Thane camus biography of abraham lincoln
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“When is a Life Good Enough?” with guest Avram Alpert
We have all been told to strive for greatness, to “go big or go home.” We aspire to be the top of the heap and assume that other people’s successes are our failures. What if those aspirations are unrealistic? What if the pursuit of greatness actually leads to failure and unhappiness. On this episode challenge this paradigm and ask about the good enough life, a life with good enough success, good enough justice, good enough food, and good enough friends. What would all of this mean and how would it change the discussion?…Continue reading “When is a Life Good Enough?” with guest Avram Alpert→
“How does Luck Determine our Lives?” with guest Mark Robert Rank
How much should we think about the accidents that drive our lives? How central is our lack of control? Maybe we didn’t get the flu the weekend of our big presentation or got somewhere first because the traffic jam happened on the other highway. Maybe our success isn’t our own. On this episode of Why?, we explore how chance shapes who we are and what we do….Continue reading “How does Luck Determine our Lives?” with guest Mark Robert Rank→
“How to Give Sex Advice” with guest Dan Savage
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Macbeth and the Moral Universe
Editors’ note: This essay inaugurates the CRB’s Locus Classicus feature, in which we review good and great works of the past that continue to compel modern attention. Harry Jaffa’s interpretation of Macbeth, published here for the first time, is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College in 1974. It was the last of three memorable lectures by him on three great literary murder sagas: Camus’s The Stranger, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The complete lectures will be published by the Claremont Institute.
Macbeth is a moral play par excellence. In this, it stands in stark contrast to two more recent well-known tales of murder, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Camus’s The Stranger. In Macbeth Shakespeare presented the moral phenomena in such a way that those who respond to his art must, in some way or another, become better human beings. In Dostoevsky’s and Camus’s heroic criminals we see the corruption of moral consciousness characteristic of modern literature.
By the art of Camus we are led to admire his hero, Meursault; young people especially tend to identify with him. What kind of hero is Meursault? He is utterly indiffer
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