Philosophy
A Darwinist Mob Goes After a Serious Philosopher
Is there a greater gesture of intellectual contempt than the notion that a tweet constitutes an adequate intervention in a serious discussion? READ MORE >>
Here is my nominee for the worst phrase in the English language: “it is what it is.” The phrase combines resignation, even despair, with self-congratulatory smugness. It is a fatal combination, because one really should not be self-congratulatory about despair. READ MORE >>
Remembering Ronald Dworkin
For those of us who have read and appreciated Ronnie Dworkin’s writing, who have heard him lecture, debate or teach a class, and most of all who have had the privilege and pleasure of being his friends, he has made our lives better, richer and more delightful. I say better because he was first of all a person of high seriousness and moral commitment. READ MORE >>
How to Be a Pseudo-Intellectual
Get Real
Destroyer and Builder
IN THE SUMMER of 1674, officials of the Dutch court carried out the recommendation of the States of Holland to ban the Theological-Political Treatise, a book that one of its more spiteful antagonists described in an anonymous pamphlet as “forged in hell by the apostate Jew working together with the devil.” It was an inauspicious debut for a work that Steven Nadler calls “one of the most important books of Western thought ever written.” READ MORE >>
Checkmate
The Unexamined Socrates
Religious Realism
DURING HIS LIFETIME, John Patrick Diggins produced a seemingly unending stream of books, all of them marked by a rare combination of wide-ranging intellectual history and highly opinionated commentary. It comes as a welcome surprise to learn that the stream did not dry up with his death. His partner (Elizabeth Harlan), his former student (Robert Huberty), and his editor (Doug Mitchell) have combined to put out this slim, intriguing book on Reinhold Niebuhr. READ MORE >>
