Every issue has one section dedicated to a particular question. Collecting responses from a range of perspectives, these symposia prompt us to think about the values and ideas that shape our most urgent cultural and personal decisions.
“It seems beyond dispute that the goal of politics is to ensure security and prosperity; the only question is what means will achieve the ends. But could it be that when we understand the goal of politics as security and prosperity, we underestimate it?”
Obama: Philosopher-King?
In hindsight, the Obama campaign was most notable for the passion it excited. After a period in which apathy seemed endemic to prosperous democracies, politics…
Arendt and the Space of Action
What is politics for? For getting something done, surely. And what needs to be done seems particularly obvious today. From bridges to banking, America is…
Self-Conscious Publics
Every day each of us confronts the question of what politics is for as we interact with our neighbors. I live in the neighborhood of…
Idealism in Obama’s America
Cynicism about politics, rampant in the United States for years now, has peculiar features that distinguish it from its siblings in the disillusionment family, such…
