[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

Lean more about the Genealogies of Modernity Project: our journal, our podcast, and our vision.

Each month we keep track of the different paths modern life is taking and how writers are keeping up. Here are some routes we found in September 2024 on our modern life.

I wanted to capture a certain impression of everyday life, where thoughts arise and disappear, and many ideas blend together in a way that can be confusing and chaotic.

Donato Loia discusses his new book, 1095 Short Sentences

"Yet the human person, standing at the crux of reality, calls the artist to the limit of his creative powers."

Daniel Fitzpatrick on "seeing" as a theological enterprise

[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

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

Each month we keep track of the different paths modern life is taking and how writers are keeping up. Here are some routes we found in August 2024 on our modern life.

Concerns that video game players confuse the game world and the real world, manifesting virtual into real violence, contain echoes of Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

Jacob Martin on video games as time travel

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

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

What is Flourishing? What is good work?

Grant Martsolf and Brandon Daily introduce The Savage Collective

Each month we keep track of the different paths modern life is taking and how writers are keeping up. Here are some routes we found in July 2024 on our modern life.

Williams’ work is not just a historical treatise but a call to deep introspection about what it means to live out one’s faith amidst the pressures of any culture that has a different telos than one’s religion.

LuElla D'Amico reviews Nadya Williams’ latest work

“Our times have fallen out of tune with simplicity.”

Michael Golec on typographical modernity

Mateusz Stróżyński on Owen Barfield, whose philosophy and poetry are “indispensable… for those who want to go beyond the present spiritual and cultural crisis.”

Murder is a real conundrum for modern humans. Officially, we are against it.

Elizabeth Stice on the violence at the heart of modern life

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

“I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing.”

Ayman Hareez Muhammad Adib on the modern subject’s self-theft

On his journey home, Merrill adapts to the conventions of the upper-class in hopes of carving his own place within it.

Ayman Hareez Muhammad Adib on an eight-mile journey through backyard swimming pools