What we've been up to

From the new issue's Notes & Comments: The work of John Rawls, one of the most influential political theorists of the last century, has long been taken to task by critics on both the right and the left for having an insufficient account of what is good and what is just. As Charles Blattberg, professor of philosophy at the University of Montreal, explains in "Politics, Anyone?" Rawlsian liberalism renders the social contract—and all of politics—as a great game. Blattberg argues that thinking about politics in these terms does great harm to liberal democracy.

"Consider elected officials, or anyone else participating directly. It seems obvious that likening politics to a game will encourage them to behave adversarially, just like competitive players. Yet this rules out forms of conflict resolution aimed at serving the citizenry's common good. Conversation must clearly be set aside, since conversation requires earnest interlocutors, the kind who take their exchanges seriously. Moreover, who can listen with an open mind to someone seen as not merely an opponent but an adversary—that is, a person who gains only if, and to the degree that, one loses?"

From the new issue's book reviews: The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky infamously suffered and survived a mock execution. This cruel ordeal broke the minds of many victims of the nineteenth-century Russian state, but for Dostoevsky, the experience seems to have given him greater insight into human suffering and redemption. As writer Christopher Sandford considers in his review of Kevin Birmingham's The Sinner and the Saint: Dostoevsky and the Gentleman Murderer Who Inspired a Masterpiece, his search for the right material to "satisfy his lifelong fascination with the human spirit under duress led him to an unusually vivid subject." He discovered one of the most notorious murderers of modern Europe:

"The French poet-murderer Pierre François Lacenaire, a conspicuous incarnation of evil even in a city such as mid-nineteenth century Paris, a soiled, sad place whose inhabitants habitually murdered, stole, lied, and cheated as they slithered around in a sea of immorality. It seemed that the various outrages of that time in Europe were all absurdly and graphically gory, the motivations behind them often low, and the cast of characters uniformly sordid and grotesque. Compared to the farrago of horrors Dostoevsky and his generation read about or personally experienced on a daily basis, much of today's high-profile crime seems as innocuous and bloodless as the case of a purloined cow-creamer in one of the stories of P.G. Wodehouse. Even so, Lacenaire was something special."

Read more from the Summer issue:

Paul Nedelisky reviews Metamodernism: The Future of Theory by Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm.

Jay Tolson interviews Historian and Tocqueville Biographer Olivier Zunz.

Paul Franz reviews Not Thinking Like a Liberal by Raymond Geuss.

"On Patrimony" by Brian Patrick Eha.

Ryan Kemp reviews The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is by Justin E.H. Smith.

"Less" by Philip M. Weinstein.

B.D. McClay on whataboutism.

"Pastlessness" by Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn.

Carl Elliott considers the conundrum of ethics and sensitivity trainings.

"The Tragedy of the American Political Tradition" by Nick Burns.

Jay Tolson reviews The War of Words: A Glossary of Globalization by Harold James.

"The Evangelical Question in the History of American Religion" by Kirsten Sanders.

John Owen writes about the temptation to make a culture war out of the Ukraine war.

"Vladimir and Volodymyr: A Pivotal Moment in History" by Martha Bayles.

Philip S. Gorski reviews a new biography of sociologist Robert Bellah.

"A Usable Past for a Post-American Nation" by Johann N. Neem.

Eric B. Schnurer writes about the crisis of governance in an increasingly virtual and massively distributed world.

"Nietzsche's Quarrel with History" by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

Kyle Edward Williams introduces "The Use and Abuse of History."

From the archives: Can liberal democracy survive—and our political culture thrive—in a world in which we have become deeply divided over basic questions of justice and morality? There is a deep current within American intellectual life that has been sanguine about our ability to get along without such foundations. In his essay for the spring 2000 issue, "Proceduralism, Pragmatism, and Postmodernity" the late historian John Patrick Diggins considered the history of pragmatist political ideas and their revival with the rise of poststructuralist thought in the late twentieth century. Diggins questioned whether pragmatism alone is enough to solve the problems facing liberal democracy.

"For most of American history, politics was practiced without reference to philosophical foundations, and indeed the founding of the Republic itself, as articulated in the Federalist Papers, did not rely upon such foundations as 'self-evident truths.' Yet in periods of moral crisis—such as the crisis over slavery, which the Democratic Party had deflected until the 1850s—it is difficult to see how politics can be addressed without reference to deeper philosophical foundations."

From further afield:

For The Critic, Ben Felsenburg reviews Old Truths and New Clichés Essays by Isaac Bashevis Singer, edited by David Stromberg (contributor to our forthcoming fall issue).

At The American Mind, Joel Kotkin argues that the globalized commodification of housing is destroying democracy.

In the pages of the Wall Street Journal, William Taubman remembers Mikhail Gorbachev and his tragic legacy.

In the New York Times, Ari Schulman considers the record of Anthony Fauci and the role of science in American society.

Be in touch

Have a question or a comment? Want to pitch us or submit an essay for publication? We love to hear from our readers. Feel free to email us at hedgehog@virginia.edu.