In Search of Monsters — Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?

A moral philosopher and a walking trove of literature’s wisdom walk into a radio conversation together. The question for one hour is the bleak time we’re all living in, this sea of troubles we don’t have a name for. The violence is shocking: the war far away, the shots close to home; the spectacle of kids, like ours, running for their lives. The pandemic is still pestilential. The climate crisis is still existential.

Our guests this week are the philosopher Cornel West at Union Theological Seminary, who has styled himself a blues man in the ivory tower, and David Bromwich, Sterling Professor of English at Yale, ranging wide in recent books titled Moral Imagination and American Breakdown. Cornel and David are dream diagnosticians of the American condition, in good times and bad. In this installment of In Search of Monsters, Chris Lydon asks our guests where do they go — in history, in themselves — for a firm footing and guidance in a storm?

Listen to the full episode here:

Additionally, check out these related resources here:

Climate change is a national security issue – QI Research Fellow Adam Weinstein in Responsible Statecraft, September 1st, 2022.

Waging Proxy War in Ukraine Won’t Save Us From Ourselves – David Bromwich in The Nation, May 27th, 2022.

Climate Change: The Greatest National Security Threat to the United States – QI Eurasia Director Anatol Lieven’s Quincy Brief, October 2021.