Longreads

Harvard University Press Centennial Explore a century of excellence in scholarly publishing by clicking on active, fully colored candles. More candles will become active as the year progresses, so…

Print Lincoln the deliberate emancipator By Louis P. Masur Tweet William Lloyd Garrison, the fiery abolitionist editor of the Liberator, had struggled for decades to see slavery abolished, but when…

People’s attitude toward judicial review usually depends on the makeup of the Court. Originally, the Supreme Court of the United States met in a drafty room on the

Print How big money is overwhelming judicial elections and corroding our confidence in the courts By Lincoln Caplan Tweet The hearing room of the Wisconsin Supreme Court could be a Beaux-Arts museum,…

Now in its seventh week, the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to expand and evolve. Notable events this week include the successful effort by Occupy Oakland protesters to shut down the…

Oscar Wilde was not a man who lived in fear, but early reviews of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” must have given him pause. The story, telling of a man who never ages while his portrait turns decrepit, appeared in the July, 1890, issue of Lippincott’s, a Philadelphia magazine with English distribution. The Daily Chronicle of London called the tale “unclean,” “poisonous,” and “heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction.”

Some critics dont like it. Catholic World notes its formidably excessive use of amateur swearing and coarse language, and there seems to be some question as to whether an alienated,…

Plato and Aristotle treated morality as a genre of interpretation. They tried to show the true character of each of the main moral and political virtues (such as honor, civic responsibility, and justice), first by relating each to the others, and then to the broad ethical ideals their translators summarize as personal “happiness.” Here I use the terms “ethical” and “moral” in what might seem a special way. Moral standards prescribe how we ought to treat others; ethical standards, how we ought to live ourselves. The happiness that Plato and Aristotle evoked was to be achieved by living ethically; and this meant living according to independent moral principles.

All over the world people are struggling for lives that are worthy of their human dignity. Leaders of countries often focus on national economic growth alone, but their people, meanwhile, are striving for something different: meaningful lives for themselves. Increased GDP has not always made a difference in the quality of people’s lives, and reports of national prosperity are not likely to console those whose existence is marked by inequality and deprivation.