Philosophy

What We Call Progress

Can we still imagine change for the better? Critical theorist Rahel Jaeggi tries in her new book.

  • Maya Krishnan

Plato and the Poets

The centuries-old debate should be settled: an intellectual world bereft of poetry is a damaged one.

  • Elaine Scarry

How Can We Live Together?

Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

  • Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

In Search of Arab Jews

Can a culture be resurrected?

  • Samuel Hayim Brody

Could Ditching Elections Save Democracy?

A new book makes the case for replacing them with a system of government based on random selection.

  • Niko Kolodny

There’s a Word for That

Can language describe everything we feel—and should it?

  • James D. Reich

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Politics All the Way Down

Critics are right: the algorithms that increasingly run the world can be dangerous. Are human systems always better?

  • Lily Hu

My Father, the Cyborg

The seductions of medical surveillance.

  • Omer Rosen

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Donald J. Trump

The tragic reascent of Trump is not an anomaly to democracy but its fatal flaw.

  • Peter E. Gordon

The Violent Exhaustion of Liberal Democracy

A conversation with Wendy Brown on the U.S. presidential election, the exclusions liberal democracy is built on, and why we must aim at more than restoring its mythical former splendor.

  • Wendy Brown
  • Francis Wade

Against False Universals

Seyla Benhabib’s 2024 Adorno Prize lecture.

  • Seyla Benhabib

Remembering Andreas Eshete

A revolutionary, philosopher, and devoted patriot, he was among Ethiopia’s leading public intellectuals.

  • Ephraim Isaac
  • Joshua Cohen
  • Abdul Mohammed
  • Mulugeta Gebrehiwot
  • Alex de Waal
  • Solomon Dersso

Mapping Injury

Sunaura Taylor on what the environmental and disability movements can learn from one another.

  • Sunaura Taylor
  • Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow

For a Solidarity State

The state structures society. It can make us more prone to care for one another.

  • Leah Hunt-Hendrix
  • Astra Taylor

The Summers of Theory

How it rose, fell, and may rise again.

  • Peter E. Gordon

Is the State Here to Stay?

States are exerting greater control over capital. In the face of climate change, it may be too little, too late.

  • Jonathan S. Blake

What Happened to Liberalism?

Becca Rothfeld speaks with Samuel Moyn about his book Liberalism Against Itself and why liberalism is in crisis.

  • Samuel Moyn
  • Becca Rothfeld

Salvation Now

Fifty years ago, religion met Marxism in the liberation theology movement. Its message still serves.

  • Travis Knoll

Democracy in the Real World

Theories of justice map what a good society should look like, but they generally offer few details about how to get there.

  • Thad Williamson

What Does It Mean to Be Free?

Lewis Gordon and Nathalie Etoke discuss the space for freedom opened up by Black existentialist thought.

  • Nathalie Etoke
  • Lewis Gordon

Could a Large Language Model Be Conscious?

Within the next decade, we may well have systems that are serious candidates for consciousness.

  • David J. Chalmers

The Fake News about Fake News

In Foolproof, psychologist Sander van der Linden compares misinformation to viral infection—and claims to have a vaccine.

  • Daniel Williams

All Roads Lead to Cooperation

Amna Akbar talks with Bernard Harcourt about his new book—and how we can build on existing forms of cooperation to transform society.

  • Amna A. Akbar
  • Bernard E. Harcourt
  • Anthony Morgan

Is Equal Opportunity Enough?

Focusing on opportunities instead of outcomes is misguided—politically and philosophically.

  • Christine Sypnowich
with responses from
  • Gina Schouten
  • Martin O’Neill
  • Nicholas Vrousalis
  • Anne Phillips
  • William M. Paris
  • Leah Gordon
  • Claude S. Fischer
  • Zofia Stemplowska
  • Lane Kenworthy
  • John Roemer
  • Ravi Kanbur
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