Montaigne was charting new, and uniquely modern, territory. We embrace ourselves, as ourselves, and try to learn to be ourselves, rather than striving to become something other.

Erik Dempsey reviews Pierre Manent’s Montaigne: Life Without Law

In the parallel spiritual journeys of its characters, Endo’s The Samurai reflects a typically postmodern yearning for transcendence and synthesis of values beyond the conflict of cultures.

Katy Carl on Shūsaku Endō’s The Samurai and finding transcendence beyond the postmodern

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

By reaching back to Venerable Bede’s description of righteous conquest, Mather casts American origins as something deeply rooted in time and tradition—an inheritance that cannot be revoked.

M. Breann Leake on continuity from Venerable Bede to Cotton Mather

Given all the transformations wrought and about to be wrought by COVID-19, we will see much more attention paid to the role of plagues, pandemics, and pestilences in shaping human affairs.

Andrew Latham looks to microbes to explain macro-changes in history.

By observing the patterns in history and finding the hidden unity behind them, we can formulate ideals and new futures based on a better understanding of what humanity is.

Henriikka Hannula develops Dilthey’s philosophy for life.

Three recent action films—Kingsman: Secret Service, Avengers: Infinity War, and Tenet—face down climate change by pointing to a supposedly new threat: a new crop of Malthusians, out to exterminate parts of the human race for the greater good.

Brice Ezell on the persistence of a bad idea.

What is remarkable about Hagia Sophia’s transformations is the ways in which it was architecturally transformed in line with the politico-spatial turning points in the region’s history… These architectural changes have the power to reinforce, and even ignite, historical change.

Emre Çetin Gürer maps the space of historical change in the Hagia Sophia

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.

The rediscovery of neglected texts has made it increasingly clear that women have always done philosophy, even where this work has been obstructed, lost, forgotten, or misattributed.

Anna Ezekiel on the excision of women from philosophical memory

Food can have a transportive quality that can transcend where or when you are and take you somewhere and sometime else. However, food’s histories and transcendent qualities are never only personal.

Krystal Marsh eats her way across history

The term ‘folk opera’ draws attention to Hadestown’s connection with other Orphean music dramas, placing it in a genealogy with earlier operas that take the myth of Orpheus as their subject.

Jacob Martin follows Orpheus’s song through the ages

This year, I’ve decided to take a new approach to Christmas gift-giving—one inspired by the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca.

J. LaRae Cherukara goes Christmas shopping with Seneca.

The politics of nostalgia looks to translates the past into a near-future that is utterly inhospitable to it. It is about using the past-that-never-was to build a future-that-never-could-be.

Andrew Latham reads Dante’s Monarchia and Xi Jinping’s China Dream together.

Using these recipes privileges cultural memory and tradition over efficiency and precision. Thus, we participate in the ritual of cooking not as a means of scientific inquiry or perfection, but to strengthen the community ties that bring us together at the table.

Alexandrea Pérez Allison on cookbooks and modernity.

Modernity is more akin to an epistemological front, waxing and waning here and there in history, whose distribution might be unevenly spread across different human societies at any given moment.

Tim Howles expands on Bruno Latour's genealogies

September

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.

The pandemic has made many acutely aware of the absence or presence of solitude in one’s life—in crowded households, its paucity, and in bachelor pads, its excess.

Suzannah Cady reviews A History of Solitude

This absurdity is at the heart of what makes the film profound. “The Happening” depicts our impaired ability to grapple with that which fails to make logical, rational sense.

Katherine Kurtz watches the The Happening for guidance in 2020.

Here is the simple truth on which Dickens has founded his Tale, a truth that still resonates today. It is still the best of times, still the worst of times, but there is no time that cannot be redeemed by love.

Dwight Lindley finds a stark decision in Charles Dickens.