What we've been up to

From the new issue's theme: From Kant onward, modern philosophy tended to make rivals of desire and reason. True knowledge could only be attained independent of eros, it was thought, and eros is fundamentally irrational and often dangerous. But there are other ways of thinking, both ancient and more recent, about this relationship between desire and reason. In "Desire in the Cave," Mary Townsend, assistant professor of philosophy at St. John's University, in Queens, New York, considers how reasoning that claims to rise above the passions can lead to ends as calamitous as those brought about by thoughtless passion.

"A long time ago, Aristotle remarked that the nature of the human being is either desiring reason or thinking desire. The funny way he flips the phrase back and forth points to something of a paradox: We seem to be both wanting and reflection, reflection and wanting at once, such that neither one is obviously the leading force or the passive substrate underlying the whole. If you are tempted to ask, well, which are we?—the answer seems to be, unsatisfyingly, both. With the Greeks, there's an integrity and wholeness to the marriage of these aspects within our nature—which is why Socrates can claim, without being completely obtuse, that true philosophy is true erotic desire for being or beings that lie somewhere—or somehow—beyond our immediate selves. To put it in modern terms: Is there a foundational way to reconcile the chasm between the smooth surface of our observing, objective, self-effacing reason and even our most complicated yearnings?"

the view from the top of a spiral staircase looking out at the sky

From the new issue's Notes & Comments: FOMO (that is, fear of missing out) can make anxious worriers of us all—especially the young. There's a reason this particular fear has taken hold of us, writes Paul Scherz, associate professor of moral theology at the Catholic University of America. In "A Time of Regret," he identifies a culprit in modern decision theory—a way of approaching life choices, small and great, that has become a kind of common sense.

"We moderns have acquired a new experience of time, partly as a result of the development and application of probability and decision theory. That altered sense of temporality has, of course, been driven and amplified by new technologies, the key one being the Internet. Older forms of media certainly gave access to other forms of life and to information about unfolding events, but the Internet makes such information more immediate. We can constantly and instantaneously gain access to the price of stock we sell. An acquaintance's fun night out at the party automatically appears in Instagram and Facebook feeds. The forgone alternative futures (now alternative 'presents') do not just lie passively in mind. They press themselves upon our attention. The absent becomes aggressively present."

a dinosaur figurine on a blue piece of paper

New Web Feature: Late modern life is driven by the engine of progress. We are always on the hunt for new ways to progress—and new ways to measure it. In "The Leaning Tower of Progress," Travers Nisbet, associate fellow at the Institute, considers how economic indicators and quantitative metrics have distracted from other, more meaningful ways of understanding and living.

"What might the world look like if we refined our understanding of progress as something more than the desire to move forward according to the metrics of growth? What if we focused more on prosperity, the opportunity to thrive, treating economic growth and progress as means rather than ends? What might the world look like if we treated it less like a machine that can be optimized and controlled and more as a complex, entangled system? We could start by rethinking how we measure conventional proxies for progress, as well as by exploring new concepts to create broader ownership and prosperity in economic gains, such as a citizen-owned sovereign wealth funds or national endowments."