Articles

"Such monoculture wasn’t always the norm. Until the 1980s, economics was a vibrant, pluralist field, home to Marxist, Keynesian, Austrian, developmentalist and institutionalist schools. Since then, that diversity has evaporated."

"Wittgenstein’s philosophy is not about being lonely, but one can see disquiet about loneliness sublimated in his work. “Perhaps this book will be understood only by someone who has himself already had the thoughts that are expressed in it,” begins the preface of the Tractatus. It’s as if communication were impossible. We are trapped in our own thoughts, except for the hope that someone else already had them; we can tell each other nothing."

"But in an era of fluid modernity, defined by incessant change, why should sameness and identity be preferred over otherness and difference? What if the purity of the community and the self came under suspicion as ideologies of restriction and exclusion? What if hybridity came to be preferred to polar oppositions and categorical distinctions? What if hospitality to the alien was privileged over the imperative to defend the homeland against alleged intruders?"

"Against those on both left and right who seek what he views as a retrograde rolling back of globalization, Habermas wants political decision-making to be scaled up to our globalizing economy. Democracy and the welfare state not only need to catch up to globalization if they are to survive, but can only do so when reconstituted in new and more inclusionary ways beyond the nation state."

"To begin with, do not think of art just as an object, like paintings or sculptures, but think of it first as a thought or perception. Joseph Kosuth stated that all art after Duchamp is conceptual because art for him only existed conceptually. This reasoning was the starting point for many artists of the 1960s, who, like Kosuth, questioned the validation of traditional art forms resulting from their increased commercialization."

"But Transcendentalists put forward a broader, more idealistic case for individual freedom. As Emerson saw it, every aspect of religion and society was in flux. Nothing—not the church, not government, not the laws, not commerce, not education, not even the home—could be set in stone. Everything was “in perpetual flux,” and if individuals were to thrive, they would need to trust themselves and navigate the waves of change by and for themselves. Let every person seek out the divine spark within; let each realize the creative, spiritual powers within the self and express them to the fullest. The wider society would benefit in ways that could not be foreseen."

"At its core, Aztec virtue ethics has three main elements. One is a conception of the good life as the ‘rooted’ or worthwhile life. Second is the idea of right action as the mean or middle way. Third and final is the belief that virtue is a quality that’s fostered socially."

"Yet Descartes was not always the undisputed champion of reason that he is today. In 17th-century England and the Netherlands, he was publicly and repeatedly accused of being a fraud and of lying to his readers so as to manipulate them into becoming his disciples."

"Not only are many of the auction houses’ clients keeping their hands firmly in their pockets for now, some may soon disappear – or at least be replaced. The ‘Great Wealth Transfer’ is expected to see baby boomers pass on an estimated $84 trillion in cash and assets to younger generations over the next two decades. This is likely to catalyse a surge of inherited collections coming to market, but it could also precipitate a profound shift in the profile of buyers and collectors, which would be accompanied by a transformation of the prevailing tastes and dynamics."

"It wasn’t until I retired that I grasped the ramifications of this: that freedom isn’t about doing everything, but rather choosing what matters most. I still need to unlearn the habit of equating busyness with productivity, to be more selective about how I spend my time. I want to invest in what matters, rather than just ticking off my bucket list."

"The upheavals of the sixties, however, produced a younger generation of literary critics with a longing for an interpretive theory that emphasized the political and social dimensions of literature, as well as differences and divisions within it—precisely those aspects of prose and poetry that the New Critics fused into an autonomous and unified whole."

"The story of intelligence begins with Plato. In all his writings, he ascribes a very high value to thinking, declaring (through the mouth of Socrates) that the unexamined life is not worth living. Plato emerged from a world steeped in myth and mysticism to claim something new: that the truth about reality could be established through reason, or what we might consider today to be the application of intelligence."

"It should not surprise us that Joyce the artist was also Joyce the entrepreneur. Artists and entrepreneurs are blessed with similar convictions. Both are innovators. They see possibilities where others see limitations, bringing the previously unimagined into being. Both have skin in the game, living in the theatre of risk, performing on the public stage of jeopardy."

"Thus, to find meaning anywhere in life, Camus thought, required approaching it with more than cold reason. It required encountering reality in different states of mind. Like many people who have known real poverty in their youth, Camus was first and foremost a pragmatist."

"'Self-optimization' has become a go-to euphemism for what used to be known as self-help. The word’s evolution foregrounds the perfectionism that was always inherent in more rigorous forms of self-help while deftly leveraging the therapeutic element of self-care, thereby lending the whole operation a moral sheen."