Not very long ago the History of Ideas had been organized according to movements within each field. In Anthropology, for example, Malinowski was associated with Functionalism, Levi-Strauss with Structuralism, etc. Post-structuralism and postmodernism each in their turn at first appeared as “the next big thing.”… read more »

A naïve and perhaps mischievous take on the query “why we write” is to claim that what we write already asserts why we write. On this view “It was lunchtime and I had a sandwich at Joe’s” directs you ostensively to information about my afternoon meal.… read more »

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. – Samuel Beckett

Why do NY Mets fans stay true to their team, season after losing season? The answer may have to do with the kind of delirious joy they experience when that special year comes around and they finally win the World Series.… read more »

An Afternoon of Art, Neuroscience & Storytelling

Join us for the New York premiere of the newly expanded 2025 edition of See Memory—the Bronze Telly Award–winning, hand-painted short documentary that premiered on PBS this spring.

Created by filmmaker and visual artist Viviane Silvera, See Memory brings the invisible workings of memory, trauma, and healing to life through over 40,000 individually painted frames.… read more »

For most of the 20th century Freud’s thoughts were foundational in understanding mental functioning while also offering the consensus approach to treating mental conditions, from neurosis to other more severe psychopathologies. With the advent of psychotropic medications and advances delving more deeply into the brain’s biology, the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and his followers lost much of their influence within the realm of psychotherapeutics.… read more »

What counts as a deficit? I can’t do sums in my head. I’m terrible at recognizing people’s faces. I can’t carry a tune and meanwhile truffles make me gag. I am so very overweight. Please don’t stand so close to me!… read more »

Mindfulness meditation is one of the most popular contemplative techniques in the world. Recently, however, a number of influential criticisms of the practice have emerged, many of which frame the technique as part of a larger neoliberal endeavor meant to privatize emotional well-being.… read more »

Pan played the Flute, Orpheus the lyre, Jimi Hendrix the guitar, Mickey Hart the drums. Melody, whether harmony or dissonance, could soothe the brow, agitate the body, or link with the mystical. In the 6th century BCE Pythagoras, listening to the “music of the spheres”, uncovered the celestial mechanics and mathematics inherent to music.  … read more »

This question is nearly always posed rhetorically, as in: there is no “good” reason for war, is there? But responses to Why War? that grasp it literally are surely also called for. At the very least, merely insisting on war’s moral vacuity has sadly failed to drive it to extinction.… read more »

The notion of Otherness—for all its familiarity and slipperiness—has become so relevant in our era of rapid political polarization that a fresh and interdisciplinary examination of its roots seems in order. This roundtable will bring together philosophers, psychoanalysts, social theorists and historians to trace its origins and significance at multiple levels. … read more »