Spring 2017
A Note on the Spring 2017 Issue
A few years ago, one of our contributors said to me, "Raritan is a good place to get thinking done." What she meant was that Raritan allows writers to follow their curiosity wherever it leads, without requiring a tidy resolution. Her comment reflects Raritan’s commitment to providing a space for long-form essays and sustained reflection, and the writers in this issue are thinking through some problems that have long remained controversial and not easily resolved. Read more...
Hobson's Choice
The Impossibility of Seeing: Animals of the Universal History of the Things of New Spain, or the Florentine Codex
Lincoln as Realist and Revolutionist
The Savior of All Human Beings
Two Poems
Boring Howells
Sophistication and the Fear of Art: On William Gaddis
Four Poems
Aura as Medium: Walter Benjamin Reconsidered
Hannah Arendt and the Uses of Literature
Path Wisdom
Ambivalence (poetry)
Culture Wars and the Humanities in the Age of Neoliberalism
Still Enlightening After All These Years
What Is Living and What Is Dead in Existentialism?
\"Killer\" Putin and American Exceptionalism