Last week was hard on the dwindling ranks of New York Times junkies who are also old-style “humanists,” believing that humanity is something pretty special. (I wonder how many of us are left?) On Sunday (September 18), Duke University Philosophy Professor Alex Rosenberg challenged the kind of old-fashioned humanism I am talking about with a [...]

A new selection of the poems of Philip Larkin has just been published in the U.K., chosen and introduced by Martin Amis. As many of you will know, Larkin (left) is viewed by some critics as the most considerable English-language poet since Auden. Martin Amis (below right), son of the famous post-war satirical novelist Kingsley [...]

The latest issue of one of today’s few truly indispensable magazines—The New Criterion—is a honey. First, it is their fat, end-of-summer-recess September issue. Second, it is their thirtieth-anniversary issue. Therefore, a number of the articles have a deservedly celebratory air. Last, needless to say, this September is also the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Therefore, other [...]

We recently inaugurated a new series of videotaped interviews, lectures, and debates on science, religion, and human nature. This is the second video in our series. It is a TED lecture by Sam Harris on science and human values. Harris, who received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA in 2009, is a prominent author and [...]

One of the most important intellectual issues of our day is the question of the relationship between science and religion. This is a many-faceted question that ramifies in many different directions, but two of the most important of these are the following: (1) The question of the different ways in which science and religion conceive [...]

Robert P. George is Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton. Professor George is author, co-author, or editor of more than a dozen influential scholarly volumes. Among his many notable books are In Defense of [...]

There was an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine recently (see here), entitled “Another Thing to Sort of Pin on David Foster Wallace,” by writer and blogger Maud Newton. Wallace, author of Infinite Jest (Little, Brown, 1996) and the posthumously published The Pale King (Little, Brown, 2011), and who died by his own [...]

Have you ever wondered what it is, exactly, that critics do? Here is a thoughtful reflection on this subject by one of our foremost critics of both literature and dance, Joan Acocella. About a decade ago, Acocella—who has been The New Yorker‘s dance critic for many years—published a remarkable book on one of America’s very [...]

Across the border in Canada, Charles Taylor is a widely recognized public intellectual, but in this country he remains something of a well-kept secret. We welcome the spate of recent articles on Taylor, and interviews with him, as a sign that this is about to change. Taylor is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at McGill University [...]