Symphilosophizing in Jena by Kwame Anthony Appiah (The New York Review of Books)

Fichte, Schiller, Schelling, Schlegel, Goethe, Hegel, Novalis, Holderlin, among others, resemble the cast of a sitcom in this essay. This crew went from partners to enemies in publishing, poetry, or philosophy, one's lover becoming your friend's lover, or from cherished to estranged roommates. Appiah's review of work on the lives of the Jena members raises doubt on the Romantic founders. Was it based on the happy days, where conintengent connections and presumed closeness became reified? Appiah seems to hint towards this a bit while discussing some of the Romantics turns to conservatism, monarchism, etc. However, Romanticism is complex, as Appiah's review handles it, or as my friends Joseph's book coming out this year surely will tell the progressive and revolutionary side.

Emerson & His 'Big Brethren' by Christopher Benfey (The New York Review of Books)

Emerson was similar to Kant in that, they did not care much about travel. However, later in his life, he was invited to the Western U.S. which he promptly accepted, fascinated by the romantic prospect of the new frontier. Emerson was already very famous so his trip was well documented by second hand accounts. Benfrey describes this last journey of an old intellectual in its full detail. From the race relations behind the scenes (Black Americans as servants, unenthused by the Natives), meeting important figures such as Pullman or Brigham Young (the former excited to see Emerson, the latter did not know about Emerson), and to his final destination with John Muir surrounded by the giant Sequoias (the big brethren). This trip was rather anti-climactic, one expects Emerson to have immersed himself with nature, conversing with Muir. However, Emerson's party thought otherwise, worrying more about the health of America's public intellectual. What could have been? Maybe an Emerson who experienced the new frontier, where religion is nowhere to be found, in its place vice and the raw beauty of nature. His physical health may have suffered, but his intellectual spirit may have undergone one of his final transitions.

How the Awful Stuff Won by Tom Scocca (The New York Review of Books)

Maybe because Scocca worked at Gawker, where, for better or worse, he was uniquely positioned unlike other writers to put together something intelligent and pleasing to read about "the Internet". Legacy media members downplayed the rise of the internet for a long time, expecting it to be no more of a fad. The Internet, as a sort of subjectless-subject (similar to how Capital is described by Marx scholar Michael Heinrich), has been no less revolutionary in upending society. This review is about two books, one a memoir from an ex-Westboro Baptist Church member, the other "Antisocial" Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American conversation". The Internet blindsided anyone who thought the "meat space" and the "digital space" were ontologically separate. Memes such as Dat Boi, Neo-Nazis, and ultra-religious fanatics all share a similar type of "Hegelian form of consciousness". Scocca's essay is one of the few things on the Internet and politics that reads neither like a partisan of the meat or the digital, but of where we are at in the contemporary U.S.

Questioning Desire by Elaine Blaire (The New York Review of Books)

Srinivasan's The Right to Sex, first the essay of the same title then the essay collection, was immensely popular and polarizing. If philosophy could be put into two axes, such as done by Liam Kofi Bright, Srinivasan's book would fall under the side that is more analytical on the one axis, and a little bit left of the political center on the political axis. A similar type of work would be Jason Stanley's How Fascism Works. As such a popular book, before it was even released, the reception played out like any political compass dialectic. So it was refreshing to see Blair write a review that was independent of any of the familiar reactions. Rather, Blair highlights the strong points, such as taking incel's as a social phenomena seriously akin to Hegel and the phrenologists and physiognomists or how slogans and ideas such as "believe women" benefit white women more than non-white women. However, without being ideological, Blair is not afraid to talk about how Srinivasan is weak on distinctions and arguments around porn, failing to make more progress than Dworkin and others did decades ago or in her vacuous comparisons of types of freedom in her account of liberalism in the economic and sexual spheres. Blair reminds me of some of the great reviews of philosophy I read by Williams, who was able to give a balanced account of the book, while giving it the philosophical thumbs up that it is an important work that should be read.

Grand Illusions by Pankaj Mishra (The New York Review of Books)

If Mishra was to turn this essay into a book, it could aptly be titled Globalism or Westernism, in the similar sense of Said's Orientalism. Mishra argues that the Cold War produced a generation where the only possible dialogue was one within the space of liberalism. The main targets, unlike Lane or Renan, are philosophers. Like Said, many are implicated. From obvious suspects like Isaih Berlin to less obvious like Adorno, world philosophy and world history, as Hegel might say, are driven by the West. Mishra longs for a new order of intellectual life, one that is truly global. Lacking in the essay is, like many, any positive vision for intellectual life, especially given that he finds, rightfully so, the "diversity" initiatives of adding some non-Western names to syllabi and curricula. I cannot help but think he answers his own question, noting that the socioeconomic power asymmetries mirror the intellectual asymmetries. As Foucault wisely worried, we cannot escape Hegel, since I wonder if, despite his Westernism, intellectual life (philosophy) paints its grey in grey. Truly global thinking might only arise from truly global, as opposed to Western power structures. Even more radical is, will intellectual life exist in this form that Mishra partakes in, or will philosophizing be remembered as an outdated practice, similar to the later Heidegger and Wittgenstein.

An Amazonian Exodus by Rachel Nolan (The New York Review of Books)

Many things I read lately are centered around the land of Palestine and Israel, but that is due to explicit choice. I did not expect that the story of a Peruvian man, faced with a choice of killing a man in vengeance or reading the Bible would end up at the West Bank, but that is where the life Peruvian man Segundo Eloy Villanueva ends up. After his father was murdered, Segundo inherited his fathers suitcase containing a Bible, which was rare in 1940s Catholic Peru. After intense study of the Bible, with the fervor of an analytic philosopher, Segundo rejected the New Testament and embraced the Old Testament. His search for truth and meaning in the good book led him to learning Hebrew, to conversing with and learning from Jews, to eventually succeeding in getting the majority of his converted Jewish followers citizenship in Israel. As if two historical epochs were juxtaposed together, Segundo (now taking the name Zerubbabel Tzidkiya) and his followers known as the Peruanim were resettled into the heart of Israel occupied territory during the First Intifada. The tale is truly rich, giving another angle on the events in Israel and Palestine, that starts with unusual suspects and ends up including the usual suspects New York, the US evangelicals, far-right Israelis, etc.

An Unhealthy Definition of Rights by Linda Greenhouse (The New York Review of Books)

Greenhouse documents how what may seem like a mere philosophical argument (what grounds individual rights?) has drastic consequences of life and death. With the cunning right-wing take over of much of the US high courts, this question that is central to a political philosophy class affects the power of the state to mitigate against rapidly spreading contagions. "Liberty regulated by law" is "the fundamental principle of the social compact", Greenhouse quotes Justice John Marshall Harlan. However, America has failed to ever really enshrine a "positive bill of rights" for the government, or a robust idea of "public right" as Kant would call it in his Doctrine of Right. Instead, America has rigorously upheld, almost to the point of absurdity it seems, negative or private rights. Kant, philosophically at least, that the two were not irreconcilable.. In America, they may be irreconcilable. The Republican appointees rule largely in favor of private right, while the Democrats rule largely in favor of public right. This is not to say that there are not issues with determining when public right takes priority over private or in implementing this (see the discussion around South Africa), Harlan and Kant both at least think, since public and private right are grounded in the same idea (social compact for Harlan, original contract for Kant), we need not see them as a binary. Greenhouse rightly worries if the Constitution will end up like a King with no subjects in the hands of the current Supreme Court.

The Story of the Story of the Story by Peter Brooks (The New York Review of Books)

The Storyteller by Walter Benjamin is not going to be an analytic philosopher's favorite essay, full of loose distinctions, associations, and leaps in argument (insofar as one can call it an argument). However, like Brooks, it is an essay that I return to from time to time. It reminisces of a time where stories were told in their original format, orally. Plenty of novels or movies are set like this, but today I can hardly imagine someone having the skill to be able to orate a story for hours on end, I know I could not. Not only is the skill of storytelling disappearing, but the skill of listening is disappearing along with it too. However, Benjamin is not a nostalgic-reactionary, trying to reproduce a dead or dying form of life. Rather, in a dialectical sense, the true meaning and importance of the oral story lives on in the novel, subsuming the negative, that is, incorporating the loss of the oral into itself. The novel is by the "solitary, silent individual" as Benjamin says in his 1930 article on Berlin Alexanderplatz, and it is for a reader that, according to Lukács (influenced greatly by Benjamin here), is "solitary, more so than any other reader." What the novel offers, Brooks says, is a "simulacrum of the sociality of listening to a story, but always with a residue of knowledge that modernity has shattered true community." What the novel offers best is the end, or rather, death. Brooks, like my friend Joseph as well, thinks that the modern novel is best represented in Proust, in which the reader becomes a reader of themselves, or as one of the folks in the documentary Le Temps Perdu aptly says "Everything that happens in the novel, at some point in my life I have felt it. Exactly as Proust describes it. Everything." In this regard, we find a much more positive vision of how we can achieve "Authenticity" through an understanding of Death in Heidegger's terms. One could easily replace in the last line of Benjamin's essay "rightheous" with "authentic" "The storyteller is the figure in which the righteous man encounters himself."

The American Jewish Left in Exile by David Klion (The New York Review of Books)

An Iowan when asked about why they did not vote for Vivek Ramaswamy recently said "I'm not being prejudiced, guys, I don't like his name. I don't like where he came from. After 9/11, I still harbor a lot of hard feelings." Barack Hussein Obama was subject to similar treatment, before any of his political views were even known. However, Obama's political views also contributed to a real sentiment that he was pro-Arab, mainly, his open and quick support of Palestine, and therefore a conditional support of Israel. Ever since, according to David Klion, American Jews have become more divided around support for Israel and the Zionist beliefs. With October 7th and Israel's response, many Jewish citizens are finding themselves increasingly alienated from their institutions of faith and community. There used to be other movements before Israel, such as the Bundism movement, but with the creation of Israel, its subsequent successes (and failures), and McCarthyism, and sort of socialist or left wing alternative has dwindled. Membership among Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now is rising, but little to no rabbis are finding a place for folks who are politically oriented towards these causes.

Gaza: Two Rights of Return by Sari Bashi (The New York Review of Books)

Sari Bashi's mother-in-law has been made homeless by the Israeli military three times in her life, the first when she was five, the last when she was eighty. The UN Declaration of Human Rights declares "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country". However, with Israel's bombing campaign, or the buffer zone being created, or the far-right support for the settler movement, the Israeli government is de facto denying this right to many. Even if there is a right, there is not much to return to.

Running on Empty by Christopher Hitchens (The London Review of Books)

Tom Wolfe coined the term "radical chic", which is where I first heard of him when I looked at the NYRB's wikipedia page. What seems like a scathing critique opening up the hypocrisy of the Manhattan intellectuals, by the end of Hitchens's essay, looks quite empty. Wolfe did not invent this type of critique, see "salon socialist" for example. Wolfe engaged in something he called "saturation reporting", where one studies and observes the folks you are reporting on. I have seen a few of these in New York, they go to parties, enjoy the social prestige that comes with "being there", then go home and write how much they hate everyone there and what they stand for. Most well socialized people just complain to their friends in private.

In Washington by Christopher Hitchens (The London Review of Books)

Hitchens has the benefit of not being an "isolationist", so reading his essay on the multitude of reasons given for supporting the Gulf War, although apparently in his memoir, upon better "information", Hitchens admits being wrong about the Gulf War. Nevertheless, it can still be read as a historical document that captures the many moods surrounding pre-war politics in the US. The essay's major theme is best summed up from the quote during Vietnam, roughly, "we had to destroy the village to save it". All justifications for war fit this genre, that destabilization and destruction now are creating a peaceful future.

Mary, Mary by Christopher Hitchens (The London Review of Books)

American Mother's Committee, apparently, named Hoover "Father of the Year" at one point. Whether or not he was actually a good father, this essay does not go into. The intention of this award is surely to acknowledge that Hoover was an example of a type of man all father's should strive for. If Russia and its KGB signaled totalitarianism, and to be anti-Russia is American, then Hoover was supposed to fit that. If to be American is a strong, honest, virtuous, heterosexual male, Hoover was supposed to be that. Hoover was not. Hoover's straying for perceived sexual norms may have been leaked by others for political gain, but this information never got out with the amount of spying and information that Hoover supposedly had on politicians.

The Salman Rushdie Acid Test by Christopher Hitchens (The London Review of Books)

Fredom of speech, anti-censorship, are defining characterists of liberal society. Figures such as Socrates, Galileo, or Luther might come to mind. Hitchens's thinks that if Salman Rushdie is not up there as well, one is not really for freedom of speech. There are a few things that stick out even more since this essay has been published, the increased Islamaphobia and general anti-Arab sentiment since 2001 and Rushdie's survival of an assasination attempt. Hitchens's presents a compelling narrative around the global and historical importance of this case, and that one should be weary or at least challenge someone's commitments to freedom of speech if they are not committed to Salman Rushdie.

On Spanking by Christopher Hitchens (The London Review of Books)

I do not like and I do not understand British culture, most likely due to being born and raised in the American rural Midwest. American liberalism may have deceived themselves in thinking we can be a country free of traditions, but who can blame them for the overreaction if the traditions you were thrown into were the British ones. One British tradition that seems awfully integral to British society is spanking. Hitchens's himself may have been a victim of this, himself supposedly being playfully spanked by, of all people, Margaret Thatcher in, of all places, the House of Lords. A persistent theme of Hitchens's writings is a type of Freudian theory that the sexual and the political are intimately related. This relation can never be made public, that is the essence of repression. Repression has both the political and sexual term in these investigations by Hitchens. Alice Kerr-Sutherland ran a flaggelation brothel and published her learnings in a manual. The manual was sentenced to be burned of course. But the little glimpse into the erotic-disciplinary relation makes one think deeper about British essays titled such as 'The Smack of Firm Government'. Anti-Freudians find that Freud's sexual heory, insofar as he had one, was too simple to explain psychological life. However, stories like confirm that Freud was onto something at the least.

On the Original Non-Event by Christopher Hitchens (The London Review of Books)

If you could bet long against the Oscars, Hitchens would have been one of the richest people of all time. As of writing, in 1995, the Oscars were watched by over 40 million people, now viewership is half of what it was. Not much has changed about Hollywood. Awkward hosts and questions around how political one should be are the same. It has not changed since the formula for making a hit movie has not changed. I first learned this when watching Detective Pikachu, which tossed the Pokemon skin on top of the Hollywood formula. Decades ago, the formula was known, "a movie should introduce two buddies, build their relationship to a crisis, separate the buddies so that they can learn some lessons on their own, and then bring them back together." Hitchens's notes that this was the same for Rain Man and ET, and is still being recycled with no end in sight.

Look over your Shoulder by Christopher Hitchens (The London Review of Books)

Hitchens's presents the Oklahoma bombing as a distinct moment in American history. The bombing was not entirely new, he acknowledges insurrections such as Daniel Shays and the Whiskey Rebellion. Jefferson said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure." Maybe what distinguishes rebellions from fascism is that the tyrants and the "patriots" are on the same side.

After Time by Christopher Hitchens (The London Review of Books)

Gore Vidal gave us some great quotes and Hitchens's recites them, such as "socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor" or the one about Kissinger apartment shopping while viewing the Sistine Chapel's depiction of hell. Hitchens's like many other figures he writes about, posits some sort of sexual desire as a unifying explanation for the writings, works, and deeds of someone. In Vidal's case, it was the young death of an American soldier.

A Hard Dog to Keep on the Porch by Christopher Hitchens (The London Review of Books)

Once you are "chosen", that you are a political candidate who might sit in the Oval Office, a mythology develops around you. Clinton and Hitchens were in Oxford at the same time. Hitchens does not remember much about Clinton, most likely since he was a "moderate" already, he thinks. Student life in the 60s was defined by Vietnam, so it is telling to Hitchens that Clinton opposed the draft in principle, supporting others that held that conviction, while also, in the same letter Hitchens is citing, Clinton is not going to dodge the draft so he can "maintain ... political viability within the system." If anything, Clinton can be defined and praised for an early and clear ambition above all other principles. Hitchens details how Clinton wanted to have his cake and eat it throughout his presidency, while in reality pushing the Democratic party further right. Like many of Hitchens targets, Clinton is dishonest in his words, but honest in his deeds, which stems from a misplaced realpolitik fueled by a singular ambition.

Brief Shining Moments by Christopher Hitchens (The London Review of Books)

JFK always had a bad back, but apparently one time he came onto a woman at a pool, trying to get away she pushed him away, JFK falling in the pool and hurting his back. He then had to wear a large brace to support himself. He was wearing it at the time of his assassination, and apparently it even aided Oswald. Similar to Clinton, Hitchens's portrays a JFK similar to Clinton in terms of sexual desire, ambition, and politics. The picture painted here of the Kennedy family and "Camelot" is strictly anti-idealizing. Hitchens quotes FDR who said that if Joe Kennedy, JFK's father, "ever got power, he would institute a fascist government."

Acts of Violence in Grosvenor Square by Christopher Hitchens (The London Review of Books)

Somehow, again, British spanking makes it into another essay. Police officers pick up a protester from both ends while a third spanks her. Also in this essay, Nixon and, yes, Colin Powell, helping the one person prosecuted for the Mai Lai massacre. Hitchens's pessimism about left wing political viability is on full display, and given how history played out, it may be true, at least in the West, the pessimism may be just the truth.

Moderation or Death by Christopher Hitchens (The London Review of Books)

Berlin is hailed as a liberal philosopher par excellence, up there with Mill or Kant. Hitchens's finds nothing of substance, let alone consistency, to his political thought. Rather, Berlin's legacy seems to be a dogmatist of the major Western superpowers. A formative experience, which Hitchens's likens to a traumatic event for Berlin (well, Berlin himself seems to give this impression) is when a mob in 1917 Russia carried of a police officer. If there is any consistency in Berlin's views, it is that whatever led to that was bad. Nothing else seems to explain Berlin's views. Berlin criticizes philosophers like Hegel and Marx for their grand ambitions and lack of a sort of "empiricist criterion", but Berlin adheres to the Western superpowers in the same type of degree. Hegel was too simplistic for Berlin, however, despite Hegel being the one that looks to take on the complexity of political life and tragedy, whereas Berlin comes off as the simplifier. Or with Marx, who Berlin critiques throughout his career, Berlin says in an interview in Italy, later published by Salmagundi "I had never read a line of Marx". Berlin viewed, like many, the activist (the mob) as the enemy, but towards the end of his life he had a left wing version of a Christian conversion.

11 September 1973 by Christopher Hitchens (The London Review of Books)

The last essay in the Hitch in Time collection is on Salvador Allende. It reads like an ode to missed opportunity in history. Hitchens's essays are marked by their critique of Western superpowers and narrowing of the political possibility from left and right wing liberal to essentially a one party state. Hitchens's thinks Allende would have been justified asserting power and engaging in a pre-emptive strike against the armed forces that murdered him, after all, pre-emptive strikes to protect one's interests, even if not certainly threatened, are the bread and butter of the Western superpowers. However, if Allende had played that game, nothing new would be born. Rather, like other people who seem to engage in perpetual civil war, debt shackled, underdeveloped, or are the site of a proxy war with superpowers, by dying, the possibility of realizing Allende's vision did not die with him. This is what some very pro-Israeli commentators have astutely pointed out after October 7, that, Israel's support is implicitly condition by Westerners because it is seen as a moral democracy in an otherwise immoral region. That perception can change. At the cost of short term security, they may lose long term security, which is the world accepting the idea that there should exist a Jewish state in the land of historical Palestine, which is its international social contract.

Marc Andreessen on Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin

A friend said this was "worth struggling through", and it was. Rick Rubin is a good host in that he asks good, basic, "stupid" questions, and at least is not bought too much into something like Marc's worldview. Marc is a fellow alum (shoutout to UIUC), who became a billionaire VC guy, but also is known for working on Netscape, which is considered the first web browser. Marc is a self-described techno-optimist, and is as good as anyone to listen if you want to listen to the ideas and beliefs of someone who is at the top and the inside of the digital age.

Edits and mistakes

• I said Foucault stated, but in fact, he just worried.
• I combined and misinterpreted Hitchens's comment and said it was an Italian newspaper, in fact, the interview was in Italy, and Salmagundi is not a newspaper nor in Italy.

Thanks to my good and wise friend Duncan for pointing out these errors.