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What is our motivating force today, and can we still hold on to a unified view of the history of philosophy?

JANE ZWART | Sometimes I find myself almost unable to write poems because I’m not in the right rooms in my mind. . .

YONAH LAVERY-YISRAELI | Like the modern skeptic, Rambam Rambam (more widely known as Maimonides) is wary of trends and is alive to the slipperiness of motivation. In his work Shemoneh Peraqim, he raises the spectres of misunderstanding and superficiality, and argues that there are, in fact, right and wrong reasons to engage in discomfort.

Frank Griffel is the Professor in the Study of Abrahamic Religions at the Faculty of Theology and Religion at Oxford University and Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. This is a forum on his book, The Formation of Post-classical Philosophy in Islam (Oxford University Press). Part one.

AMIT MAJMUDAR | As a modern Indian, you might also hear about the epics in the news. That movie version you were eager to go see in the theater might have set off a controversy over whether the main characters were portrayed reverently enough; the public may have declared a boycott.

MATT McMANUS | Many of capitalism’s most partisan defenders have assumed not only its immortality, but also its eternity.

AARON POOCHIGIAN | I like the double meaning because the moon is both the celestial body and Wang’s pal and playmate.

KELLY M.S. SWOPE | Lives like his were proof that the German philosophy of freedom planted real roots in American institutions before and after the War over Slavery.

MICHAEL BAZZETT | Translating the poetry of K’iche’ Maya poet Humberto Ak’abal can sometimes feel like trying to grab a beam of sunlight.

Rabbi David Wolpe is the Max Webb Emeritus Rabbi of Sinai Temple and one of the most influential rabbis in America

PHILIP BALL | According to the old story, we once thought that all this other DNA was just “junk,” a term coined in this context in the 1970s. It was accumulated over the course of evolution, for example by viruses inserting their genetic material into ours, and it did nothing useful but just cluttered up our genome the way all our old detritus of a lifetime clutters up our attic.

LUKE FISCHER | Novalis was polymathic in his range of interests and abilities: a poet, philosopher, scientist, mystic, director of salt mines . . .