From the daily reports of violence and injustice to the rise of the far right, a litany of horrors that makes it increasingly difficult to escape pessimism. And on television, instead of answers, the weary clamour of blunt opinions

In recent years, the conversation has revolved almost entirely around female identity and the rights that go with it. Yet it seems that in the world of fashion designers and catwalks, nothing has changed. The cult of form that erases reality

The fundamental difference between the transmission of knowledge and the accumulation of data: as Steiner wrote, we are moving away from the dominance of the word and entering a phase of increasing silence

A tribute to Orwell in Yascha Mounk’s essay, which offers valuable insights for today’s multicultural and multi-ethnic democracies

Ideas, society, the environment. An essay by Pierre Charbonnier that will be of use to both experts and enthusiasts. In a summer like the one we’ve just been cursing, you’ll feel like flicking through it, browsing here and there and arriving, more or less quickly, at the conclusions.

What is the present without its past? And what sort of future can we possibly anticipate? Nature violated, life violated: Giulio Ferroni’s latest essay

For the writer, happiness comes through the body: exercise, a smile, good manners and even a yawn can help keep the ills of the spirit at bay. Simone Weil’s mentor’s ironic and pragmatic remedy for melancholy, boredom and bad temper

The Americans and the Russians. So many promises and such disasters. What remains of ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’?

If the liberal-democratic or liberal-socialist left does not wish to lose support, it must work to foster social bonds based on self-regulation and even self-governance. Dictatorships and authoritarian regimes always arise from social chaos and insecurity

Just as in the most barbaric periods of history, war has once again become the whim or vice of political leaders who dream of being remembered like Caesar, Napoleon and other great figures of history. Simone Weil’s insight into narcissistic leaders