcast is live! This episode explores fascinating parallels between Samuel Johnson and David Foster Wallace.

The great English essayist and linguist Samuel Johnson was writing during the Enlightenment—the period some historians identify as the beginning of the modern age. American author and philosopher David Foster Wallace worked more than two centuries later, in the “post-modern” style. But these two writers shared a common problem: once modernity fractured society’s sense of shared moral norms, how could you write persuasively about morality? This episode looks at how Johnson and Wallace attempted to solve this problem; what struggles plagued their solutions; and why our modern, pluralistic landscape makes their work more valuable than ever.

Listen to the episode to learn more.