Front Porch Republic
Kill Your Epistemic Arrogance
When the algorithm identifies someone as a “gang member” based on human-generated criteria, the model’s “ground truth,” however flawed, becomes a stand-in for reality.
Excess and Lack
Both bear the cost of things they have lost...
Choosing Wildness
Even if I cannot patch every leak, I still may carry some water. After all, a leaking bucket is not necessarily an empty bucket. I guess I will have to…
Books and Blessings: The Matthew Strother Center for the Examined Life
We do not need more thought leaders, but more thoughtful human beings.
The Ignored Faces of Homelessness: A Review of There Is No Place for Us
When people are trying this hard and still end up sleeping with their children on the floor of a storage room, something has gone seriously wrong with our society.
News, Notes, & Podcasts
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Cancer Cures, Manatees, and Enology
“We are Letting Schools Poison our Children.” Hadley Freeman has some harsh (but accurate) critiques of ed tech: “You don’t need to be Mr Gradgrind to be repulsed by this…
Handshakes, Extinction, and Chess
“The Intellectual Virtues of the Small Magazine.” Jeff Reimer brilliantly narrates the joys of an intellectual life and the role that small magazines can play in foster this: ‘Now remember…
Local Porch in NOVA: The Tech Exit with Clare Morell
Join Ben Christenson and others for a discussion with Clare Morell.
Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics
Laurie Johnson is teaching an introduction to Aristotle's virtue ethics for the Maurin Academy this summer. The schedule and details are here: We need a solid understanding of ethics now…
More Articles
The Grammar of Enchantment
Despite the surplus of enchantment discourse these days, the excellent parts of the book are indeed excellent.
Chemical-Drenched Corn is Not MAHA-Friendly
Mine is not a left-wing voice of animal rights idealism or return-to-the-land idyllicism. This is just plain old real science.
Nature in Oklahoma
In Oklahoma, the nature many of us live so close to is a different thing from the concept of “nature” we have internalized.
What is a Good Life?
A happy life is not something out there in the future. It’s not something you make, even.
On the Necessity of DEI for Restoring Trust in Higher Ed
I can’t help but notice that DEI might be the perfect solution to the politicization of the academy in general, and of the humanities and social sciences in particular.
A Formidable Formative Institution – The Fair Marches On
You have to cut through the glitzy, loud elements—the carnival rides and the tractor pulls and the cotton candy—to see the heart of the fair...
Reflections on Alasdair MacIntyre
Dependent Rational Animals offers both a satisfying philosophical exclamation point and a sorely needed ethical and political vision appropriate for the struggles of our own day.
Fuel, Food, and Fault: Rethinking the Emissions Debate
If we are serious about sustainability, we need to rethink where and how we apply pressure.
Friendship and its Paradoxes
Friendship is a fulfillment of our nature: the recognition that loving another for their own sake is, paradoxically, itself essential to our own flourishing.
Responsibility as Destiny: Thoughts on the MAHA Movement
What exactly is health? What do we mean by that word? What is a proper understanding of it?
The Crisis of the Self in an Age of Solutions
We live under the impression that we can do for the human community and the individual human soul what physicists have done with the atom.
Erich Maria Remarque’s Grief
He decides to write about his experience. Two earlier novels were dismal affairs. But now in 1927, over the course of a few months, he fills each page with pain and sorrow
From the Archive