Roger Caldwell considers the quest of anthropologists. When the young Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009), then a bored teacher of philosophy in Paris, received an offer to work in Brazil, he embraced the opportunity to remake himself as an anthropologist, conducting fieldwork among the remote tribes of the Mato Grosso. He thus exchanged what he saw as ‘the …
In Search of Us: Adventures in Anthropology by Lucy Moore Read More »
Chad Trainer hunts for a lost thinker. In the mid-fourth century BCE, Athens was between its peak as an imperial power and its decline into one more of Alexander the Great’s colonies. The prosperity of Athens’ Periclean age was a century in the past, and had been followed by a twenty-five years war with Sparta, resulting …
Ian James Kidd responds to rejections of humanity. Adam Kirsch is an American poet, biographer, literary critic, a faculty member at Columbia University, and a widely-published public intellectual. The Revolt Against Humanity (2022) appears in the Columbia Global Reports series of well-produced, novella-length essays on contemporary political and cultural themes. The theme of this book is the dispiriting …
Elaine Coburn navigates differences. How do we navigate cultural differences in multicultural societies? This question is the subject of heated public debates. What clothing is appropriate for a public swimming pool, say, or for swearing-in during a citizenship ceremony? Should publicly-funded schools give instruction promoting just one religion? How should the state adjudicate among citizens who …
Review of Susan Buck-Morss, Year One: A Philosophical RecountingNasrin Olla Philosophers of the enlightenment such as Rousseau, Kant and Hegel imagined their projects as universal in reach and scale. Whether these philosophers were writing about the social contract, the foundations of moral law or the progression of spirit, the idea that the whole world could …
Review of Dipesh Chakrabarty, Climate of History in a Planetary AgeRegan Burles The bright red time ball atop Flamsteed House at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich rises halfway up its mast each day at 12:55 p.m., to the top of the mast at 12:58 p.m., and drops suddenly to the bottom at exactly 1:00 p.m. …
Review of Willem Styfhals, No Spiritual Investment in the WorldDaniel Fraser Willem Styfhals’ new book offers a conceptual history of Gnosticism within a deceptively narrow discursive field. Though Gnosticism re-emerged and become a relatively widespread term in German thought from the end of the nineteenth century onwards, gaining particular prominence in the interwar period, Styfhals …
Review of Oxana Timofeeva, Solar Politics Isabel Jacobs Since Antiquity, the sun has been tied up with earthly and divine authority. The solar god Sūrya, a Hindu deity, was worshipped in sun temples across India. In the fourth century, under Roman Emperor Julian’s rule, the ancient Helios, like Sūrya depicted with a radiant crown and …
Review of Paul K. Jones, Critical Theory and Demagogic Populism Mike Makin-Waite Although there is now a massive literature on the right-wing populisms that have reshaped politics over recent decades, debates continue as to whether we have really understood these movements, and the nature of their parties and leaders. Two new books consider how the …
Nikhil Krishnan’s intriguing and charming history, A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy at Oxford 1900-60, is organised around anecdotes rather than arguments. Krishnan is interested not only in “what people thought but what they were like”. The two questions are not as separate as many assume: a penetrating portrait of a philosopher can do much to illuminate …