The Post-Classical Turn: How Islamic Thought Reinvented Itself After the Philosophers’ Crisis
What is our motivating force today, and can we still hold on to a unified view of the history of philosophy?
May 17
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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
Poems as Children of the Moment: Jane Zwart Interviewed by Amit Majmudar
JANE ZWART | Sometimes I find myself almost unable to write poems because I’m not in the right rooms in my mind. . .
May 17
Why Do We Torture Ourselves? Ice-baths, Fasting, and the Allure of Discomfort
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.
May 15
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
Did al-Ghazālī End Islamic Philosophy? An Oxford Professor’s Revisionist Perspective
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.
May 8
The Long Arc of Capitalism: Coercion, Resistance, and Innovation
MATT McMANUS | Many of capitalism’s most partisan defenders have assumed not only its immortality, but also its eternity.
May 2
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
Essays
Why Do We Torture Ourselves? Ice-baths, Fasting, and the Allure of Discomfort
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.
May 15
Rhymes and Reincarnations: On India’s Epic Poems
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.
May 2
In the Translator's Workshop: Featuring Aaron Poochigian on Wang Wei’s “In a Retreat Among Bamboo”
AARON POOCHIGIAN | I like the double meaning because the moon is both the celestial body and Wang’s pal and playmate.
May 1
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
Interviews
Poems as Children of the Moment: Jane Zwart Interviewed by Amit Majmudar
JANE ZWART | Sometimes I find myself almost unable to write poems because I’m not in the right rooms in my mind. . .
May 17
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
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