Year in Review 2023

Two years may not be enough to forge an annual tradition, but tradition is a good excuse for self-indulgence: in this case, a look back at my public writing in 2023.

In January, I wrote about the terminal diagnosis of the neurosurgeon Henry Marsh, whose book And Finally is an amateur philosopher’s reckoning with mortality: “There’s no false comfort here. Instead, there’s prose that breaks in gentle waves, its undercurrents deep, the surface of an ocean vast enough to put our lives in moral perspective.”

In April, I took issue with Nihilistic Times, by the political theorist Wendy Brown, for its superficial treatment of ethical relativism:

Typography will not substitute for theory. And it’s a fallacy to think that disavowing “Truth,” whatever it is, “abets the pathos of distance Weber seeks in responsible action.” One can be committed to a scheme of absolute values, an ethics of inflexible conviction, without regarding it as True—or maintain that Truth demands responsibility, proportion, …