What we've been up to

a silhouette of a man standing next to a fire

From the new issue's theme: In the modern world, we tend to think of the search for knowledge as a rational, even antiseptic process. But the truth is that unruly and irrational desires still drive the scientist with the microscope or the professor with her books. In "Jumping Over Fire," Ohad Reiss-Sorokin, intellectual historian and post-doctoral fellow at the Institute, explores how desire can be both powerful and dangerous. Reiss-Sorokin uncovers an important and revealing case in Othmar Spann, a charismatic Austrian academic who sought to convert his students (including Friedrich Hayek) to his romantic conception of Germanic culture and spirit in the years of Hitler's ascendancy.

"He attracted young students by presenting himself as Philosophy incarnate and encouraging them to project onto him their own desire for knowledge. What seemed to be a bug—how little 'theory' his students reported learning from him—now appears as a feature. 'Out of the spirituality of the teacher,' Spann emphasized, 'the student must construct something into his soul.' Social theory, Spann argued, is not math or physics. One cannot teach it discursively, from parts to whole, from simple to complex, relying on the naturally endowed intellectual or perceptual faculties of the students. Social theory requires one to develop the ability to 'see' essences. Therefore, the teacher is called on to step beyond the limits of the discursive method, to summon the erotic aspects of knowledge, to awaken the affective capacities of his students. And in some cases, to order them to jump over fire."

From the new issue's "Signifiers" column: Actor Drew Barrymore recently told the Wall Street Journal that the best she could hope for was to be "cool-adjacent." That is, not quite cool, but close enough. In his "Signifiers" column, THR editor Jay Tolson singles out this peculiar and newly popular term, considering it from different angles. Adjacency, Tolson argues, is not just a faddish word—it is the "condition of our times."

"To draw on the theory of a more recent thinker, the French semiotician Jean Baudrillard, we may be living in what he calls the age of the pure simulacrum, when signs and symbols no longer refer to any kind of reality but only to each other, tokens in the consumerist play of signifiers. To extend the Baudrillardian conceit, we are participants in an ongoing, commercial Walpurgisnacht in which the triumph of surface and appearances is celebrated in and through the immolation of all depth and meaning. In short, we inhabit an unabashedly reality-adjacent world."

a dinosaur figurine on a blue piece of paper

New Web Feature: America's political culture is ailing—most people can agree on that much. But what are the sources of our democratic infirmity? In "David Hume's Guide to Today's Politics," Alan Jacobs, senior fellow at the Institute and Baylor University honors professor, finds insights in the eighteenth-century philosopher, and, specifically, in his diagnosis of the corrupting influence of superstition and enthusiasm.

"I want to argue that the primary social forces disrupting American society today are modern versions of these two false religions. Our current version of superstition is the MAGA belief system. Our current version of enthusiasm is what some people call wokeness but I prefer to call Left Purity Culture (LPC)."

New Web Feature: Sixty years ago this month, The Beatles released their first LP, Please Please Me. In "The Beatles and the Glory of Creative Risk," writer and THR copyeditor Vincent Ercolano marks the occasion with a brief consideration of how the band found its fresh sound—and why the public was so eager to listen.

"Perhaps it took the roiling events that would give such a manic-depressive quality to 1963—the death in early June of Pope John XXIII (and with it, some feared, the demise of John's policy of aggiornamento, 'updating'); the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in August; the March on Washington the same month; and, in cruel culmination of the year's roller-coaster ride, the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22—to open the ears (and hearts) of the American public, by year's end emotionally spent, to the cheeky wit and fresh take on rock 'n' roll offered by the Beatles. As Rorem would observe, 'Our need for [the Beatles] is…specifically a renewal, a renewal of pleasure.'"

Read more from the spring issue:

"'I Love You' (in Theory)" by Blake Smith

Kyle Edward Williams reviews Tradition and Apocalypse: An Essay on the Future of Christian Belief by David Bentley Hart.

"The Monster Discloses Himself: On the Allurements of Conspiracy Theory" by Phil Christman.

Joseph E. Davis writes about public health screenings for anxiety—and they can be so dangerous.

"From Frankurt to Fox: The Strange Career of Critical Theory" by Malloy Owen.

"Hannah Arendt and the Loss of a Common World" by Michael Weinman.

Jennifer A. Frey reviews Alasdair McIntyre: An Intellectual Biography by Émile Perreau-Saussine.

"Hilary Mantel and the Historical Novel" by David K. Anderson.

At the Institute

Andrew Lynn, long-time THR contributor and fellow at the Institute, has his first book out next week—and a copy was recently spotted here at Watson Manor. Saving the Protestant Ethic: Creative Class Evangelicalism and the Crisis of Work examines the development of a new "work ethic" among religious laity in professional, managerial, and creative classes. Congratulations, Andrew!