Top Ten of 2022
As 2022 comes to a close, we’re proud to present our top-ten most-read web pieces of the year, listed below in reverse order. If you…
On the Aesthetic Turn
The critical tide is turning, once again. The professional critics—and not just the old, curmudgeonly ones—are fed up with moralizing, and they are willing to…
On Mobs
We must instead learn how to play a different game: the game of mutual humanization. But how do we know when we are playing that…
On the End of the Canon Wars
Why is it, then, that when I encounter defenses for the value of a humanistic education today, I can’t help but find the resulting arguments…
Beyond Comprehension
Alexander Nehamas recently retired from Princeton University, where he was a professor of philosophy and comparative literature for over thirty years. In his 2007 book…
Try Something Out
“I can’t account for what kind of encounter someone will have with what I write in turn. All I can do is have a good…
When Meghan Married Harry
This essay is a preview of our forthcoming print issue, which features the symposium “What is college for?”
Limited Time
INTRODUCTION The subtitle of Martin Hägglund’s new book, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom, indicates its ambition. In the first half of This Life,…
The Beauty Industry
What does it mean to face the question of beauty every day, not just personally but professionally? This spring we surveyed models, cosmetic physicians, influencers…
Working in Tech
What is it like to work in tech every day? This winter we surveyed people who work in tech about their jobs, common misconceptions about…
Military Life
We sent around a questionnaire asking veterans to reflect on their time in the military: what it meant to them, how it changed them and…
Intellectuals in Crisis
Intellectual Ex-Radicals and World Reaction: The Crisis of the Disillusioned Fellow-Travelers of Bolshevism Is Not the Same as a “Crisis of Marxism” (Trotsky 1939) The Intellectual:…
Muellerisms
The following is a collection of statements published in the New York Times about Robert S. Mueller, from 2001 to today.
Comedy Studies
The following are actual titles of papers published in peer-reviewed academic journals.
The Crisis of Language Project
alt right: i) right-wing racists who use leftist rhetoric. ii) establishment.
The (Updated) Dictionary of Received Ideas
Classics, the: force of oppression. Know enough to despise ~: “Plato was an authoritarian.” “Aristotle condoned slavery.”
The Perils of the Past
Enter the basement of the Centre des Archives Nationales in Beirut and you’ll immediately notice the large white sacks, overflowing with documents and papers, strewn…
Among the Reality Entrepreneurs
If you wanted to know what was really going on, you had to get on Urbit.
The Unifier
Some elections are determined by a kingmaker, others are defined by the appearance of a troublemaker. The 2022 presidential election in France falls into the…
The Fall and Rise of McGovern McNabb
First of all Viola Hill and Gracie Rae Gooden were arguing over how do you raise a dead man up from the dead, so loudly…
The Emigrants
while some arms release you, others receive you. that was the title of the novel i wanted to write. that i started to write. that…
The Life of the Mind
By some indicators we are entering a new Dark Age: anti-intellectual fervor is raging, suspicion of experts is at an all-time high and appeals to…
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America arrives at an auspicious time. The French sociologist came initially to America to prepare a report on criminal justice,…
Back to Real Life
This is the first column in the fourth round of Reading Room, a collective column on reading and life. In each round, the contributors respond…
Restless Minds
This is the third column in the third round of Reading Room, a collective column on reading and life. In each round, the contributors respond to a prompt…
Guilt Lit
This is the second column in the third round of Reading Room, a collective column on reading and life. In each round, the contributors respond to…
Privacy Settings
This is the first installment of “Human Resources,” an advice column from The Point written by Anastasia Berg.