Morality
Story Stream
Civilizational Ethics Precede National Self-Interest October 30, 2024
Anyone who’s taken Psychology 101 will recall Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a pyramid-shaped analysis of how humans prioritize their lives. At the most foundational level are food, water, and shelter. Next, there are physical safety and security. Last...
How Pete Rose Fell October 22, 2024
Sports serves many purposes in modern life, practical and moral instruction chief among them. Football “teaches you discipline and helps you develop a sense of leadership and courage and camaraderie with your friends and teammates,” the NFL cornerbac...
The Irrepressible Elaine May October 22, 2024
In Elaine May’s The Heartbreak Kid (1972), Lenny and Lila are a pair of newlyweds on their way to Florida for their honeymoon. As they have breakfast at a diner, Lenny notices something about Lila that he never had before—not an especially surprising...
The 85 Best Quentin Tarantino Characters Ever, Ranked October 11, 2024
We cut to two men wearing black-and-white suits. There’s Vincent Vega with an earring and shoulder-length hair riding shotgun. The car is driven by Jules Winnfield, who’s sporting a Kurtis Blow Jheri curl that looks like it’s still dripping. Context ...
The Poet October 09, 2024
I've had my galley of Michel Houellebecq's Annihilation for at least four months now; I've been able to stare at the tentative publication date of 10-8-24, thinking about when I'm going to get around to writing this review.There's something in Houell...
Blue Walls Falling Down October 09, 2024
An Excerpt from Blue Walls Falling Down: A NovelStella Tęsknota was ready to marry Blake Yourrick, the troubled if earnest protagonist of Infinite Regress. In this stand-alone novel (and loose sequel), set after Blake abruptly—and inexplicably—breaks...
Why Rachel Kushner Writes Characters Without Morals October 01, 2024
Rachel Kushner’s latest, Creation Lake, has been called a spy novel. Shadowy corporate interests have enlisted the operative (alias: Sadie Smith) to safeguard the construction of a megabasin designed to divert local water to industrial monocroppers. ...
Will We Embrace AI Fetishism? August 29, 2024
In parts of Thailand, thanks to a confluence of modern technology and traditional beliefs, a peculiar transport service has emerged. The anthropologist Scott Stonington calls them “spirit ambulances”. Some Thai Buddhists feel morally obliged to prese...
The Russian Lit Plot Twist of Today’s American Politics August 27, 2024
When Russian literature becomes necessary to explain democratic elections in the West, something has gone very, very wrong. As John Adams said, the American republic was designed for moral and religious people. So, when unambiguous machinations at th...
House of the Draggin’ August 27, 2024
Watching House of the Dragon is like watching professional soccer. The pacing is slow, and most episodes are devoted to world-building and character development. And, like a soccer match, most of the game consists of setup, which is periodically punc...
The Meaning of Political Philosophy August 26, 2024
Klingenstein: What is political philosophy?Ellmers: It has two parts: the philosophic study of politics, and the political study of philosophy. The second one means that the human things are always the gateway to thinking about abstract ideas like tr...
The Resilience of Natural Law August 21, 2024
At its inception in seventeenth-century England, our liberal order held that law must be humble. Brutal political conflict had proved that we are incapable of knowing basic moral and social truths. With fundamental disagreement inescapable, law must ...
On Nietzsche and Our Crisis of Masculinity August 19, 2024
As is often the case, I first read Friedrich Nietzsche as a teenage boy. In the fall of 2001, at the age of fifteen, I learned that I was to have brain surgery, and I needed reading material for the recovery period. In preparation for a month or so s...
The Wound and the Show August 16, 2024
Kat Tang’s debut, Five-Star Stranger, has a very bright and colorful dustjacket, but its less than effusive narrator, if not exactly unreliable, is not given to telling us what he’s feeling, and we sense that if we ever find out, somber tones will re...
We Need Moral Direction August 15, 2024
There’s a lot of advice out there about anxiety, especially for young people. Anxious people need to do breathwork. We need to meditate more. Repeat positive affirmations. Almost none of it works.I think this is because we now use the word anxiety to...
Inside Out 2: Fluff, Hijinks—and the Right Message August 05, 2024
My generation’s worst habits are finally being put under the magnifying glass. Social media addiction is getting national attention, from the surgeon general of the United States advising a warning label, to some of the biggest school districts in th...
On Trying to Write a Novel August 05, 2024
I spend a lot of time suspicious of speculation. I have argued, in my academic and theological writing, that there is something inherently alienating about our human relationship with the artificial, with the imagined, with the unreal. I have taught ...
Joy Williams’s Beautiful Apocalypse August 01, 2024
The writer Joy Williams, whose latest book, Concerning the Future of Souls: 99 Stories of Azrael, was published July 2, has become one of our foremost scribes of environmental destruction and the moral and spiritual questions it raises. Animals and t...
