Columns

Most of what's on this site is organized by topic: Ethics, Power & Politics, Mind & Knowledge, and so on. But there's a second way to move through the archive, and it runs sideways to the topics. Four columns, each one a different method for putting an old argument to work, regardless of what subject it happens to land on.

Then & Now takes one argument from the past and one situation from the present, sets them side by side, and stops there. No verdict handed to you in the last paragraph. The pairing is the argument; you supply the conclusion.

The Objection builds the strongest possible version of an idea, the version its smartest defenders actually hold, before running the counter-argument against it. Beating a weak version of a strong idea proves nothing. This column tries not to do that.

Deep Cuts has no word ceiling and no listicle structure. Some questions fit in fifteen hundred words. Some don't, and forcing them to fit costs the parts that made them worth writing about. This is where the long ones live.

Reviews holds one named work, a novel or a film, to account on its own terms. Not a recommendation, not a star rating: an examination of what the work is actually arguing, and whether it earns the claim.

Topics tell you what a piece is about. Columns tell you how it argues. Neither route through the archive is primary, so pick whichever one matches how you're browsing today.