On June 22, 2013, at Wadham College, Oxford, The New York Review of Books held a free conference, “Philosophy as a Humanist Discipline,” to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary and to honor the lives, work, and legacy of Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire and Bernard Williams.

This session, chaired by Robert Silvers, features remarks by Avishai Margalit, Timothy Garton Ash, and Marc Stears.

Ethics and Power: The Long Shadow of Machiavelli

Pandemic Journal: Hari Kunzru, Brooklyn, New York, March 23, 2020

“I realized what I had been experiencing the whole day of my outing: a heightened appreciation of our ordinary lives, as if they were something extraordinary—something almost like a miracle. I knew that the feeling would disappear as the virus faded away, or, in the worst-case scenario, as we resigned ourselves to living with it. And I thought about the role of literature, how it can make us appreciate our ordinary lives as if they were a miracle—and do so even in a time of boring normalcy.”

Pandemic Journal: Minae Mizumura, Tokyo, Japan, March 23, 2020

“I came to Ethiopia for book research that has to do with displacement and Eden, and tracing our beginnings as humans. How could I have known that the trip I had meticulously planned for months would be so ill-timed, that the world would be so anxious about endings?”

Pandemic Journal: Anna Badkhen, Lalibela, Ethopia, March 21, 2020

“In early March, at a faculty meeting, the coronavirus was third on my list of agenda items, after facilities improvements and fundraising progress. I mentioned a colleague’s suggestion that Wesleyan, where I am president, should cancel the upcoming Spring Break so as to finish the semester early. The room erupted in laughter, and I joined in. Students have their theses, professors their research—ridiculous to contemplate disrupting everyone’s plans.”

Pandemic Journal: Michael S. Roth, Middletown, Connecticut, March 24, 2020

“Along the boardwalk there are people walking, jogging, walking their dogs, singly or in couples. They are sensibly spaced, intentionally or not. I keep my own distance: all of them are potential carriers. It feels new, this very old way of looking at the world and fearing the unseen, suspecting dybbuks and devils inside people, lurking on door handles, hovering in the air.”

Pandemic Journal: Adam Foulds, Toronto, Canada, March 27, 2020

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