Today, Christopher Benson kicks off the “Why Marx Was Right” blog discussion, addressing the contemporary relevance of Marxist ideas in the midst of our current social and economic problems as presented in Terry Eagleton’s newest book, Why Marx Was Right. In his capacity as organizer, Benson writes: Let me compare
Another hot topic on our Spring 2011 list is the ongoing debate about the current state of economic affairs and the sustainability of capitalism. One of the most notable Marxist critics, Terry Eagleton, tackles the perception that Marxism is dead in his newest book, Why Marx Was Right. Christopher Benson,
January is a long month. The holiday cheer begins to wear off, back to work and school; and for those of us in the cold: banks of dirtying snow and “wintry mixes,” sputtering heaters, and searing winds. At this time, the bright year ahead simultaneously seems most promising, and most
What DID happen to Modernism? Bill Marx weighs in for the Arts Fuse in response to Robert Boyers’ review of Gabriel Josipovici‘s What Ever Happened to Modernism? in The New Republic. Modernism itself is no easy subject to define, which both reviewers point out in their articles, and the book
Alberto Manguel has a beautiful library. His life has been dedicated to the art and collection of books. The Argentine-born writer was once a reader to Jorge Luis Borges, who, blind by this point, nurtured Manguel’s interest in literature. In the time since, Manguel has become a world-renowned translator, editor,
The “Arts” section of today’s New York Times features a beautifully illustrated interview with Yale Law Professors Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis, authors of Representing Justice: Invention, Controversy, and Rights in City-States and Democratic Courtrooms. The book tells in words and nearly 300 illustrations the story of how the image
For twenty years, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity has been awarding its Ethics Prize to college students writing on particularly difficult ethical challenges and dilemmas in our society, and advocating the actions necessary for our society to undertake. These have now been published in a new volume, An Ethical
In the prologue to Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life, historian Nicholas Phillipson acknowledges the difficulty of writing about a man who left little to write about. A fastidious author and scholar who disdained any prospect of misinterpretation, Smith had his letters, notes, and unfinished manuscripts destroyed before his death in
A few weeks ago, we celebrated Columbus Day and the discovery of America. Or at least he made the physical discovery, and even that is contested. What other Americas were there to discover? One might say: the political discovery of the American Republic’s early successes. Alexis de Tocqueville and his
This morning The Wall Street Journal featured a nice review of Yale Press’s new release of Hobbes’ “Leviathan”, edited by Ian Shapiro and part of YUP’s “Rethinking the Western Tradition” series. Written by Jeffrey Collins, the review discusses not only Hobbes’ fundamental conceptions of man in nature vs. man in