We know Isaac Newton as a brilliant polymath, inventor of the calculus and the person who first began to suss out the fundamental laws of physics. But in this delightful account of his life and though
In this lecture course, Reiner Schurmann develops the idea that, in between the spiritual Carolingian Renaissance and the secular Humanist Renaissance, there was a distinctive Medieval Renaissance con
David Graeber is not only one of today's most important living thinkers, but also one of the most influential. He is also one of the very few engaged intellectuals who has a proven track record of eff
This volume tracks the crucial role of Reiner Schürmann’s engagement with the work of Michel Foucault between 1983 and 1991. Drawing on Foucault’s highly original reading of the philo
When we look at the cultural public sphere through the lens of digitalization, a paradoxical picture emerges. In some ways, the digital age seems to have brought the goals of the Enlightenment to thei
Media is a kind of gatekeeper, connecting disparate entities and shielding them from one another at the same time. When we speak of media, we often refer to those entities themselves—to persons,
At its most basic, philosophy is about learning how to think about the world around us. It should come as no surprise, then, that children make excellent philosophers! Plato & Co. introduces child
Why is a horse called a horse and not a giraffe or a flapdoodle? Why did Plato go from being called Aristocles, after his grandfather, to being called Plato, which means muscleman? Where do any names
After the Crisis offers a platform for discussions between some of today's leading artists, writers, theorists, curators, and historians aimed at questioning the very status of photography today. Cont
Sergei Eisenstein’s cinematic adaptation of Karl Marx’s Capital was never realized, yet it has haunted the imagination of many filmmakers, historians, and philosophers to the present day.
When a meteor crashes into greaser Rockabilly’s backyard, a ripple of strange events ensues. The tattoo of a pin-up girl on his back comes to life and begins to exert her murderous control over
Resonating at the heart of Neolithic Childhood. Art in a False Present, c. 1930 is the question whether art has present, past, and future functions. The modernist assertion of the autonomy of art was
Materiality has emerged as a new focus for art, design, and architecture. Where there was once the belief that the form of a work offered more capacity to bestow meaning, “New Materialism”
In 1920, on the third anniversary of the October Revolution, dramatist Nikolai Evreinov directed a cast of 10,000 actors, dancers, and circus performers—as well as a convoy of armored cars and t
Breaking Bad is known for its grim and gritty outbursts of anger and violence. In the chaotic story of a meth-dealing high school chemistry teacher, time seems to collapse, and we feel as though the l
Modern philosophy continues to grapple with the idea of subjectivity—and, as the concept of subjectivity has consequently been repeatedly refined and redefined, the struggle has spread to the ways we
Moses has long been a source of modern fascination. For Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis, Moses was a particularly fruitful subject for the study of memory and historiography. He also held great inter
Mass gatherings are at the center of contemporary discussions about community formation, communication, and social control. As new digital technologies and social media platforms have emerged, the con
Modernist and contemporary literature are marked by a preoccupation with time, specifically with the passage of time characterized by starts and stops and suspended states of waiting. Acclaimed noveli
“Born too late to see the war and too early to forget it.” So writes Reiner Schurmann inOrigins, a startlingly personal account of life as a young man from postwar Germany in the 1960s. Schurmann’s se
Between 1946 and 1953, the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation sponsored a series of conferences aiming to bring together a diverse, interdisciplinary community of scholars and researchers who would join forc
As the world teeters on the brink of crisis and potentially catastrophic change, outlooks for the future have come to be characterized by anxiety. The skepticism that meets utopian visions of the futu
