by Peter Scotchmer | Dec 2, 2025 | Essays
In this piece, Peter talks about the enduring power of inherited wisdom and how neglecting it leaves us unmoored. In a speech delivered in 1858, Abraham Lincoln foresaw the consequences of the ruinous Civil War that was to devastate his nation: “A house divided...
by Peter Scotchmer | Nov 25, 2025 | Essays
In this piece, Peter talks about how Hagar’s pride blinds her to the shared moral wisdom all humans depend on. In Margaret Laurence’s novel The Stone Angel, the combative central character Hagar Shipley (nee Currie) tells the story of her own life. The reader must be...
by Peter Scotchmer | Sep 16, 2025 | Essays
Irony and the human condition: Peter Scotchmer on why double vision matters more than ever. “…the ironist is caught in a boundary zone between two opposed and mutually exclusive perspectives… between the necessity to believe in the world as it ought to be, and the...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Sep 9, 2025 | Essays
Irony, #1 – Hannah Arendt, the Refugee from Königsberg – Nigel writes about a stateless thinker who made irony her weapon against totalitarianism. Hannah Arendt, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture Königsberg was a jewel on the coast of the Baltic....
by Jonathan Bennett | Aug 26, 2025 | Essays
Forget “live-to-work”. The ancients believed leisure—not work—was the highest purpose of human life. In this essay, Jonathan defends self-cultivation through art, conversation, and exploration. “One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a...
by Aashisha Chakraborty | Jul 29, 2025 | Essays
Trying to uncover how Maugham wove himself into his fiction, be it through The Razor’s Edge, Of Human Bondage or The Moon and Sixpence “The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.” — W. Somerset Maugham The primary reason I admire Somerset Maugham is because I...