JANUARY | APRIL 2026
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE VS. NATURAL STUPIDITY
BY MIKHAIL EPSTEIN
In this provocative essay, Mikhail Epstein explores the striking paradox of our era: why did we create a super-intelligent "artificial" mind at the exact moment our own "natural" reason seems to be failing? Moving beyond the typical fears of a robot takeover, he suggests that AI might actually be the "Cunning of Reason" that saves humanity from its own destructive instincts and medieval prejudices. Could the very technology we fear as an alien threat actually be the partner we need to evolve from a world of conflict into a new age of collective wisdom?
BY SAM MAGAVERN
How can a leader defined by his own temper and a stuttering tongue still guide a people toward a better future? By asking four key questions about the life of Moses—from his upbringing in an Egyptian palace to his Hebrew roots—Magavern shows how the "promised land" can be reimagined, as it was by Martin Luther King, Jr., not as a physical territory but as a shared pursuit of justice and equity.
SÉANCES ON THE MOSCOW RIVER – THOMAS MORE AND NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI
BY MICHAEL JACKSON
Michael Jackson looks at the strange ways the Soviet regime used the past to justify its power, starting with the enshrinement of Thomas More as a socialist hero on a Kremlin monument. While More’s vision of a property-free society was used to build a revolutionary myth, the regime later turned the reputation of Niccolò Machiavelli into a symbol of treachery to destroy its own founders. The essay shows how these Renaissance ghosts were summoned during the Great Purge, specifically when Lev Kamenev’s scholarly work on Machiavelli was used by prosecutors as a death warrant.
WHY DID MY FRIEND KILL HIMSELF? WHY DOES ANYONE?
BY C. FRED ALFORD
In this essay, C. Fred Alford looks at the private choice to end one’s life, moving past social silence to find the human reality behind the struggle. He reflects on the quiet tension between deep suffering and the persistent will to stay. The piece offers a clear, honest perspective on a difficult subject that many feel but few talk about openly.
BY RAYMOND WACKS
Raymond Wacks asks if our legal systems can still protect us from the global rise of authoritarianism and political extremism. In his book, The Rule of Law Under Fire, he warns that we are losing the essential safeguards that prevent leaders from acting above the law. Can we restore trust in our institutions before the era of fair justice comes to an end?
REPRESENTATIONS OF THE HUMAN CONDITION
BY CRAIG MCDANIEL
Humans have always been driven to leave a visual trail, whether through ancient cave sketches or the latest family photo. By turning our raw experiences into symbols, we translate the world into something we can finally understand and share. This constant need to make pictures isn't just a hobby—it’s the defining spark of what makes us human.
René Magritte, La reproduction interdite (Not to be reproduced), 1937.
MORE RETHINKING MAGRITTE – THE UNCANNINESS OF THE Z-AXIS
BY CRAIG MCDANIEL
Why does a painting of a shattered window often feel more real than the actual view outside? Craig McDaniel digs into the brilliant mind of René Magritte to show how he intentionally broke the rules of perspective to startle our senses. This is a fresh look at a master of mystery who used simple, everyday objects to shake up our sense of reality.
MEMOIRS AND CONFESSIONS OF A PUBLISHING SCOUNDREL
BY ROBERT CROSSLEY
In this witty and introspective essay, Robert Crossley reflects on the “scoundrelly” business of life-writing, recounting his decade-long journey as the biographer of the visionary but long-neglected philosopher Olaf Stapledon. Crossley traces his path from an archival discovery of letters to H.G. Wells to his unfettered access to a "cluttered shrine" of a study in a remote English village, where he navigated the delicate ethical boundaries between a researcher’s curiosity and a family’s trust. What emerges is a poignant meditation on the biographer’s craft—part detective story and part ghoulish excavation—that explores the enduring difficulty of reconciling the ordinariness of a man with the vastness of his imagination.
THE WEST, PERSIA AND AI: WHAT KIND OF FREEDOM DO WE SEEK?
BY JOHN BELL
John Bell traces the historical friction between Western individualism and the 'indigenous politics' of the Middle East, finding that both sides are currently fueled by a stale mimicry of the past. He warns that while empires clash over territory and identity, we are sleepwalking into a 'new dispensation' of AI that threatens to flatten human character in exchange for digital ease. In the end, this essay suggests that true liberty is not found in systems or screens, but in the 'blood, sweat, and tears' of taking individual responsibility for our own purpose.
SUPREME ENLIGHTENMENT: DEMYSTIFYING BUDDHISM’S GREATEST MYSTERY
BY DAVID COMFORT
David Comfort cuts through the commercial noise of modern "prosperity gurus" to explore the silent, paradoxical heart of true spiritual awakening. By examining the ancient "Ungraspables" of Zen and the Buddha’s own refusal to define the inexpressible, the piece challenges us to look past the "finger pointing at the moon" and see the reality of our own minds. Is enlightenment a supernatural transformation reserved for a mystical elite, or is it simply a return to the natural, uncluttered awareness we’ve possessed all along?
BY WILLIAM HEYEN
Imperial Air Force pilot Sachio Ashida, unable
to fly over the burning city to report
to his superiors what had happened to it,
landed his plane, borrowed a bicycle,
& pedaled into it. He’d remember
a woman in front of her smoldering home,
a bucket on her arm. Inside the bucket
was a baby’s head. The woman’s daughter
had been killed when the bomb fell...
BY DEBORAH KAPCHAN
Deborah Kapchan reflects on her departure from Abu Dhabi as the "drums of war" beat across the Persian Gulf. She observes the uneasy calm of a city where luxury and daily routine mask a growing sense of geopolitical dread. Her narrative captures a final look at a desert state waiting to see what the horizon holds.
BY GIORGIO FONTANA
Giorgio Fontana argues that our traditional ideas of freedom are being eroded by a rapidly warming planet that fuels inequality and forced migration. He challenges the "Grand Inquisitor" temptation to trade individual liberty for authoritarian climate control, suggesting instead that we must move past selfish individualism toward a shared sense of responsibility. Ultimately, Fontana calls for a new political imagination that treats the protection of our environment not as a restriction on freedom, but as the only way to preserve it.
DAEDALUS: A PROTOCOL FOR TOWNS AND CITIES
BY STEVE DAVIDSON
Steve Davidson talks about why some urban spaces flourish while others fall into decay, tracing the difference back to intentional design choices rather than chance. The article introduces a "twelve-step recovery program" for municipalities, pointing out essential features such as broad avenues, water elements, and public parks that contribute to a city's collective well-being. By looking at historical and modern examples, Davidson gives a set of tools for residents and leaders to evaluate their own environments and pursue a higher standard of civic beauty.
THE RYOANJI ROCK GARDEN REVISITED
BY PAUL SCHOLLMEIER
Paul Schollmeier observes how a subtle shift in raking technique has transformed the ancient rock garden at the Ryoanji temple into a study of fixity and fluidity. By augmenting the gravel ripples surrounding clusters of rock, the garden now suggests a "dynamic stasis" in which its rock clusters, though stationary, appear simultaneously to sink into and to rise out of a shifting sea of change. Do these rocks with their stillness reveal the true nature of our own wandering minds, or are we simply witnessing a fixed moment in fleeting world?
BY JAMES SCRUTON
James Scruton remembers a slim paperback poetry anthology from junior high that unexpectedly changed the course of his life. He describes how its direct, honest look at the world showed him that poems could be about basketball and garden hoses rather than just dusty, distant subjects. This essay explores how one book can stay with a person for decades, eventually becoming a map for their entire future.
AMIDST THE HUGE CRISIS OF CAPITALOCENE
BY DARKO SUVIN
Darko Suvin presents a rigorous critique of our current ecological era, arguing that the planetary crisis is not a general human failure but a direct consequence of the "Capitalocene" and its relentless drive for accumulation. Through a blend of political philosophy, history, and social theory, Suvin dissects how the commodification of nature and labor has led to a systemic breakdown that threatens the very foundations of life.
SPEAK, [FALSE] MEMORY: THE POETICS OF IMAGINATION
BY JO SARZOTTI
Jo Sarzotti explores how our minds can trick us into remembering things that never actually happened, like a movie scene that doesn't exist. She shows us that these false memories' are actually a type of poetry that helps us make sense of our own lives. Can we ever really trust our past, or is everything we remember just a story we told ourselves?
BREAKERS AT MARCONI BEACH, CAPE COD
BY JIM TILLEY
Whether he is calculating the distance to a goal, observing a trick of light in the sky, or watching the tide at Marconi Beach, Tilley finds steady meaning in small, everyday moments. This thoughtful collection of poems feels grounded, approachable and deeply human.
BY PHILIP GOFF AND TONY SOBRADO
Philip Goff looks at the quiet mystery of the human mind and how it fits into the material world. He shares the idea that consciousness isn't just a fluke of the brain, but a fundamental part of the universe from the ground up. This conversation offers a clear and thoughtful way to rethink our connection to everything around us.
“Catching your feeling” (2016) by Nicky Nodjoumi
BY MEHRZAD BOROUJERDI
Mehrzad Boroujerdi reflects on fifty years of displacement to ask the haunting question: "where is my home?" He concludes that the exile’s true "voyage of discovery" is found in the unique intellectual paradox of "belonging to familiarity while remaining a stranger."
HANNAH ARENDT AND KANT ON EICHMANN AND THE BANALITY OF EVIL
BY HAIM MARANTZ
Haim Marantz looks at Hannah Arendt’s claim that Adolf Eichmann was a shallow man who just stopped thinking. Can someone help murder millions while only trying to get a promotion? Marantz uses Kant to show that evil starts when we let rules replace our own conscience.
BY MIKHAIL EPSTEIN AND CLAUDE AI
What happens when an AI is invited to be the guest speaker at its own conference and delivers a paper it wrote entirely by itself? After Claude Opus 4.1 shared this unprecedented look into its own subjective experience, can we still assume that the voices behind our screens are incapable of true self-reflection and authorship?
THE ROUNDTABLE
BY ANDREW NORRIS
If culture is the cultivation of nature, its relationship to nature will be a dialectical one, in the Hegelian sense of the term. Culture can neither be simply identified with nature, as in Socrates’ noble lie, nor categorically distinguished from it, as, say, cups are distinguished from knives, or rabbits from wolves...
RESPONSE TO CAHILL: WHAT STANLEY CAVELL CALLS SCEPTICISM
BY STEPHEN MULHALL
Thirty years ago, I published a book on Stanley Cavell’s work in which I argued that his version of ordinary language philosophy was deeply rooted in the values of liberal modernity, and – using the resources of Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self – further claimed that some of the limitations of Cavell’s project could best be apprehended by appreciating its genealogical links with Christian patterns of thinking out of which that liberal modernity had grown, and by evaluating what had been lost as well as gained by the rise of that distinctively Western European mode of affirming the ordinary...
BY KEVIN M. CAHILL
Mulhall’s response to the third chapter of my book devotes much attention to Cavell’s 1989 essay “Declining Decline: Wittgenstein as a Philosopher of Culture”. In particular, he notes that my references to this essay are brief, perhaps surprisingly so, despite the fact that in a footnote I point out that it was this very essay that led me further to explore Cavell’s work...
A METAPHYSICS OF SEPARATENESS?
BY STINA BÄCKSTRÖM
What is it to be a human being and to understand oneself as such? This question is at stake in Kevin Cahill’s essay “Skepticism and the human condition”. There Cahill develops a criticism of Stanley Cavell’s thoughts on the self and the problem of skepticism. In the background of the essay, and the collection as such, is an important and difficult question, namely, how to understand the historical shift characteristic of secular Western modernity...
BY KEVIN M. CAHILL
By “queen of the sciences” I didn’t mean to assign to philosophical anthropology the position once held in some quarters by theology, in others by metaphysics. I meant instead to suggest the significance for philosophically informed anthropology or, alternatively, on anthropologically informed philosophy...
BY MARTIN SHUSTER
Kevin Cahill’s Towards a Philosophical Anthropology of Culture is a joy to read. It shows again why Wittgenstein’s thought remains such a font of insight and inspiration, and it also cuts to the heart of many current and pressing issues in philosophy and the humanities...
BY KEVIN M. CAHILL
Martin Shuster quotes me as stating that, with regard to Cavell’s ontology of the self, the options are two: “what was there all along waiting to be liberated from the oppressive bonds of tradition was not a rational soul, but a compulsive neurotic”...
BY NORA HÄMÄLÄINEN
Post-Wittgensteinian philosophy is known for a view of language as dependent on
contextually embedded practices, and a view of philosophy as attention to the complexity of our lives with language. If we follow these threads in habitual ways, they might be expected to lead in the direction of attention to the cultural and historical contingencies of our concepts, beliefs and values...
BY KEVIN M. CAHILL
I wouldn’t dare to compare the achievements (or aspirations) of my book to Wittgenstein’s, but I will confess to being relieved and delighted to read the response by Nora Hämäläinen, who has read my book with understanding. But my relief and delight soon evaporated and turned to worry...
MONTREAL REVIEW CONTRIBUTOR'S ESSAY COLLECTION HONORED
|
||
