Tag public intellectuals

In Conversation with Susan Sontag: Art Through Metaphor

“Being intelligent isn’t, for me, like doing something ‘better.’ It’s the only way I exist…. I know I’m afraid of passivity (and dependence). Using my mind, something makes me feel active (autonomous). That’s good.” –Susan Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh Susan Sontag viewed the world as metaphors. In

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Place Your Bets on Earth’s Future

Today’s raging partisan battles over climate policy and the Keystone XL pipeline are just the latest examples of a deeper debate about our future:  Are we headed for a world of scarce resources and environmental catastrophe as environmentalists believe, or will market forces and technological innovation yield greater prosperity? In

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A True Literary Event: Terry Eagleton on Literature

For Terry Eagleton, writing is “exploratory.” “The act of writing is both a great delight to me in itself,” he explained in a recent interview on London’s Yale Books Blog, but it “also is constitutive of my thought.” As the author of more than forty books, which span the fields

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Literature Matters; Lionel Trilling Matters

In Why Trilling Matters, from Yale University Press’s Why X Matters Series, Adam Kirsch makes a compelling argument for why mid-century American literary critic Lionel Trilling might matter thirty-six years after his death. Yet the importance of a literary critic rests on the more fundamental question of the importance of

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