thinking about Hegel, art history, and my favorite Filippo Lippi: open.substack.com/pub/chezaristo…

“Dolly Parton is not simply a good person, or a beautiful poetess; she is both beautiful and good, in a way the philosophy of character strives to explain but can’t always illustrate convincingly.” M.M.Townsend

Happy birthday to Dolly Parton!

plough.com/en/topics/cult…

Happy New Year's Eve. Here is a thread of some of the incredible arts and culture writing we've had the privilege to publish at The Bulwark in 2023.

reading some more Ibsen and Chekhov over the break, and thinking about freedom and time: open.substack.com/pub/chezaristo…

philoposhy

'Descartes' Coffee Company: At Times It Even Seems to Affect the Soul'

teen son: hm looks like my make-up homework is to read about the communist manifesto
me: no you are sitting down right now and reading it start to finish

there are many things that are lovable about Iris Murdoch, but one of the best is her rock solid understanding that the Good is different from the other forms

y&w son watching Fahrenheit 451 and I’m pretending to grade computer generated essays and I am *gloomy*

I got to sit in for JVL for today's Triad newsletter and used it to recommend some of our excellent recent culture writing by M.M.Townsend, the only joel, and Clare Coffey. plus.thebulwark.com/p/effective-al…

insisting my child put the Harbor School on hs apps, Susannah Black Roberts

I love daylight savings, when all Americans spend an hour reading 'Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature.' What, you forgot to set your clock an Auerbach?

don't want SBF to be in jail forever, just want him to come to class

For all its pretensions to mathematical objectivity, the moral paradigm of crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried cannot tell you how to respond to “the terrible temptation to do good.” M.M.Townsend from the archives: plus.thebulwark.com/p/effective-al…