It is tempting to harness Civilization and Its Discontents as a guide to our contemporary political morass, but doing so may obscure its most valuable message. Civilization and Its Discontents; translated by James Strachey and edited by Samuel Moyn Sigmund Freud was an ambivalent man, especially when it came to politics. He often held conflicting… Read More Udi Greenberg: Freud and the Miseries of Politics
During the months that the Covid virus ensured that just about every Indian lost someone they knew, many religious institutions across the country stepped in to help: they organised hospital beds and vaccine camps, distributed food, clothes and masks, and on a rare occasion, offered to look after the educational needs of children orphaned by… Read More Chandan Gowda: Seeking a dharma for these times
Reading Dr. Mark Rego’s provocative, intense Frontal Fatigue: The Impact of Modern Life and Technology on Mental Illness, I found myself thinking of David Foster Wallace’s “This Is Water.” In it, the late author observes the need to be aware of “what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us.” Today, we live in a culture that… Read More Modern life is giving us brain fatigue. By Mary E. Williams
As the pandemic stretches on, our collective ability to weather adversities and bounce back to emotional stability is being challenged daily. Many of us have suffered significant trauma from illness, hospitalization and death. Many more have experienced job loss, economic uncertainly and financial instability. And everyone has had to cope with an unprecedented uprooting of… Read More The Resilience of Life
Frantz Fanon’s impact is as important today as it was when he wrote The Wretched of the Earth, a political work that assesses violence, both of colonists and activists. Glänta commemorates the psychiatrist and political philosopher’s life and work, highlighting his influence on postcolonial theory and anti-racism, in an interview with historian Michael Azar. Frantz… Read More Michael Azar: Transcending ‘the absurd drama – the legacy of Franz Fanon
Forging stronger bonds in a post-pandemic world… will require acts of moral imagination that are not part of any political ideology or mission statement, but are functions of the human condition: tenderness, compassion, longing, generosity, allegiance and affection. These are the only answers to loneliness, alienation, dislocation and disintegration. But the fullest expression of these functions…… Read More Jill Lepore: Is society coming apart?
Many of the early twentieth-century champions of eugenics were social democrats and feminists. All shared a belief that science and technocracy could re-engineer society for the better. Attempts to institutionalize eugenics coincided with the emergence of welfare states and infrastructure to monitor the ‘feebleminded’. What Malthus called the population question looms large in the intellectual history… Read More Bryan Fanning: People like us
NB: India’s Prime Minister has warned the world of the threat of ‘regressive thinking.’ The rhetorical artistry of our Great Leader is indeed admirable; although I think his camp-followers will miss the irony. The article below describes what can happen in India in the name of politically correct nationalism. And here’s another: A Grateful Nation. We… Read More Mukul Kesavan: Photobombing death and the banality of evil / Evil, framed. By SLAVENKA DRAKULIĆ
One of the greatest satisfactions in the history of philosophy is the inconsistency, even the hypocrisy, of the Stoics. For as long as I have studied them, I have quarreled with them. Like the late Tolstoy, they get into your head. The Stoics were meticulous students of human breakability and raised it into a subject… Read More Leon Wieseltier: 'The Wise, Too, Shed Tears'
After the truth-shower 