The German Philosophy that Emancipated America
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.
Mar 12
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Past Issue
Mary Magdalene and Jesus: Gnostic Union or Deferred Desire?
MARGARET D. KAMITSUKA | Mary Magdalene was tarred with a misogynous and anti-sexuality brush from the start...
Sep 28, 2025
Living Systems are Not Like Machines: A Conversation with Nobel Laureate, Paul Nurse, Part Two
SIR PAUL NURSE | Human beings like things to be ordered. That's how we are. But maybe cells and living things are more sloppy. Perhaps the cell has to be sloppy to avoid, as I said, getting stuck...
Jul 27, 2025
The Enlightenment's Apocalypse: Harvard, Antisemitism, and the Future of Science
SAMUEL LONCAR | Supersessionism thus fights its enemy not with swords, destined to become ploughshares, but with time itself. The very nature of history is against the Jews, because they have not adapted to the new time inaugurated by Christianity...
Jul 27, 2025
In the Translator's Workshop: Featuring Michael Bazzett on the Poetry of K’iche’ Maya poet, Humberto Ak’abal
MICHAEL BAZZETT | Translating the poetry of K’iche’ Maya poet Humberto Ak’abal can sometimes feel like trying to grab a beam of sunlight.
Mar 12
Rabbi David Wolpe on Global Challenges, Judaism, and Our Existential Crisis
Rabbi David Wolpe is the Max Webb Emeritus Rabbi of Sinai Temple and one of the most influential rabbis in America
Mar 11
Current Issue
Meanings of Science
AlphaGenome: On the Promise and Limits of AI in Science
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.
Feb 22
Some New World of Wonders: Levitation, Rationality, and Naturalism with Carlos Eire and Peter Harrison
Naturalism is not intrinsic to a rational scientific understanding. Now, why we think that, then, is partly because we've constructed false narratives about conflicts between science and religion,
May 4, 2025
Conversations on the Plurality of World-views: A Response to Peter Harrison’s Some New World
PHILIP BALL | Conflicts can in fact be tremendously fertile, alerting us to areas where more work is needed . . .
Feb 9, 2025
Featured Forum
A Forum on Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship After Empire
Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship After Empire is a master class in how to open a dense intellectual archive. . .
Nov 22, 2024
Reviews
The German Philosophy that Emancipated America
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.
Mar 12
Discovering Novalis: The Poetic Transmutation of Philosophy
LUKE FISCHER | Novalis was polymathic in his range of interests and abilities: a poet, philosopher, scientist, mystic, director of salt mines . . .
Feb 1
Ritual Practice and Cosmic Order in Hasidism
Leore Sachs- Shmueli | Mayse book resonates with contemporary concerns regarding embodied piety and subjective experience that are relevent to all people seeking a more integrated understanding of the world.
Oct 12, 2025
Mary Magdalene and Jesus: Gnostic Union or Deferred Desire?
MARGARET D. KAMITSUKA | Mary Magdalene was tarred with a misogynous and anti-sexuality brush from the start...
Sep 28, 2025
Essays
In the Translator's Workshop: Featuring Michael Bazzett on the Poetry of K’iche’ Maya poet, Humberto Ak’abal
MICHAEL BAZZETT | Translating the poetry of K’iche’ Maya poet Humberto Ak’abal can sometimes feel like trying to grab a beam of sunlight.
Mar 12
AlphaGenome: On the Promise and Limits of AI in Science
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.
Feb 22
In the Translator's Workshop: Featuring Victoria Moul on a Short Poem from the Subhāsitaratnakosha
VICTORIA MOUL | Sanskrit lyric is particularly rich in erotic verse, which is divided into many different types and typical scenarios: there is no real parallel for this in any Western literary tradition.
Dec 8, 2025
The Cosmic Mobility of Our Divine Mothers: Binah and the Shekhinah
YONAH LAVERY-YISRAELI | Perhaps the only needed modification is to go in both directions, near and far at once, with gentle caution, a controlled and attentive tumble into the stars. Cosmic mobility: that is exactly what the two-mother idea has to offer, and it is needed.
Nov 22, 2025
Interviews
Rabbi David Wolpe on Global Challenges, Judaism, and Our Existential Crisis
Rabbi David Wolpe is the Max Webb Emeritus Rabbi of Sinai Temple and one of the most influential rabbis in America
Mar 11
Theory, Metaphor, Narrative: How Science Creates the Stories it Tells
PHILIP BALL | Science is often not a competition between theories but a process of narrative creation in which the paradigm tends to be set by the most persuasive narrative
Dec 8, 2025
The Most Influential Book on Modern Culture
Bruce Gordon, Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Yale Divinity School
Nov 10, 2025
Christian Jewish Relations, the Second Vatican Council, and Nostra Aetate
In this episode, we share a conversation between our Editor-in-Chief. Dr. Samuel Loncar, philosopher and scholar of religion, and Dr. Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, the Kraft Family Professor and Director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College.
Oct 26, 2025
Marginalia Review of Books
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