Sing Sing prison, with warden T. M. Osborne and two other men, c. 1915

Were Early American Prisons Similar to Today’s?

...for sleeping. via Wikimedia Commons A new philosophy in corrections and political theory more broadly dictated that prisons should be economically self-sustaining. The administration desired to offset the cost of...
Nadezhda von Meck

Tchaikovsky’s Patroness

...politics and philosophy in eighteenth-century Europe. The 1970 book 84, Charing Cross Road, along with its 1987 film adaptation (starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins) is about the amiable solidarity...
Andean ritual with coca leaves

What Coca Means in Peru

...  Contact Us You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the provided link on any marketing message. Δ “This custom is an integral part of Andean philosophy, which...
Some of the chief defendants listening to the court summary at the Nuremberg War Trials. In the front row (from left to right) are Goering, Hess, von Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner and Rosenberg. In the back row are Doenitz, Raeder, von Schirach and Sauckel.

In History, The Past is the Present is the Future

...holds that things inevitably get better over time. “Ethical Manichaeism and anti-utopianism are not inherent features of all retrospective politics but rather result from an underlying philosophy of history that...
Vintage engraving of The Bench, by William Hogarth. 1758, depicts four judges listening to a case in the Court of Common Pleas.

Does Law Exist to Provide Moral Order?

In 1959, as a response to what was commonly known as the Wolfenden Report, Lord Devlin, an English judge, delivered the Maccabaean Lecture in Jurisprudence at the British Academy. The...
Sunlight and Shadow by Albert Bierstadt

Do We Actually See Shadows?

As a student, I wondered why the eighth century monk Fridugisus of Tours read the Bible to prove the existence of shadows when he could see shadows on the page....
Two devadesis in Chennai, India, in the 1920s.

How South Asian Temple Dancers Fought Moral Reform

...colony of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Añcukam focused on stories of her predecessors, delved into Hindu philosophy, and ended with her own autobiography. Addressed to fellow devadāsīs, the book documents...
A Young Student at His Desk: Melancholy by Pieter Codde, 1633

The Anatomy of Melancholy at 400: Still Good Advice

...and Morall Philosophy, Philology, in Policy, Heraldry, Genealogy, Chronology &c.” As Shirilan writes, “The indiscriminate mixture of recreations both physical and intellectual reveals that, for Burton, the mind that ails...
Margo Williams
Author

Margo Williams

...respiratory infections. She holds a BA from Yale University in History of Science and Medicine and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge in History and Philosophy of Science. She...
A soldier in shadow, holding a gun

How Veterans Created PTSD

...of this philosophy would be accounting for PTSD’s influence on behavior if those behaviors should result in criminal convictions. In response, veteran treatment courts have cropped up around the country...