History, Philosophy, Society
Humberto Beck
Meaning and modernity
Perhaps the main consequence of disenchantment has been this fragmentation of our image of the world. The effects of this disintegration have been immense: it has uprooted human experience.
Literature, Philosophy
Josep Maria Esquirol’s Philosophy of Proximity
Intimate Resistance in an Age of Saturation
His philosophy shifts attention away from logics of domination, self-realisation, and expansion, toward vulnerability, care, and inward gathering as the fundamental ways of sustaining life and recovering meaning.
Culture, Humanism, Society
Celebratory Lecture by Leon Wieseltier
Music
Music by the Busch Trio and Serguei Milstein
Livestream Celebratory Symposium: A New Song of the Earth
Politics, Society
Leon Wieseltier
The Great Slander
The authoritarians of the right and the left are correct: the liberals do indeed stand in their way. We understand the populist temptation too well, and we recall its consequences too vividly, to be left alone.
Rob Riemen
What Can Cure a Civilization in Crisis?
Introducing the topic of the Nexus Conference 2026
History, Politics, Society
Elif Shafak
An Appeal to Cosmopolitanism
Contemporary politics — with its populist demagogues, illiberal democracies and nationalist or tribalist movements — more and more resembles the beginning to an Anatolian folk tale. Just like the listeners of those ancient folk tales, we, global citizens of today, have entered a messy, disorderly universe.
History, Politics, Society
Jack Luzkow (free access)
Fighting Fascism at the Apocalypse
For a fascist like Trump, the Big Lie becomes the new truth. Truth reflects the assertion of the Leader. Truth is not established by fact, but by repetition of the Big Lie.
Politics, Society, War
Q&A with Robert Malley and Sigrid Kaag
Politics, Society, War
Middle East Diplomacy: The Inevitability of Tragedy
Biography, Politics, Religion, Society
Kassem Eid
Waiting for Jesus’ return
I’m a person who saw a lot of evil people and evil deeds with his own eyes. I lived through it. I survived. But still I truly believe that the majority of all people are good and kind.
Culture, Society
Azza El-Kholy
Are We Civilized?
It is only when we dare to question, to probe deeper and to reason for ourselves that we can move towards progress and respect of human dignity, rather than revert back to the dark ages of religious, ethnic and colonial strife.
Europa, History, Politics
Allan Janik
Wake Up Europe!
With that we come to the crux of the problem: the European Union is totally asleep as far as it ability to perceive the will of ordinary citizens.
History, Politics, War
Sean Wilentz
America, the War, Two Speeches, and Two Stories
There are two stories to be told about America and Putin's war on Ukraine, one encouraging, the other frightening.
Culture, Humanism, Science
Marilynne Robinson
In Praise of the Human Soul
A world, more or less alien or welcoming, emerges to enrich a reader’s store of hypotheses about how life is to be understood. As with scientific hypotheses even failure is meaningful, a test of the boundaries of credibility. So many voices, so many worlds, we can weary of them.
Culture, Society
Alain Badiou
How to Change the World?
To ‘change the world’, as an infinite process, is always, under pressure from a local event, an active fidelity to the new real that was revealed as the possibility of the impossible.
Culture, Religion
Leszek Kolakowski
On Happiness
If we experience the excellence, goodness and beauty of the entire Universe, are we not happy? The answer is: no, we are not.
Politics, Religion, Science, Society
‘I will show you what must take place after this’
Politics, Science, Society, War
‘What have you seen? What is?’
Politics, Society
Q&A with Antony Blinken
Politics, Society
Present at the Re-Creation: Restoring the Promise of America in the World
Politics, Society
Introduction Rob Riemen
History, Politics, Society
Antony Blinken
Walls or Bridges?
A defining division has emerged in America that separates us from each other and leads to two very different visions for the future. It is a division between a future of walls and a future of bridges.
