top of page
Wright's Writing
Search
A little misanthropy can be a healthy thing
This is from a letter Sigmund Freud wrote to his pastor friend Oskar Pfister: I do not break my head very much about good and evil, but I...
Jul 24, 201919 min read
A plea for honesty in discussions of sex and gender
A recent article of mine, called "Political Correctness Is Getting Out of Hand," elicited some angry emails. Not from people who...
Jul 19, 20197 min read
Against "the postmodern novel"
[Here's an excerpt from a book on 'humanism' I wanted to write back in 2006. It's from a passage in which I was arguing against...
Dec 12, 20184 min read
Critical thoughts on "The Alchemist"
[Notes from 2006.] Reading The Alchemist, the novel that has sold tens of millions of copies. “To realize one’s destiny is a person’s...
Jul 13, 20184 min read
The importance of John Brown
[Grad-school notes...] I'm reading about John Brown--David Reynolds' John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the...
May 29, 20188 min read
The Destruction of Reason
Just a quick note: I recently posted a long summary of and commentary on Georg Lukacs' masterpiece The Destruction of Reason, which has...
Mar 23, 20181 min read
Collectivism
[Excerpts from this book.] Collectivism comes in both noble and evil forms. In the former, the principle of the individual is paramount;...
Mar 11, 20189 min read
On Susan Sontag
[Notes from 2008.] Reading Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation, and Other Essays. It’s wonderful to think that the publication (in...
Nov 30, 20166 min read
On "success"
[From this book.] The more one experiences the world, the more one understands how difficult it is to be “successful” and have integrity...
Nov 10, 20162 min read
Contemporary philosophy vs. sanity
[The following is a vignette I wrote years ago when studying for my Master's in philosophy. I was taking a class in contemporary...
Jul 29, 20164 min read
Elite pretentiousness
The following is the beginning of an essay I wanted to write years ago on the concept of pretentiousness, a phenomenon the ubiquity of...
Jul 9, 20165 min read
An underwhelming encounter with Christians
A misadventure. [Written in 2006.]— At lunch in the campus center I saw a flyer advertising an event tonight having something to do with...
Jun 22, 20166 min read
Notes on Theodor Adorno
[Old notes.] Reading Adorno: A Guide for the Perplexed, by Alex Thomson. I’m not very impressed with Adorno. Continental thinkers...
Jun 21, 20164 min read
"The West's" derivativeness
I’ve always suspected that people give too much credit to ancient Greeks. They couldn’t have been as divinely original as we’re taught....
Jun 2, 20163 min read
Random notes on Hannah Arendt, Max Weber, economics, and traditional China
Years ago I read and took some notes on various works by Hannah Arendt. In particular her classic Origins of Totalitarianism. It's a...
May 31, 20161 min read
Old notes on the Enlightenment
In Margaret Jacob's The Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents (2001), the selections from Locke’s Thoughts Concerning Education...
May 21, 20163 min read
On the French Revolution
It’s interesting that the French Revolution’s liberalism in some ways helped make possible its illiberalism, its nationalism and...
May 6, 20163 min read
Catholicism, an anachronism
In the Piazza of San Marco in Florence is a church in which lies the dried-out corpse of Saint Antonino from the fifteenth century, his...
May 5, 20162 min read
Intellectual origins of American radicalism
Staughton Lynd's Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism (1968) is a fantastic exploration of the ideological offshoots and effects...
Jan 29, 201613 min read
"The Pedagogy of the Oppressed"
[Notes from my journal.] I'm reading Paulo Freire’s famous little book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), which is apparently...
Jan 5, 20163 min read
bottom of page