Philosophy

As a God Might Be

The recurring—and often conflicting—narratives of technology and progress.

  • Meghan O’Gieblyn

Beyond Freedom and Equality

The democratic value of dignity.

  • Nick Bromell

To Be and to Do

The life’s work of Giorgio Agamben.

  • Leland de la Durantaye

For Love of Country

Is emotion the key to the good society?

  • Shivani Radhakrishnan

The New Nature

It is impossible to divorce nature from human influence. Can that influence be democratic?

  • Jedediah Britton-Purdy
with responses from
  • Jo Guldi
  • Jairus Grove
  • Robert Paarlberg
  • Andreas Malm
  • David Keith
  • Anna Tsing
  • Ugo Mattei
  • Vandana Shiva
  • Paul Waldau
  • Roy Scranton

The Riptide of Technocracy

Is a centralized European Union compatible with democracy?

  • Jonathan White

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America’s Refugee Debt

The United States should take responsibility for its actions in Syria

  • Aziz Z. Huq

In Memory of Sheldon Wolin (1922–2015)

The revolutionary theorist sought not liberal stability but democratic adventure.

  • Anne Norton

Ghost in the Machine

Is digital life soulless or the site of a new transcendence?

  • Jenny Hendrix

The Lure of Luxury

Most people own things they don’t really need. It is worth thinking about why.

  • Paul Bloom
with responses from
  • Virginia Postrel
  • Susan A. Gelman
  • Nicholas A. Christakis
  • Shamus Khan
  • Debra Satz
  • David Cloutier
  • Joel M. Podolny
  • Bruce Hood
  • Judith Levine
  • Will Wilkinson

Reliable Rebel

Jeremy Corbyn and the Revival of the Radical Left

  • Martin O’Neill

Thoreau’s Public Mind

The author of Walden was not an enemy of civic life.

  • Simon Waxman

Feeling into Action

On Lori Gruen’s Entangled Empathy

  • Colin Dayan

Finding Your Way Home

Philosophy constantly invents new ways to falsely intellectualize our relationship to things that we do.

  • Peter Godfrey-Smith

Anxieties of Democracy

Democracy no longer has rivals, but its fairness and effectiveness face skepticism.

  • Ira Katznelson
with responses from
  • Hélène Landemore
  • Larry Kramer
  • Michael Gecan
  • David M. Kennedy
  • Martin O’Neill
  • Mark Schmitt
  • Nadia Urbinati
  • Rick Perlstein
  • Melissa S. Williams
  • Mohammad Fadel
  • Alex Gourevitch
  • Michael C. Dawson
  • Richard Trumka

Effective Altruism’s Political Blind Spot

“Effective altruism,” the philanthropic movement founded on Peter Singer’s ideas, applies a consequentialist philosophy to the problem of global poverty.

  • Emily Clough

Your Own Worst Enemy

Every day we transgress against our own longing to act well.

  • Vivian Gornick

The Logic of Effective Altruism

A minimally acceptable ethical life requires using a substantial part of one’s spare resources to make the world a better place.

  • Peter Singer
with responses from
  • Emma Saunders-Hastings
  • Daron Acemoglu
  • Rob Reich
  • Angus Deaton
  • Paul Brest
  • Jennifer Rubenstein
  • Iason Gabriel
  • Larissa MacFarquhar
  • András Miklós
  • Leila Janah
  • Catherine Tumber

Teaching Philosophy on Death Row: An Interview with Lisa Guenther

This conversation is the tenth in the series, Trench Democracy: Participatory Innovation in Unlikely Places.

  • Albert W. Dzur

Preserving the Self

The Political Economy of Attention

  • George Scialabba

American Cynicism

And its cure.

  • Jess Row

The End

The politics of American apocalypse.

  • Meghan O’Gieblyn

Crisis of Man? Lighten Up

“What should be the starting point for twenty-first-century thought?”

  • Kevin Mattson

Did Christianity Create Liberalism?

On Larry Siedentrop’s Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism.

  • Samuel Moyn
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