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Hegel Vindicated

Klaus Vieweg’s eight-hundred-page biography of Hegel made something of a sensation when the German original appeared in 2019. More lies have been told about Hegel than about any other philosopher, Vieweg averred, and the biggest lie of all painted Hegel as an apologist for the Prussian . . . . Continue Reading »

Leave Them Kids Alone

Is there such a thing as good therapy? Not for kids, argues Abigail Shrier. Sure, “play therapy” for the littlest tykes probably does no more harm (and no more good) than a very expensive babysitter. But when the talk therapy developed for adults is administered to children and . . . . Continue Reading »

Briefly Noted

Initially developed at the University of Toronto between the 1930s and 1970s, media ecology is a meta-disciplinary perspective that understands media as environments that shape human consciousness. Despite this expansive approach to media, media ecology has generally shied away from exploring that . . . . Continue Reading »

Rome’s Concordat

A few months ago, I predicted that the Francis pontificate would seek to establish cordial relations with the Rainbow Reich. (See “While We’re At It,” January 2024, composed late November 2023.) In mid-December the Vatican issued the declaration Fiducia Supplicans, vindicating my . . . . Continue Reading »

Hedgehogs, Foxes, and Other Thinkers

Years ago, I spent a month with my family in Burundi. I had once worked there when still single. During this visit, my daughter took French lessons from a local teacher in the small provincial center where we were staying. At one point, M. Jérôme, the teacher, asked her why Europeans give flowers . . . . Continue Reading »

How to Revolt

Earlier this year, a Seattle-based journalist named Tariq Ra’ouf took to social media to explain the logic behind the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have been rocking American cities for months. “We are going to inconvenience every single person who doesn’t give a f**k until they give a . . . . Continue Reading »

America’s Greatest Explorer

On July 4, 1776, as several dozen sweating American colonists sat in the stuffy Pennsylvania State House wondering what would befall them for having dared to rebel against their king, a lone, hungry Spanish priest lay in the windswept stone plaza of a Hopi village wondering what would befall him for . . . . Continue Reading »

Resist the Machine Apocalypse

No two ways about it: We are making ourselves wretched. We are more affluent than ever, but riches—and power, the only point in having riches—do not make people happy. Ask a psychiatrist. Or take a look at the face of Vladimir Putin, who has, alas, the power of life and death over . . . . Continue Reading »

Our Bodies, Our Anger

Our culture is full of angry women—angry at misogynist men, angry that careerism hasn’t brought the fulfillment it promised, angry that they might get pregnant, angry when they don’t, angry at toxic masculinity, angry at the mental load, angry about a whole host of grievances. In a . . . . Continue Reading »

Friedman’s Rise and Fall

Anyone who lived through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 will remember the pitiable figure cut by the Eastern Bloc residents interviewed back then. They looked stunned, tongue-tied, disoriented, like rescuees emerging into the sunlight after days in a collapsed mine. Whether they were . . . . Continue Reading »

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