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Paul Valéry and the Mechanisms of Modern Tyranny All modern forms of government presume an objectification of their citizens. Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody Hedgehog Review Spring 2021 Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody is a poet and translator living in California. His most recent translation is The Idea of Perfection: The Poetry and Prose of Paul Valéry. In 1922, the former director o..

Originalism’s Original Sin The legal philosophy cloaks its theocratic impulses in secular garb. By Adam Shapiro The Chronicle of Higher Education March 1, 2021 Even though the Biden administration is unlikely to nominate a staunch originalist to the Supreme Court, the legal philosophy prominently associated with the late Antonin Scalia isn’t going anywhere. The court is already packed with juris..

Wagnermania The revolutionary contradictions of Richard Wagner Nathan Shields The Baffler No. 56, March 2021 © Chris Lloyd Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music by Alex Ross. Macmillan, 784 pages. When the revolution came to Dresden in 1849, Richard Wagner greeted it with unhinged ecstasy. “Whatever stands, must fall,” the thirty-five-year-old court conductor wrote that April in the..

They’re Using You to Kill People Is Scientific Reasoning the Deadliest Weapon Devised by Humankind? By Trevor Quirk VQR PUBLISHED: December 3, 2020 Rational Fog: Science and Technology in Modern War. By M. Susan Lindee. Harvard UP, 2020. 296pp. HB, $45.Thomas Pynchon found an accommodating symbol in the Aggregat 4 (aka the V-2) rocket, a weapon that could not save the war for the Greater German ..

Remembering Karl Popper written by David Cohen Quillette, Published on February 22, 2021 It’s the end of the wartime workday at 14a Westenra Terrace in the Port Hills of Christchurch, New Zealand, high above the southern terminus of the city’s streets. The one-bedroom apartment offers commanding views of a region shaped by the heaving of the Earth’s crust and the dry winds that blow in from the ..

The Cultural Contradictions of American Education Kay S. Hymowitz Current Issue The National Affairs Asset 10 number 46 • Winter 2021 For several decades now, educators in the United States have focused much of their attention on the disappointing levels of academic achievement among low-income children. This concern is hardly unwarranted: Even as it became clear to policymakers that education w..

T. S. Eliot and the Jews by David P. Goldman The First Things March, 2021 There recur in the work of ­T. S. Eliot two obsessions that make one cringe: his Jew-­hatred and his contempt for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The first is sometimes excused as a reflection of ambient prejudice, the second as critical crankiness. In fact, these obsessions have a common source. The characteristically Jewish contri..

Oscar Wilde’s Utopia written by Jared Marcel Pollen The Quillette Published on February 12, 2021 Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes See nothing save their own unlovely woe, Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,— This is the opening verse of Oscar Wilde’s “Sonnet to Liberty.” Beyond its apparent cynicism, it elegantly encapsulates the acute miseries of youth—solipsistic, impa..

Those Who Work What you can learn about medieval Europe if you focus on peasants. By Judith M. Bennett LAPHAM's Quarterly Wednesday, February 10, 2021 Female head, England, c. 1420. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy the Getty’s Open Content Program. Why should we care about peasants? Historians understand that history is richer when seen from the margins. By looking a..

Why “Trusting the Science” Is Complicated By Suman Seth Losangeles Review of Books FEBRUARY 12, 2021 IT IS POSSIBLE that John Pringle’s neighbors viewed him with some distaste. Formerly physician-general to the British forces in the Low Countries, in 1749 Pringle had settled down in a rather swanky part of London, where he began investigating the processes behind putrefaction. He would place pie..