Raymond Geuss in Sidecar:
Alasdair MacIntyre, who died on 21 May 2025 at the age of 96, never got the memo informing him that Descartes was the father of modern philosophy. He never thought that imagining the disembodied subject abstracted from its social context was a good starting point for anything, or that epistemology had philosophical priority, or that a principal task of philosophy was to defend the validity of our knowledge against sceptical doubt or to argue that some ‘ethical demands’ were ‘obligatory’. He certainly never received the notification issued at the start of the 20th century that henceforth philosophy would be essentially devoted to the analysis of language, the construction of formal arguments and the solution of logical puzzles. In contrast to all this his thought had a kind of archaic substantiality. He was one of the very few anglophone philosophers of the past two hundred years whom one could imagine emerging from the pages of Plutarch or Diogenes Laertius.
There are a number of reasons for this. He was, of course, erudite, highly intelligent and argumentatively incisive, but more importantly he instantiated an unusual form of the unity of thought and life. He had a remarkable ability to learn and willingness to change his position. At various times in his life he was a Marxist, a practising analytic philosopher, an Aristotelian, a Presbyterian, an Anglican, and eventually a Roman Catholic and Thomist-Aristotelian. At times he seemed close to psychoanalysis; he wrote knowledgeably about Hegel, Kierkegaard, Hume, Edith Stein, various figures of the Scottish Enlightenment and a number of theologians. In the case of almost any other philosopher, one might think it a sign of flightiness, but actually it was a mark of intellectual integrity.
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Eight times a week at the Majestic Theater in Manhattan, the entire, harrowing arc of a classic tragedy is delivered in 4½ minutes that are as exhilarating as they are upsetting. All the textbook components of tragedy according to Aristotle are vigorously at work here: self-delusion and self-knowledge, pity and terror, and the sense that what is happening is somehow both unexpected and inevitable.
Dear Reader,
I had read about the Santa Ana winds in a Joan Didion essay but had incorrectly understood them to be a mood-altering phenomenon, something with positive ions that made people feel on edge. It did not occur to me that they were a very real weather event, not just a vibe. That day, January 7, the fires had already started in the Pacific Palisades, which is more than 20 miles from Highland Park, where I live, but even so, I was not overly concerned. At my daughter’s school, they’d kept the kids inside during recess. That seemed excessive—and when my friend texted me some X account, with a crudely circled map, warning about the winds, it sounded overblown. That evening, when I walked to pick my daughter up from her class, there were gusts of wind and palm fronds littering the road. It felt spooky, but also slightly exciting. A weather event! The L.A. version of a snowstorm.
In 1994, an earthquake of a proof shook up the mathematical world. The mathematician Andrew Wiles had finally settled 
The “HUGEst” political alliance of the century is breaking apart before our eyes in suitably spectacular fashion.
Twombly (1928–2011) has been a polarizing figure. He is best known for his large scrawly works in grayscale, sometimes called “blackboard paintings,” that resemble the marks of a second grader trying to learn cursive and failing. The artist has drawn (ha!) admiration from some of the greatest writers and critics of our era, from Roland Barthes and Robert Motherwell to Octavio Paz and Anne Carson. Yet few artists have also been on the end of more ridicule. Donald Judd called an early exhibit of Twombly’s “a fiasco.” Jackson Arn 
Most of us like to see ourselves as good, morally decent individuals. What’s more, we largely agree on what it means to be a decent person. You don’t just have to pay your taxes and not harm others. You have to go beyond that by, for instance, being kind, treating others with respect, and supporting your friends, family and neighbours. What our modern secular society lacks, however, is a clear idea of how a decent person should give to charity. We live in a world of staggering inequality and extreme need. There will always be more we could do. When have we given enough – not to be a saint, but to clear the bar of decency?
In Vienna, in late February 1895, a 30-year-old woman, Emma Eckstein, is about to undergo an operation. She has recently complained of a few health problems – mostly stomach pain and discomfort, some sadness, especially around her period. Luckily, a young Berlin doctor by the name of Wilhelm Fliess is there to help. He comes highly recommended by a long-time trusted family friend, himself a reputable physician, Sigmund Freud. They agree that Eckstein’s menstrual stomach issues can be addressed through a simple surgery on an altogether different body part – Fliess removes a bit of bone from inside her nose.