Dear all,
No new Sunday read uploaded today. Instead, just a reminder that you can always access the full log of articles here. There’s so much to explore.
The only announcement this week is to check out three wide-ranging events happening Monday and Tuesday!
Monday Event: 11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK
“Who Do We Become When We Talk to Machines?”
Sherry Turkle in conversation with Audrey Borowski
Technology is the architect of our intimacies. We are human because language makes us so. And yet, we now contemplate a world where from our earliest years we talk to smart machines. Machines have no friendship to offer, and yet we persist in the desire for conversation, companionship, and even communion with the inanimate. What does that do to who we are as humans? What do we forget when we talk to machines? How can we remember ourselves? You can find out more and register here.
Monday Event: 4pm PT/7pm ET/9am (Tues) AET
“Liberalism as a Way of Life” - co-hosted with Boston Review!
Alexandre Lefebvre in conversation with Helena Rosenblatt
Conservatives are right about one thing: liberalism is the ideology of our times, as omnipresent as religion once was. Yet, as Alexandre Lefebvre will argue in this event, many of us are liberal without fully realizing it – or grasping what it means. Misled into thinking that liberalism is confined to the realm of politics, we fail to recognize that it’s the water we swim in. In conversation with historian Helena Rosenblatt, Lefebvre will discuss how so many of us are liberal to the core, why liberalism provides the basis for a good life, and how we can make our lives better and happier by becoming more aware of, and more committed to, the beliefs we already hold. You can find out more and register here.
Tuesday Event: 4pm PT/7pm ET/9am (Weds) AET
“Romantic Empiricism: Nature, Art, Ecology”
Dalia Nassar in conversation with Daniel Nellor
In this event, Dalia Nassar will analyse Immanuel Kant’s notion of reflecting judgment, Johann Gottfried von Herder’s articulation of the idea of “animal worlds”, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s explication of the obligations of the scientist, and Alexander von Humboldt’s aesthetic science to show how these thinkers developed a sophisticated empirical approach to the natural world, which focuses on the phenomenon while also recognizing the creative role of the knowing subject and the cognitive value of art and aesthetic experience. She will show how their search for a new methodology culminated in a new, ecological understanding of the world and the human place within it. Revisiting their thought, Nassar will argue, has the potential to redirect contemporary environmental debates and respond to urgent ecological questions in new and productive ways. You can find out more and register here.
That’s all for this week!
Wishing you all a lovely Sunday, wherever you are.
Andie Cook and Anthony Morgan
Newsletter Team