The Best of The Point Magazine
10+ most popular The Point Magazine articles, as voted by our community.
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The Point Magazine on Criticism
Criticism in Public: An interview with John Guillory
John Guillory’s forthcoming book Professing Criticism will force professors to rethink graduate education and challenge literary scholars to confront the paradoxes inherent to the discipline.
The Point Magazine on Literature
On the Hatred of Literature
When I was in college, at the end of the last century, the prevailing school of literary interpretation was called “New Historicism.” The foundational assumption …
The Point Magazine on Philosophy
Anger Management
This is part of a series of columns on public philosophy by Agnes Callard; read more here. Racism doesn’t tend to make me angry. You might […]
Academic Philosophy and the Meaning of Life: Part Four
This is the final column in a four-part series by Helena de Bres on academic philosophy and the meaning of life.
The Point Magazine on Politics
The Lull
Time seems to have come to a halt. Ennui builds—and yet, the stillness is rife with threat.
The Point Magazine on Spirituality
Minor Resurrections
A few days after my youngest brother died last August, I started to think about Lazarus all the time.
The Point Magazine on TV
Specialists Without Spirit
Unlike the schlockier disaster porn that precedes it, the technical disaster movie depicts a real or realistic catastrophe that is in principle avoidable.
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Academic Philosophy and the Meaning of Life: Part Three
This is the third column in a four-part series by Helena de Bres on academic philosophy and the meaning of life, published weekly.
What Are Numbers?
What does it mean for a number to exist? In the philosophy of mathematics, there are two general camps when it comes to numbers: there are the Platonists—or the “realists”—who think numbers somehow…
After the End | The Point Magazine
We all responded to the events of 2020 in our own ways. Like many others, I spent large parts of my days searching through news […]
Saint Augustine’s Slave Play
Augustine’s relationship to slavery—and sex—tells us much about how the ideal of freedom emerged alongside human bondage.
Heaven Down Here
A few years ago, a close friend of mine was working on a piece about Jim Jones, who I only knew about at the time from the phrase “drink the Kool-Aid.” She outlined the basic beats of the Jonestown…
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