Linnaeus’s personal contradictions do not make him a historical chimera. If he sounds odd to those who hold a view of Enlightenment science as rational and orderly, perhaps that’s because real Enlightenment science was a great deal weirder than that.
Reading
The peculiarities of the British constitution mean that it requires the combined input of the disciplines of law, politics and history – each with its own priorities, sensitivities and hinterlands of learning – to make sense of its practices. But the field has been vacated by most historians.
It’s not that the locals are in denial about what is going on in the camp. Everyone seems to have incorporated the horrors as real but ignorable aspects of regular existence. Höss and Hedwig not only tolerate Auschwitz. It fails to touch their happiness in any way.
Devotees often exult in the stripping of her beauty and her wealth; she is imagined as a woman of substance, who owned property in Magdala (hence her name), and when she repents and gives all this up, her reduction becomes the source of great satisfaction to the worthy men who love her in spite of – or because of – their general suspicion of and contempt for women.
The Manningtree Witches and The Glutton are both driven by an appetite for the ‘juiciest’ words – for ‘how they feel when you say them, or look at them’. But if a writer seems more invested in verbal effects than in what she is communicating, disillusionment sets in. I came to doubt that Blakemore was focused on what she was telling me.
For Hegel, the actual contains the possible, so that you can plunge into it with no fear of losing sight of a desirable alternative. You don’t need to tack some arbitrary utopian dimension onto what exists, since what exists already secretes within itself the seeds of what ought to be.
It was impossible to tell where my ancestors were buried or the location of the mass grave containing five hundred of the town’s Jews, shot in 1942. But few descendants of the Ostjuden who visit Eastern Europe in search of their roots expect more than this; a good result is finding that a supermarket hasn’t been built on top of your relatives.
The intermittence of Western arms money is not the Ukrainian military’s only problem as it organises to do three things: hold Russia at bay this year, push it back in the medium term, and create an impregnable defence for an indefinite future truce. Alongside the lack of money to fund weapons is the lack of weapons to buy.
The letters page from London Review of Books Vol. 46 No. 4 (Friday 09 February 2024)
Trump’s misdeeds have been amply documented through two impeachment proceedings, extensive congressional investigations, Mueller’s final report and endless news coverage. Perhaps the liberal principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is at work. If so, it is having distinctly illiberal effects.
Table of contents from London Review of Books Vol. 46 No. 4 (Friday 09 February 2024)
David Sirota speaks with researcher Zach Rausch about the myriad ways modern technology is rewiring childhood development.
- by Aeon Video
- by Benjamin Santos Genta
- by David Keen
As we approach the fortieth anniversary of the miners’ strike, Channel 4 has delivered a groundbreaking three-part documentary: Miners’ Strike 1984: The Battle for Britain. As the filmmakers state, this was a watershed of the post-war era — an event that wounded and changed Britain forever. The series reveals the painful realities and traumatic divisions […]
Over the last few years, the RBA has been emphatically denying that price gouging from corporations with significant market power has been driving the movements in the inflation rate. They knew that if they conceded that reality then there would be no justification for the 11 interest rate hikes they have introduced since May 2022.…
Union members at the Foundation for Young Australians across the country joined the Global Strike for Gaza, demanding their employer make a statement of solidarity with Palestine.
The post ‘Why we went on strike for Palestine’ first appeared on Solidarity Online.
I don’t think he’s going to survive this: He doesn’t seem to know which party he’s in. And they don’t want this. They want Emperor Donald Trump.
How the lucrative market could spark conservation.
The post The Hidden Butterfly Trade appeared first on Nautilus.