Tag: 18th century
The 10 Best Books of 2023
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With unnerving rapidity, books are on their way to becoming a countercultural medium—one whose insistence on focus and complexity, on the slow building of story and argument, stands against so much else that daily assaults our eyes and ears. At The Atlantic, we hold on tight to books because of the unique space they offer for ideas to roam. When we
The People Cheering for Humanity’s End
“Man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.”
With this declaration in The Order of Things (1966), the French philosopher Michel Foucault heralded a new way of thinking that would transform the humanities and social sciences. Foucault’s central idea was that the ways we understand ourselves as human beings aren’t timeless or natural, no matter how much we take them for granted. Rather, the modern concept of “man” was invented in the 18th century, with