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1 month ago | 
lawliberty.org | Agnes Callard |Zena Hitz |Richard Samuelson |Helen Dale
The Elks, the Shriners, and the bowling leagues are too far gone to be mourned. Even our dining has become solitary if our cultural commentators are to be believed. Office communities breathe on life support, as do many churches. Face-to-face interaction of any kind, much less substantive conversation, is increasingly hard to come by. But who mourns the decline of philosophical conversation?
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2 months ago | 
thefp.com | Agnes Callard
Some struggles persist over millennia. The philosopher Agnes Callard explores the life and lessons of one of the greatest thinkers of all time.
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
entertainment-mag.com | Agnes Callard
OPEN SOCRATES: The Case for a Philosophical Life, by Agnes CallardMaybe this is the year that you have resolved to drink less and exercise more. Or maybe you want to be kinder, gentler and more caring to the people around you. In “Open Socrates,” Agnes Callard suggests that self-improvement, at least as we usually understand the term, isn’t so much a matter of willpower, but of ideas.
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
nytimes.com | Agnes Callard
Callard's name may be familiar to those who have read a profile of her in The New Yorker. She left her first marriage, to another philosopher, to marry a graduate student, also a philosopher. She talks as if love is an ecstatically intellectual pursuit, at least when it's going well.
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Dec 25, 2024 | 
unherd.com | Agnes Callard
Christmas Reads 2024Culturediverse Even if you haven’t read Robert Musil’s unfinished modernist masterpiece, The Man Without Qualities, you probably agree that it has a great title. If you have read it, I’m sure you agree, because the novel returns obsessively to the theme of how its main character, Ulrich, can’t quite get his act, or, more fundamentally, his personality, together. But I’ve come up with an even better title.
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Sep 29, 2024 | 
thepointmag.com | Agnes Callard
Last year, two university presidents lost their jobs because, when testifying before Congress, they failed to project authority and moral seriousness to the general public; a third resigned this summer. This tells us something about what a university president is today. Being judged a leader by those whom you are not employed to lead is, apparently, part of the job description—especially at universities such as Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania. Six months later, Lawrence D.
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Aug 17, 2024 | 
thefp.com | Agnes Callard
I guess I didn’t have the emotional reaction to this piece that many others did. I did not find it beautiful or inspiring or anything of the sort. I saw this as a 13 year old “screaming” over being denied. That’s what’s heartbreaking. When I read the title I kept expecting to read how the niece realized they’d all put way too damn much into attending a concert. But no. Instead the family is trying to buy her another ticket somewhere in the world so she wouldn’t be disappointed. Guess what?
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Aug 17, 2024 | 
thefp.com | Agnes Callard
In her song “Cornelia Street,” Taylor Swift describes a nascent relationship on the brink of failure because neither party is willing to take the first leap: we were card sharks, playing games. She is about to end things, when all of a sudden, he proclaims his love—or, as Swift puts it, you showed your hand. In Vienna, Austria, where Taylor Swift was to play three concerts last week, there is also a Cornelia Street.
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Feb 1, 2024 | 
thestyletitle.substack.com | Ilia Sybil Sdralli |David Rollinson |Agnes Callard
They say that life is what happens when, well, you make other plans. Allow me to explain. Last week’s newsletter was all about the relevance- or irrelevance- of couture today. It took only a Galliano show for all that skepticism to come crashing down. The designer went back to his roots and offered a walk through the underbelly of Paris filled with whimsical silhouettes and over-the-top drama, enough to reinvigorate everyone’s love for fashion.
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Jan 9, 2024 | 
thepointmag.com | Agnes Callard
There is a minor grievance I have been nursing for some time now, against a friend who uninvited me from a party he threw. First he invited me, then he changed his mind about the composition of the party—not without reason, I’ll grant—and so he uninvited me. It did not cause a rupture in our friendship; we remain on good terms, except for the rare occasions when it comes up, and I make it clear that I am still a bit annoyed.
