Essays & Reviews

  • On the Aesthetic Turn | July 19, 2023
    On how to approach art once we stop trying to justify it in moralistic terms, and on the possibility that it is not "for" anything at all.

    On Mobs | February 19, 2023
    On the difference between collective thinking and action and the zombie hoard. With Becca Rothfeld.

    Motherhood and Taboo | January 14, 2021
    On The Lost Daughter, and the alleged taboo on the representation of unnatural mothers. With Rachel Wiseman.

    On Choosing Life | September 7, 2019
    On the idea that it is unethical to bring children into a world threatened by climate breakdown. With Rachel Wiseman.

    On Left Straussianism | May 22, 2019 On the elitism inherent in refusing to air disagreements with one's "allies" publicly. With Jon Baskin.

    On Denialism | January 14, 2019
    On political rhetoric and the danger inherent in trying to deny the very existence of projects and practices that have become the targets of criticism (e.g., "identity politics"), rather than defending, evaluating and proposing a new vocabulary for discussing them. With Jon Baskin.

    I Am Madame Bovary: “Cat Person” and the dark pleasures of empathy | April 23, 2018
    On the relation between reading with empathy and reducing works of art (and people) to their moral failings.

    Iowans, Unite! | February 8, 2016
    On my (day of) work in electoral politics.

  • The Paradox of Slow Love | February 14, 2022
    On the tension between people's romantic plans and family trajectories.

  • The Success Narratives of Liberal Life Leave Little Room for Children | June 10, 2024
    On saving children from the culture wars. With Rachel Wiseman.

    How to Reopen the American Mind | October 22, 2020
    On why the “crisis of the humanities” won’t be solved within the cloisters of academia alone: to live up to the mission of the humanities we must recover our trust in the broader public’s capacity to think. With Jon Baskin.

    Now Is As Good a Time as Any to Start a Family | April 30, 2020
    On whether it a good idea to try to start a family during the year of the plague.

  • What If Motherhood Isn’t Transformative At All? | June 11, 2024
    On resisting the account of motherhood as an identity transformation. Excerpted from the conclusion of What Are Children For?

  • We Deserve Better From Our Public Intellectuals | December 2, 2020
    On Kate Manne's new book, incels and the perils of public philosophy

    The Nature of Thought | April 14, 2020
    On why Irad Kimhi's Thinking and Being is the best philosophy book of the past decade.

    Giorgio Agamben's Coronavirus Cluelessness | March 23, 2020
    On theory's collapse into paranoia and what it is we are really sacrificing our pleasures and freedoms for.

    ​The Case for Admissions Lotteries | September 13, 2019
    For the Chronicle’s forum on meritocracy and higher education I wrote about why the current admissions system has all the vices of an aristocracy, and none of the virtues; and defended an alternative.

    Fanning the Flames While the Humanities Burn | May 20, 2019)
    On why acknowledging and mourning the rapid decline in humanities enrollment and employment does not imply nostalgia for an exclusionary past, but a commitment to the life of the mind.

  • Finite Variety | October 4, 2019
    On Martin Hägglund's This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom, and why our finitude - the threat of failure, the prospect of death - cannot carry the burden of rendering our lives meaningful all by itself.

  • Confession Is Just a Special Form of Bragging: On Fleabag | July 30, 2019
    On guilt, absolution and the refusal to confess as a way of reclaiming lost agency.