Wright's Writing

In the time of Trumpism, Michael Paul Rogin’s great book The Intellectuals and McCarthy: The Radical Specter (1967) shouldn’t be as...

I was recently skimming old notes of mine and came across the following thoughts from a two-volume book on "humanism" I wanted to write...

Many years ago, when I was a simple boy who thought he ought to know a lot about Hegel, I took masses of notes on his philosophy. Below...

When I read old books or articles that are totally forgotten despite being brilliant, it saddens me. Siblings of Donald Trump publish...

I'm kind of a "vulgar Marxist." In this respect, I suppose I'm a lot like people in the American ruling class, except that their values...

This is going to be a whiny, self-pitying post. Just to warn you. The question is sometimes asked, "Why are stupid people frequently so...

I've been reading Camille Paglia's collection of essays Sex, Art, and American Culture (1992). I disagree with a lot of Paglia's...

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...

Here's a blog post for you masochists who are interested in the debates that go on among Marxist intellectuals over questions around...

Just a quick note: I recently posted a long summary of and commentary on Georg Lukacs' masterpiece The Destruction of Reason, which has...

[Excerpts from this book.] Collectivism comes in both noble and evil forms. In the former, the principle of the individual is paramount;...

[The following is a vignette I wrote years ago when studying for my Master's in philosophy. I was taking a class in contemporary...

Richard Lewontin’s article “The Evolution of Cognition: Questions We Will Never Answer” is excellent. It counsels skepticism about...

The following is the beginning of an essay I wanted to write years ago on the concept of pretentiousness, a phenomenon the ubiquity of...

In a sense, writing history is an intrinsically moral activity—although different kinds of history embody different degrees of morality....

Reading the Chomsky-recommended Political Economy and Laissez-Faire: Economics and Ideology in the Ricardian Era (1986), by Rajani Kanth....

Reading The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin (2011), by Corey Robin. An elegant and erudite elaboration of...

Albert Camus: “We [moderns] read more than we meditate. We have no philosophies but merely commentaries. This is what Étienne Gilson...

[The following is an excerpt from this book.] In order to determine someone’s intellectual or artistic integrity and acuity, a simple...

If intellectual curiosity means the desire to learn new things, encounter new ideas, explore and explain the world, then “intellectuals”...