Plato and the Tyrant: The Fall of Greece’s Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a Philosophical Masterpiece James Romm For my money, there is no more captivating view in all Italy than the vast panorama of the harbour of Syracuse, framed by its majestic, honey-coloured Baroque buildings. The city’s origins go back to the eighth… Read More Roots of The Republic
A little-known philosopher’s deep influence over the avant-garde, neoconservatives, and the European Union…. ‘His work on behalf of a resistance group in Puy-en-Velay got him arrested by the Gestapo; anticipating his future talents as a negotiator, he managed to talk his way out of the firing squad.’ The Life and Thought of Alexandre Kojève BY Marco… Read More Hegel Dust
As for Don Quixote, though, if he had been newly created in 2025, he would certainly be squaring off against AI. Anthony Grafton The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries by Andrew Hui The Librarian’s Atlas: The Shape of Knowledge in Early Modern Spain by Seth Kimmel Libraries were all the rage in Renaissance Europe, and no wonder. Theatres of knowledge,… Read More No Cheese Please
One of the major causes of war is industry. When industry and economics go hand in hand with politics they must inevitably sustain a separative activity to maintain the economic stature. All countries are doing this, the great and the small. The small are being armed by the big, some quietly, surreptitiously, others openly. Is the… Read More Krishnamurti on War
NB: Skip the first three paragraphs. What follows should be easy to read. The aphorisms are not purely mine, but then nothing is. DS In our obscurity, in all this vastness , there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us: Carl Sagan The… Read More After Discourse
This article is based on excerpts from my contribution to the second KP Sasi Webinar on Religion and Spirituality in the Age of Fascism held on 18 May 2025 I have been engaged with this subject of religion, spirituality and fascism quite seriously since the 1984 violence in Delhi. And after that, I did a… Read More The further you look, the more you realize you don’t have a clue
Guy Debord’s Comments on the Society of the Spectacle issue #19, 1991 As late as 1979, Guy Debord could write about his 1967 book of theory, which is entitled The Society of the Spectacle: “There is no a word to be changed . . . . [Since 1967] the spectacle has done nothing but meet more exactly… Read More Guy Debord’s Comments on the Society of the Spectacle
Ellen Wayland-Smith admires how Is a River Alive? places the reader in immersive contact with the nature we regard as mere backdrop to human activity. Is A River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane. 2025 IN RELIGIOUS COSMOGONIES, anthropologist Mircea Eliade argues in his 1957 book The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, the natural world… Read More What Would It Take to Re-Sacralize Nature?
We have previously written about the debates over the political relevance of the Enlightenment today, drawing on Antoine Lilti’s critical review of the histories of Jonathan Israel. We present the English translation of his essay, which has import far beyond any disciplinary boundaries: Viewpoint Magazine David A. Bell: The Uses and Abuses of Enlightenment: AV lecture; January 2025 ***… Read More How Do We Write the Intellectual History of the Enlightenment? Spinozism, Radicalism, and Philosophy
Kieran Setiya reviews Christoph Schuringa’s A Social History of Analytic Philosophy IS THE FORM of philosophy dominant in English-speaking universities covertly resistant to radical thought? Does it present as the work of pure reason what is in fact the function of an ideology complicit in oppression? In A Social History of Analytic Philosophy (2025), the philosopher Christoph… Read More The Politics of Apoliticism
After the truth-shower 