Reviving a loaded historical term is doomed to fail, especially without an honest reckoning of its bloody past.
Comrade: A specious thesis with a revisionist bent
Friend or enemy: Schmitt’s specious dichotomy
"You're with us or against us" is an old, and fallacious, mode of organizing society.
Scraps of love and the sweetness of longing
What is love but grasps at scraps, fleeting ecstasy and agony?
Antigone’s anguish: the devastation of rule without mercy
Sophocles' Antigone lays bare the deep costs of tyranny, and shows that mercy and humanity make for better rule.
Tenuous redemption: Baldwin’s Blues and Carson’s Red
The whole and the fragments: a response to human searching in modern and post-modern fiction.
Meditations: The musings of a philosopher king
Marcus Aurelius' journals from his time as Roman Emperor provide timeless insights for a life well-led.
To be themselves: Gender and justice in the ancient Greek canon
Proscribed gender roles have been challenged as long as they have existed. The Ancient Greek writers are no exception.
Reason and pleasure: The Epicurean way of good living
The ancient Roman philosopher and poet Lucretius takes a scientific approach to reason, arguing that your best life is lived in the here and now - because there is no hereafter.
Medea: slayer of social oppression and patriarchy
On civility and barbarianism, passion and reason, and the pain of the patriarchy in the domestic sphere.
Leading wisely: how benevolent governance can help society flourish
China's "Second Sage," Mencius, believed that benevolent governance was essential to happy, thriving societies.
Human flourishing: Aristotle on how to live your best life
Aristotle has some thoughts on living the good life.
The Symposium and Sappho: Love is virtue; love is divine
A glimpse at Love through the eyes of Sappho and Plato.
