Articles

Ethics of the Infinite: The Origins of Radical Responsibility in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

Born to Jewish parents in Lithuania on January 12, 1906, the life path of Emmanuel Levinas led him across several countries and through two world wars. He passed away on December 25, 1995.

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Transforming 1984: The Pursuit of Wisdom and Wonder With How We Read

The year is 1984. George Orwell’s dystopian future has arrived. Ronald Regan is president-elect, and Wes Craven’s nightmare occupies Elm Street. Not only is it a leap year, but it is the year of the rat, according to the Chinese …

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Mary Oliver Finds the Antidote to Confusion in Literature

In her essay collection, Upstream, Mary Oliver describes the antidote to confusion she found in literature – first reading and then writing – as a kind of standing with otherness in the world.

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Bridge and Door: Georg Simmel on How Separation Inspires Human Connection

Offering a fresh perspective and a hope for connection amidst the closed doors of social distancing, Georg Simmel is emerging as a thinker for our contemporary cultural moment.

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The Role of Reciprocity in Nature in Haruki Murakami’s The Elephant Vanishes

A fresh perspective on the imbalance between animals and humans, Haruki Murakami’s short story The Elephant Vanishes explores the troubling paradoxes hiding in a relationship built on exploitation instead of reciprocity.

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Marilyn McEntyre on When Poets Pray

Marilyn McEntyre collects her meditations on classic and contemporary poetry in When Poets Pray and offers the reader a deep reverence for language and God.

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Simone de Beauvoir The Ethics of Ambiguity

Simone de Beauvoir on The Ethics of Ambiguity and Existential Courage

Born in 1908 in Paris, France, the French philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir, developed as a writer, intellectual, and activist with radical existential courage.

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Simone Weil on the Generosity of Attention in Gravity and Grace

In Gravity and Grace, Simone Weil offers supernatural insight on attention and suffering and how to live in contradiction.

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Walter Benjamin The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Walter Benjamin on the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Cultural criticism from Immanuel Kant to Walter Benjamin to Martin Scorsese stems from a high view of art and a low view of human cognition.

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Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read

Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read is a newly packaged collection of some of the most beautiful prose Virginia Woolf has written on the creative, radical, and rebellious act of reading.

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Ray Bradbury on the Seduction of Space in The Rocket Man

In his 1951 short story, The Rocket Man, Ray Bradbury explores the seduction of the open sky that inspires Elton John’s iconic song by the same name.

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Lost in Translation: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Meaning is lost in translation between the original Japanese and the English translation of Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

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Kenneth Burke on the Rhythm of Reading

In approaching rhetoric, Kenneth Burke teases out a theory of reading that incorporates rhythm and promotes a harmony of our experiences.

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Kenneth Burke on Reading for Identification

Kenneth Burke considers every influence of a rhetorical act and develops a theory of identification that offers readers a new way to think about rhetoric.

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