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Adam Smith.

The Contradictions of Adam Smith

Smith's influence on American politics, and the misunderstanding at the heart of our idea of the "champion of capitalism."
by Glory M. Liu, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins via The Nation on December 14, 2022
Statue of Liberty's torch.

Why the Philosophers Libertarians Love Always Come Out Worse for Wear

Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek have been through the wringer.
by Rebecca Brenner Graham via Slate on December 5, 2022
Photograph of protesters and text from a 1944 edition of "Are You An American?"

The Failure of a Public Philosophy

How Americans lost faith in the possibility of self-government.
by Win McCormack via The New Republic on November 23, 2022
Cartoon of Buckminster Fuller with spirals in his glasses and hands out as if hypnotizing the reader.

Space-Age Magus

From beginning to end, experts saw through Buckminster Fuller’s ideas and theories. Why did so many people come under his spell?
by James Gleick via New York Review of Books on November 3, 2022
The image displays two duplicate portraits of Adam Smith. One is upside down.

The Mysteries of Adam Smith

How to understand Adam Smith’s politics.
by Glory M. Liu via The Nation on September 3, 2022
Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche, 1894, by Curt Stoeving.

Nietzsche’s Quarrel with History

As much as we may wish otherwise, history gives us few reasons to believe that its moral arc bends toward justice.
by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen via The Hedgehog Review on July 5, 2022
A pair of color stereogram photographs featuring people sitting in front of a desert stone structure.

New Look, Same Great Look

The history of humans being confounded by color photography.
by Kim Beil via Lapham’s Quarterly on May 16, 2022
Illustration of John von Neumann surrounded by mathematical formulas, by Valentin Pavageau

John von Neumann Thought He Had the Answers

The father of game theory helped develop the atom bomb—and thought he could calculate when to use it.
by Samanth Subramanian via The New Republic on March 8, 2022
Split frame image of Norman Mailer, in black and white.

My Norman Mailer Problem—and Ours

Digging down into the roots of white America’s infatuation with Black.
by Darryl Pinckney via The Nation on March 7, 2022
Undated photograph by “Miss Carter” of William James in a séance with the medium Mrs. Walden.

“Pajamas from Spirit Land”: Searching for William James

After the passing of William James, mediums across the US began receiving messages from the late Harvard professor.
by Alicia Puglionesi via The Public Domain Review on February 23, 2022
Portrait of William Small, by Tilly Kettle, c. 1765.
partner

The Revolution Whisperer

The overlooked first mentor of Thomas Jefferson.
by Greg Shaw via HNN on February 20, 2022
Watercolor portrait of Bronson Alcott, a 19th century American philosopher and educator.

New England Ecstasies

The transcendentalists thought all human inspiration was divine, all nature a miracle.
by Brenda Wineapple via New York Review of Books on February 16, 2022
A political cartoon in which a king sitting on a litter carried by enslaved men rests his elbow on three skulls labeled Fugitive Slave Bill.

Transcendentalists Against Slavery

Why have historians overlooked the connections between abolitionism and the famous New England cultural movement?
by Peter Wirzbicki, David Moore via Mere Orthodoxy on February 9, 2022
1963 black and white photo of protesters marching for racial equality in Washington D.C.

Just Give Me My Equality

Amidst growing suspicion that equality talk is cheap, a new book explains where egalitarianism went wrong—and what it still has to offer.
by Teresa M. Bejan via Boston Review on February 7, 2022
Hawaiian feathered war god.

In Defense of Presentism

The past does not speak to us; we speak for the past.
by David Armitage via Oxford University Press on January 13, 2022
Ink and watercolor portrait of John Rawls

John Rawls and Liberalism’s Selective Conscience

With its doctrine of fairness, A Theory of Justice transformed political philosophy. But what did it leave out? 
by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò via The Nation on November 27, 2021
Statue of Robert E. Lee on his horse.

Reëxamining the Legacy of Race and Robert E. Lee

The historian Allen C. Guelzo believes that the Confederate general deserves a more compassionate reading.
by Allen C. Guelzo, Isaac Chotiner via The New Yorker on November 24, 2021
A colorful bird and landscape sketched within the shape of a man's head.

Emerson Didn’t Practice the Self-Reliance He Preached

How Transcendentalism, the American philosophy that championed the individual, caught on in tight-knit Concord, Massachusetts.
by Mark Greif via The Atlantic on November 9, 2021
A courtroom gavel placed in front of an open book and justice scale.

History Won’t Judge

The idea of history’s judgment was, and remains, seductive. Yet this notion cannot withstand scrutiny, as Joan Wallach Scott’s On the Judgment of History shows.
by Kirsten Weld via The Baffler on September 7, 2021

The Rise of the Elite Anti-Intellectual

For decades, “common sense” has been a convenient framing for conservative ideas. The label hides a more complicated picture.
by Simon Brown via Dissent on August 20, 2021
Illustration of microphones and newspaper cutouts

Men in Dark Times

How Hannah Arendt’s fans misread the post-truth presidency.
by Rebecca Panovka via Harper’s on July 14, 2021
Job seekers wait to be called into the Heartland Workforce Solutions office in Omaha last summer.
partner

How Cruelty Became the Point of Our Labor and Welfare Policies

Why do so many politicians think people only work if threatened or forced into doing so?
by Gail Savage via Made By History on May 26, 2021
Iroquois Leaders

One of the Most Important American Documents You’ve Never Heard Of

Colonial lessons in civility from the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee.
by Nicole Eustace via Literary Hub on April 29, 2021
Jose Altuve of the Houston Astros

What Counts, These Days, in Baseball?

As technologies of quantification and video capture grow more sophisticated, is baseball changing? Do those changes have moral implications?
by David Hinkin via Public Books on February 24, 2021
Charles Mills

Charles Mills Thinks Liberalism Still Has a Chance

A wide-ranging conversation with the philosopher on the white supremacist roots of liberal thought, Biden’s victory, and Trumpism without Trump.
by Charles W. Mills, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins via The Nation on January 28, 2021
A collage featuring Thomas Jefferson and passages cut from the Bible.

What Thomas Jefferson Could Never Understand About Jesus

Jefferson revised the Gospels to make Jesus more reasonable, and lost the power of his story.
by Vinson Cunningham via The New Yorker on December 28, 2020
John Rawls

How John Rawls Became the Liberal Philosopher of a Conservative Age

With "A Theory Of Justice," Rawls became the most influential political philosopher of his time — just as the liberal agenda he supported was retreating.
by Katrina Forrester, Daniel Finn via Jacobin on October 4, 2020

Cousins Like Us: Black Lives and John Maynard Keynes

Reflections on the famous economist through the prism of the author's own mixed-race family.
by Taylor Beck via Los Angeles Review of Books on September 4, 2020

The Argument of “Afropessimism”

Frank B. Wilderson III sketches a map of the world in which Black people are everywhere integral but always excluded.
by Vinson Cunningham via The New Yorker on July 13, 2020

The Inner Life of American Communism

Vivian Gornick’s and Jodi Dean’s books mine a lost history of comradeship, determination, and intimacy.
by Corey Robin via The Nation on May 5, 2020
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