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Progressivism’s Fragile Gender Realism

Is there a fact of the matter about a person’s gender? To answer in the affirmative is to adopt a realist stance on questions of gender identity. We could formulate such a realist position as follows: there is a mind-independent feature of reality that decides a person’s gender, and it is not . . . . Continue Reading »

The Right Side of History

One generation's progress may fall victim to the next generation's very different agenda. If there is a lesson to be taken from this, it is that history is not, after all, a singular progressive movement along some grand Hegelian trajectory. Continue Reading »

The New York Times's Misanthropy

The mainstream media are misanthropic. Article after column after editorial published in our most prominent news outlets promote the view that human exceptionalism is hubristic and arrogant. If we would just rank ourselves alongside the other animals in the forest, we are told repeatedly, we would . . . . Continue Reading »

The Idea of Moral Progress

Almost everybody agrees that progress is a good thing. But most self-evidently good things, when examined more closely, have a way of generating disagreements. And so it is with the idea of progress, of which the idea of moral progress is part. Thinkers arguing from the most diverse perspectives . . . . Continue Reading »

A New Heaven and a New Earth

“RE-imagining,” a conference “by women for women and men,” marked the midpoint of the World Council of Churches’ “Decade in Solidarity with Women.” Held last November 4-7 at the Minneapolis Convention Center, the conference drew 2,200 participants from forty-nine states and . . . . Continue Reading »

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