“[O]nce I was relieved of the burden of having to figure out the answer to the other, I could more clearly see and appreciate the complex mystery of whoever stood before me”
Parker Henry’s beautifully personal review of Hopwood’s The Moral Philosophy of Iris Murdoch
thepointmag.com/criticism/mo...
In his recent book on the moral philosophy of Iris Murdoch, Mark Hopwood gives us “a Murdoch who is no longer just a defective analytic philosopher, but a thinker in a tradition of her own,” writes Parker Henry:
New online, a web supplement to our issue 36 forum on the left and the good life: Ege Yumuşak on making space for political engagement in everyday life.
We're hosting two workshops this year at UChicago: "Questions Concerning Technology," taught by Jon Baskin and Dan Silver, and "The Good Life," taught by Anastasia Berg and Joseph Keegin. More info: publicthinking.thepointmag.com/workshop#themes
Applications are open for our fully funded Summer Workshops on the philosophy and practice of public thinking—an incredible opportunity for college students interested in writing and engaging the public. Learn More: www.publicthinking.thepointmag.com/workshop
"We can excuse someone being an asshole if they go on to do great things, if they do the things we can’t. There’s much less to sympathize with in the asshole who ends up choosing the small life like the rest of us." @zeets.bsky.social on "Marty Supreme". thepointmag.com/forms-of-lif...
Really good piece on the stylelessness of liberals:
'There is no liberal Joe Rogan because his liberal equivalent would rather soliloquize and tweak a couple of ordinances than enter into an unscripted tête-à-tête for hours.' thepointmag.com/criticism/li...
I wrote about Marty Supreme and the problem with writing a compelling unlikable protagonist and then undercutting him at the end in the name of sentimentality thepointmag.com/forms-of-lif...
New on Forms of Life, @zeets.bsky.social on sports movies, “Marty Supreme,” and the trouble with its ending:
“Unless we insist that politics is imagination and mind,” wrote the liberal critic Lionel Trilling, “we will learn that imagination and mind are politics, and of a kind that we will not like.””
thepointmag.com/politics/on-...
New online, Alex Gendler on Voice of America’s downfall and the end of soft power:
Orson Welles sets up a scene in THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (1942).
An AI-driven reconstruction of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS @newyorker.com, Wes Anderson @thepointmag.bsky.social, Michael Almereyda @nytimes.com + @hammertonail.bsky.social + @screenslate.bsky.social, @szacharek.bsky.social on the underappreciated …
Did You See This? www.criterion.com/current/post...
super thoughtful, well laid out essay about reading literature in schools and progressive ed
loved this part about a character in Brave New World reading Shakespeare on his own, and how, lacking a broader context where others have also read and discussed Shakespeare, the books don’t save him
Ah that feeling when you read something that says everything you're currently trying to write, but better. Love this piece on progressive education by @annieabrams.bsky.social: thepointmag.com/examined-lif...
"Good politics, like good art, does not lecture or declaim. It strains; it argues; it is an unending negotiation with the difficult and intransigent adventure of humanity." || via @thepointmag.bsky.social
From the new issue, Becca Rothfeld on two recent books that “typify the liberal tendency to fiddle while Rome goes up in flames”: Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s “Abundance” and Cass Sunstein’s “On Liberalism”:
great article by Jensen Suther on the faults of degrowth Marxism thepointmag.com/politics/rad...
With Russia's full-scale invasion, contextualizing Ukraine’s Soviet past became more complicated than ever. An essay I wrote for @thepointmag.bsky.social looks at what its meant for the museum holding Ukraine's largest collection of Soviet socialist realist art. thepointmag.com/corresponden...
"When I try to remember what it was like to be that age, what I remember is a burning desire to be somebody else. I don’t just mean that I didn’t want to be me, but that I also actively wanted to be other people, who happened to be near me at the time. If I felt defined by anything, it was the absence of those instinctive ceremonies of self that the people around me were conducing quite unthinkingly. And if I didn’t have an instinct for scandal or Olympian hauteur or social grace or a gift for euphoric absurdity or a straightforward way of loving those around me or emotional percipience or a really cool skill, and was besides a 0.01st-percentile dancer with a wrong sort of face and walk, at least I could roll a cigarette quicker and better than anyone else and I always had something to do with my hands."
wonderful piece on the life of a smoker — and the process of quitting — by @johnphipps.bsky.social thepointmag.com/examined-lif...
“Education is for the student’s benefit, not for the benefit of their future employer…students go to school not merely to acquire skills but to develop an entire social and intellectual life: to have something good and to have it forever”
@thepointmag.bsky.social
thepointmag.com/examined-lif...
Enjoying Becca Rothfeld's skewering of "Abundance" and Cass Sunstein's latest
thepointmag.com/criticism/li...
I really love that Annie’s work doesn’t simply defend the liberal arts, it actively demonstrates how taking up its texts & traditions can provide invaluable insight into contemporary issues. English classes should be invitations to appreciate, enjoy, & contribute to living traditions & communities.
A poignant, poetic take on the waning Canadian migrant dream, and the very hot, present, (im)migrant pivot across the globe. Vikrant Dadawala is clear-eyed and nuanced about his grasp of the situation and where he himself stands in it:
thepointmag.com/examined-lif...
"Teachers can show students what has moved others to use language with care...and invite them to join a long tradition of people who have found a way to say something new." - @annieabrams.bsky.social, in a crucial essay on the struggle for liberal education.
thepointmag.com/examined-lif...
"Forms of labor that conserve, fix, make and care for others once had a place in the mythos of America, not to mention on the mantle of the Old Left."
Extraordinary essay about what the last year has been like in DC by Noelle Bodick in @thepointmag.bsky.social
thepointmag.com/politics/rig...
“calling our current public-education policy ‘progressive’ is, read most generously, imprecise”
great essay about what progressive education ought to aim for—one that hopefully clarifies things not only for the Tates of the world, but also for those of us who aim to do this kind of work ourselves.
For @thepointmag.bsky.social I wrote one of the most personally important essays I’ve ever written. Please give it a read if you’re someone who cares about education. thepointmag.com/examined-lif...
