I would like to begin this essay by sharing a personal anecdote from which this writing first developed. One day I was feeling down and could not quite pinpoint what had put me in this mood. Although the nature of what I was feeling at that time and the origin of my feelings were unknown to me, certain senses of melancholy, sadness, or anger were present in me. An acquaintance, with whom I was engaged in conversation at that moment, said to me that my look reminded him of the Korean emotion han. Upon hearing this, I found myself astounded…

Is the concept of a “moral arc” to the economy that bends toward justice implicit in the thought of Martin Luther King, Jr.? Can a source for this concept be found in the economic justice campaigns of the Black Church? A moral arc to the economy that bends toward justice informs King's concept of economic democracy, which frames his campaigns for economic justice. Throughout King's writings from 1957 to 1968, he explores the economic plight of African Americans and advocates for economic remedies to the subordination of African Americans within most sectors of the American economy and the exclusion of…

The war is always with us. As Viet Thanh Nguyen reveals throughout Nothing Ever Dies, a war does not simply vanish when the battles are over and when bodies are buried.1 Nguyen's deep excavation of the personal and political consequences of war inspires this piece and energizes me to consider how such a sweeping event seeps into our memories and transforms when it surfaces in the realm of cultural representations. As a child of survivors of the Korean War, I have continually sought to make sense of the lyrical reflections offered to me by my mother and the poetic depictions…

Introduction The purpose of this article is twofold: to illuminate Foucault by looking at the Mishnah, and to illuminate the Mishnah by looking at Foucault. We argue that the Mishnah challenges the universality of Foucault's claims about ancient thought. Yet, at the same time, Foucault's framework helps to highlight ways in which the Mishnah can be read as a signpost for advancing contemporary philosophical thought. While in its outward form, the Mishnah puts forth an account of normative-legal duties to God and to human beings, we show that it can also be read as an exemplary instance of an ethics…

1. Introduction Our natural state as human beings, Hegel argues in Philosophy of Right, is “an immediate and uneducated [ungebildeten] position” from which we must liberate ourselves.1 Only in our second nature, through the habits we form in our spiritual education, or Bildung, are we no longer determined by our natural instincts and drives. Earlier liberal political philosophers found justifications for limited government in the state of nature. But Hegel's political science rests on an education that transforms this first nature. To illustrate the origins of self-transcending human nature, Hegel turns again and again to a source text that earlier…

The Center Has Not Held Across the West, the old liberal center is coming apart and the extremes are resurgent. A decade of financial disruption, austerity, and stagnant wages has produced a popular rejection of market fundamentalism. Mass immigration, multiculturalism, and weaker civic ties have left many people feeling dispossessed and humiliated. Part of the revolt against the elite consensus comes from economic and cultural insecurity, and it is fueling the support for anti-establishment insurgents not just on the fringes but also in the mainstream of Western politics—whether the radical right of Donald Trump and the Tory arch-Brexiteers, or the…

The campus culture wars are back. If the debates of the 1980s ended with the demise of Western Civilization courses and the establishment of multiculturalist curricula, the Europeanists are again making their case, but no longer as tenured classics professors. Rather, the new defenders of Western culture are right-wing agitators from off campus who, feeling marginalized in their whiteness, are seeking to reaffirm the centrality of European culture for U.S. identity. In an additional turning of the tables, they have been making their case in the form of a free speech movement that seeks to emphasize how their victimized and…

How are we to explain the current “revolt against the elites,” the “new populist wave,” recently referred to by the French philosopher, political scientist, and historian of ideas Pierre-André Taguieff in an interview appearing in Telos?1 What follows will try to reflect on specific aspects of the intimate relationship between populism and nationalism, the import of the conspiracist view of sociopolitical phenomena, and the overall “populist illusion” in the left-wing version of populism, with reference to the Greek experience of the past few years, notably through the SYRIZA phenomenon. To the extent possible, an effort will be made to examine…

Over 150 years after the defeat of the Confederate States of America (CSA), a 21-year-old white male slipped into an evening prayer service on June 17, 2015, at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. He drew a Glock .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol and shot twelve people as they implored him not to fire. Nine died, three survived, and he fled only to be captured the next day in North Carolina. An avowed white supremacist, Dylann Roof declared his plan for these murders was to trigger a race war in the United States of America. He was tried…