Philosophy

Flesh and Statue

How do we separate David Foster Wallace the person from DFW the icon?

Strapped

My eight years with a gun.

E-Disharmony?

Online Dating Isn’t Threatening Monogamy

Votes Behind Bars

As of 2010, more than 5.85 million American citizens were disenfranchised because of criminal convictions. This is troubling. 

The Checkpoint

On patrolling West Bank checkpoints as a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces.

Remarkable Facts

On Thomas Nagel’s radical claim that science should go teleological.

Happiness Policy

Should economists be studying happiness?

Free Market Fairness

Is there a moral case for free markets?

Before Greed

Americans Didn’t Always Yearn for Riches

Head and Heart

Are conservatives more moral?

Choose Your Choice

The Great American Obsession with Choices

The Execution of Carlos DeLuna

Preventing Wrongful Convictions

Telling Stories about the Stories We Tell

An interview with Philip Gourevitch on Rwanda, the dangers of narrative simplification, and the limits of humanitarianism.

Undoing the Wrack

Without campaign finance reform it is difficult to see how America’s problems can even be addressed, much less dealt with.

How Markets Crowd Out Morals

There are some things money can’t buy—and many things money shouldn’t buy.

The Salafi Question

Egypt’s Constitutional Moment

What Would Augustine Do?

The President, Drones, and Just War Theory

The Primal Ache

What Adam Smith Knew about Inequality

How to Be Poor

The “culture of poverty” isn’t about moral failure but about reasonable adaptation to circumstances.

Exterminate the Brutes

Your pit bull is too violent to live—even if it isn’t.

Capitalism and the Urban Struggle

An Interview with David Harvey

The Antidepressant Wars

A fierce debate that ignores patients.

Much to Answer For

James Q. Wilson’s legacy.

The Loneliness Scare

Isolation Isn’t a Growing Problem

Get our newsletter

Vital reading on politics, ideas, and culture to your inbox


A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975

Registered 501(c)(3) organization