My students are not detached—not from their feelings, not from their values and not from the events happening in the world around them. If I am to be their teacher, I cannot be detached either.
Read MoreThe pandemic has intensified family relations, and correspondingly intensified my own need to play competitive games.
Read MoreWe may not have arrived at the end, but we have certainly arrived at the thought of it.
Read MoreIt is often said that people gravitate towards religion in crisis, but I experienced something close to the reverse.
Read MoreWe seem to be less interested in either of these games than in exploring the connection between them—or rather, the philosophical question to which that connection points.
Read MoreThis is the eleventh in a series of columns on public philosophy by Agnes Callard; read more here. Twenty-five years ago a secretary made a mistake, […]
Read MoreI committed my first academic crime at the age of six.
Read MoreIt is hard to speak about parenting without at the same time seeking validation as a parent.
Read MoreIn December 2018, I found myself unexpectedly pregnant. I have three children, the oldest of whom is in high school, and I had not planned on negotiating the difficulties of pregnancy and early childhood at this point in my life and career. Adding a decade or so of intensive child-raising to what I’d already committed to meant curtailing my ability to achieve what I both want and need to achieve in my finite lifetime. I asked myself, what are children for?
Read MoreThe first time I opened my mouth in college it was on the topic of devil’s advocacy.
Read MoreWhen my oldest son was born, fifteen years ago, one of the gifts we received was a giant clay bowl made in the shape of the artist’s pregnant belly.
Read MoreWe are committed to the idea that there should be some price or other, and that that price be a set, fixed, real fact about the way the world is organized. The spoiled demand for unearned satisfaction stands as a threat to that commitment.
Read MoreI’ve been called upon by the union to cancel class to accommodate the strike. But, as I see it, that would amount to using educational harms to undergraduates as an instrument to achieve graduate students’ ends.
Read MoreOne of the paradoxes of advice seems to be that those most likely to be asked for it are least likely to have taken anyone else’s: their projects of “becoming” are the most particularized of all.
Read MoreWhat could be better than a good old-fashioned philosophy battle?
Read MoreThis is the second in a series of columns on public philosophy by Agnes Callard; read the first here. If you tell me to calm […]
Read MorePublic philosophy aspires to liberate the subject from its academic confines: to put philosophy into action. Is that a good thing? I’m not sure it is.
Read More