Tense Times with Protesters in a Brooklyn Hot Zone

As New Yorkers brace for a second surge, Orthodox communities that resist public health directives, and the NYPD, lead the way

----- On the morning of October 7, I discovered that Marine Park, the neighborhood in deepest Brooklyn where I live, is in the red zone of neighborhoods experiencing alarming increases in the number of positive COVID-19 tests. While the rest of New York state has a positive test rate of 1.2%, the ...
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Tense Times with Protesters in a Brooklyn Hot Zone

QAnon as a Byproduct of a Broken America

Alienation, anxiety, and religion

QAnon is a conspiracy theory alleging that the current president of the United States, Donald Trump, is battling an organized and criminal deep state—which also happens to be a Satan-worshipping cabal of pedophiles engaged in sex-trafficking—and that this battle is moving towards an apocalyptic showdown in which our president will ...
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QAnon as a Byproduct of a Broken America

What Did Aristotle Think About Slavery?

Why we need to read great books closely

I admire Professor Collard’s attempt to defend Aristotle despite his views on slavery. My question is whether he actually held the views she attributes to him. We must avoid two common responses that seem to me misguided. The first is to reject Aristotle out of hand because his views do not ...
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What Did Aristotle Think About Slavery?

Field Notes on “Sentencing the Present”

Diagnosing what is false without ceding what is beautiful

This is a final reflection by the curators of the seminar series “Sentencing the Present,” which was republished in full last week as “An Archive of a Crisis.” Because readers have asked us about the process and production of “Sentencing the Present,” when Public Seminar asked us to write a “post-mortem” ...
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Field Notes on “Sentencing the Present”

Sentencing the Present: An Archive of a Crisis

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In a spirit of both open inquiry and political advocacy, and inspired by the response of readers to our own “Theses for Theory in ...
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Sentencing the Present: An Archive of a Crisis

Sentencing the Present: Part Five

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

This is the final seminar of the "Sentencing the Present" series. For previous seminars, see part one, part two, part three and part four. A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In ...
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Sentencing the Present: Part Five

Sentencing the Present: Part Four

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

This seminar is part of an ongoing series. To read the previous issues in the "Sentencing the Present" series, see: part one, part two, and part three. A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, ...
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Sentencing the Present: Part Four

Sentencing the Present: Part Three

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In a spirit of both open inquiry and political advocacy, and inspired by the response of readers to our own “Theses for Theory in a ...
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Sentencing the Present: Part Three

“How is it Going with Being?”

Some thoughts on Santiago Zabala’s Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts

We are now hearing from a range of media pundits, social media figures, academics, and others, restating what has been painfully obvious: the crisis reveals (sigh, once again) the contradictions of global capitalism. There will no doubt be a great deal of reckoning in the wake of this crisis, which ...
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“How is it Going with Being?”

Radical Hope Amid Catastrophe

When a collective culture is threatened with collapse, so are the reference points for defining a good life.

At a Christian Dior factory outside Paris, machines that once filled ornate vials with luxury fragrances are filling plastic bottles with hand sanitizer destined for public hospitals. Men and women who were dossing down on London’s streets have begun sleeping in rooms of the InterContinental Hotels Group after the city’s mayor negotiated a way ...
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Radical Hope Amid Catastrophe

Sentencing the Present: Part Two

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

This seminar is part of an ongoing series. Read part one of "Sentencing the Present" here. A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In a spirit of both open inquiry and political ...
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Sentencing the Present: Part Two

There is No Future without Openness to the Other

To think the future in a time of pandemic, what do we require?

To speak of the void is to recall something of the timeless: that which does not dissipate, but which persists through the perpetuation of a lack, the endurance of a pressure that withstands no relief. The void, as a kind of pressure, pregnant with demand, is the source of a drive: a drive which ...
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There is No Future without Openness to the Other