Month: January 2011

• January 25, 2011

  Who is David Brooks?

  David Brooks is a cultural and political columnist for the New York Times. He began writing there in 2003. Before then, he was Senior Editor at The Weekly Standard. If one were pressed to affix a label to him, one do worse than call him a “conservative,” but then the label wouldn’t be terribly helpful.…
• January 23, 2011

  Saul Frampton writes about Montaigne, neuroscience, and empathy.

  In “Montaigne and the Macaques,” Frampton expresses his sympathy for Montaigne. The thrust of this excerpt from Frampton’s forthcoming book is that Montaigne manages to describe vividly and forcefully the relationship between human proximity and moral feeling. “For Montaigne, human proximity is at the heart of morality.” And: “Montaigne’s general point is clear: that we have…
• January 23, 2011

  An encomium for Richard Holloway

  Update: A later version of this essay can be read at Butterflies and Wheels. * * * I admire Richard Holloway for his courage. Here is a man of religion who, from 1986-2000, was Bishop of Edinburgh. Here is a man of virtue concerned with his neighbor, with social justice, and with the common good.…
• January 22, 2011

  Is therapy a waste of time (and money)?

  The answer, according to the psychiatrist Richard Friedman in his recent NYT op-ed entitled “When Self-Knowledge is Only the Beginning,” might very well be “yes.” In the article, he argues (1) that insight into one’s past may be neither necessary nor sufficient for living well and, more polemically, (2) that such insight might actually make your…
• January 22, 2011

  Russell Jacoby pans Erik Olin Wright’s book on ‘real utopias’

  For those unfamiliar with Jacoby or his writings, you’re in for a treat. Jacoby’s prose is clear, punchy, and witty. Here are a few choice examples: “To call this book dull as dish water maligns dish water.” “Wright is no genius,” and “the book is suffocatingly narrow in scope, impossibly cramped in imagination, and irreparably muddy…