Printed Word Matters

FABRICATING DREAMS | ON HOW AN UNKNOWN PUBLISHER IN EDO JAPAN ENTICED THE WORLD

In the early 1830s the owner of the small-scale publishing house Hōeidō in the Nihonbashi area of Edo (Tokyo), Takenouchi Magohachi, met with Andō Tokutarō -aka Utagawa Hiroshige-, an unconventional amateur artist from the samurai class. We can only imagine how the two set their plan out for the most formidable series ever printed in Japan: the 53 stations of the Tokaido. In fact, little did they know that with this series, conceived originally as a profitable venture, they would firmly establis

COMPLICITY OR COMPLACENCY? JUDGING JUDGES IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES | By Raymond Wacks

<div>Courts personify the law. In the more grandiloquent accounts of the legal system judges are depicted as its custodians, guardians of its values: sentinels of justice and fair play. They embody fairness, evenhandedness, and impartiality. And an independent judiciary is among the hallmarks of the rule of law. The jurist, Ronald Dworkin, memorably observed that ‘courts are the capitals of law’s empire, and judges are its princes’...</div>

WRITING THE SELF | By Michel Foucault

<div>Self-writing clearly appears here in its complementary relation to anchoritism; it offsets the dangers of solitude; it exposes what one has done or thought to a possible gaze; the fact of being obliged to write fills the role of companion by inciting human respect and shame. One can thus posit a primary analogy: that which others are to the ascetic in his community the notebook will be to him in his solitude....</div>

MUSIC OF THE DEVIL-1955 | By Myron S. Lubell

<div>They called my generation of teenagers 'juvenile delinquents' – mainly because of our'wild and crazy' music. Drugs weren’t a major problem in the mid-1950’s, and the 'sexual revolution' hadn’t started. I’m not saying we didn’t think about sex – we sure did, a lot – but the 'respectable' girls knew how to say NO – at least with me...</div>

PHARMAKON: CULTURE AND REALITY

<div>Has culture ever been separated from practical life? Culture has different forms: high culture, mass culture, national culture, local culture, family culture, political culture, Christian culture, secular culture, and so on. Culture is the form of practical life. And practical life is the living substance of culture...</div>

HOW HUMOUR LAID THE WORLD BARE, FROM THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT | Katharina Van Cauteren

<div>Homer’s gods can roar with laughter. Zeus, Hera, Poseidon and the rest of the cabal — grinning, giggling, splitting their sides. Anything man can do, the gods can do better. The Greek pantheon is a projection of the terrestrial on to the celestial. It’s only when God becomes man that he stops laughing. Jesus doesn’t do stand-up. There are no gags in the Bible, no guffaws or gales of laughter. The Christian faith is an awfully serious thing...</div>

VEILS OF DISTORTION: HOW THE NEWS MEDIA WARPS OUR MINDS

<div>Anyone who’s followed the news for decades has noticed without fail that coverage has tilted more and more towards stories about celebrities and all manner of trivial conflicts between members of the public. What was once the sole domain of what we call 'tabloid' news has spread to become a fixture of most mainstream news outfits....</div>

ANIL SETH ON THE HARD PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

How could any kind of physical processing give rise to any kind of experience, any rich life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does. So I like this formulation of the hard problem. It basically presupposes a kind of view of the universe where there is stuff, a kind of materialist starting point, and then asks how and why is consciousness part of that picture? To me, that includes the second version of the way you put it, which is: okay, then how and why is it t

THE PALE HORSE OF OLYMPIC CEREMONY

<div>One Friday night, over the dark tides of the Seine, the river that cuts through the body of Paris, the ancient city of Catholic and secular faith, a metal horse with a rider on it appeared. It came from the Pont d'Austerlitz, galloping toward the Eiffel Tower. Water poured out that night, horizontally from above as rain and vertically from below as a river...</div>

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL WON’T GO AWAY

The Devil has stalked the pages of journalist Randall Sullivan’s and Ed Simon’s books, a whiff of sulfur apparent across the pages of their writing. Both authors have long been concerned with theodicy, with the question of evil; how such misfortune and wickedness is possible in a world created by a benevolent and omnipotent God. Central to that question has been a preoccupation with ultimate evil, the manner in which absolute and metaphysical malignancy has been represented across the Abrahamic

DOSTOYEVSKY’S SOLUTION TO KANT’S PROBLEM OF EVIL

In Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason, Kant posited the existence of a radical evil within the soul and thereby, according to Goethe, 'criminally sullied his philosopher’s cloak with a shameful taint'. He also transformed our whole approach to the problem of evil, whether as an ugly ditch, standing between man and his creator, or the practical problem of surmounting the evil each individual faces in his or her consciousness, in his or her relations with others and his or her world...

THE MODERNITY IN ROUSSEAU’S AUDIAL SELF

Psychology urges that we are never so authentic as when we encounter the self; philosophy counsels that we are never so modern as when we ponder the self. Might one then speak of a perspective that sees the self as both authentic and modern? These two disciplines seem to speak with two distinct voices. And the insistence of early twenty-first century society on specialization seems to encourage the segregation of one from the other. Indeed, we live in a culture that accords status only to the s

FROM FAME TO FOLLY | THE ORIGINS OF (POLITICAL) DEMORALIZATION

Tension between the people and their leaders is a theme in democratic history because it is rooted in human nature. Large groups of people ('The People') can be fickle. Recognition of this condition preoccupied the signers of the Declaration of Independence. They wanted to tie government purposes to a protection of 'natural rights' of individual liberty. So, too, did the Framers of the Constitution, who wanted to insulate subsequent generations from the unceasing struggles of 'factions'—struggle

HOW NEW IS THE NEW TESTAMENT?

<div>How is it that the Old Testament (OT) seems to predict the coming of Christ? Was the OT inspired by the God revealed in the New Testament (NT)? Could be, but an answer internal to the Bible itself is persuasive...</div>

REFLECTIONS ON DEATH AND THE AFTER-DEATH

What happens after we die has always been a major source of religious speculation, and providing answers to this question has also been one of religion’s chief tasks. Many faiths use the fear of death and the lure of an afterlife as a sort of spiritual club to dun adherents into proper moral behavior and correct belief in this world, promising all sorts of things to the worthy righteous after death. Pragmatically speaking, this promotes a very positive outcome, but how does one verify the benefi

REJUVENATING COMMUNISM: YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS AND ELITE RENEWAL IN POST-MAO CHINA

This book is a study of ambitious young Chinese, their aspirations, and career choices. It was prompted by an initial puzzle: how does the Chinese party-state manage to attract recruits and maintain their commitment over time, when ideology does not structure recruitment anymore and a liberalized employment market provides alternative career options? These issues are central to our understanding of what contributes to the long-term resilience of non-democratic regimes and their ability to remain

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO JOEL KUPPERMAN?

I’ll never forget that day in 1944 - it was extremely warm for November – people called it 'Indian Summer' – but I didn’t see any Indians. It was the day I saw Joel Kupperman at school. He was in a hallway carrying books - alone. We were walking toward each other - face to face. This was my chance to introduce myself, but I was too scared to speak to the most famous kid in America (at least since Shirley Temple - but she wasn’t very famous anymore). It was an exciting moment, but I froze...

THEY SHALL REAP THE WHIRLWIND: ON THE ONGOING ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR

<div>She spoke as to a child who could not understand. All the futility that lay ahead. Yet who she knew would go on to repeat. Repeat repeat the things men had to learn....</div>

THE WILD GODS OF BARBARA EHRENREICH AND WILLIAM JAMES

<div>Better known for her books on low-wage workers, such as Nickled and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote her dissertation on cellular immunology, and had always considered herself a scientist, even as she began to write on social issues. Author of about twenty books, the one that breaks the pattern is among her last, Living with a Wild God, in which she writes about an encounter with god, an event for which she was unprepared...</div>

SON OF TERAH | Short story by Jessalyn LeBlanc

<div>He hasn’t mentioned a child in years. Not since we got the farm and the linen tablecloths and the cattle with their promise of riches. Not since that first September, when the wheat bloomed in abundance. Not since that night against the oil lamp’s unsteady flame when we came to the synchronous and silent understanding that I would not bring a baby into this world...</div>