Several months ago, I argued that artificial intelligence raises ethical questions. The assumption that technological progress automatically produces human progress has appeared repeatedly throughout modern history. It was present in parts of the Enlightenment, resurfaced in certain strands of neoclassical economics, and continues to shape contemporary discussions surrounding artificial intelligence. Yet ethics may represent only part of the challenge posed by AI. A second an

Few periods in European intellectual history have produced such an extraordinary concentration of philosophical, literary, and cultural innovation as the German-speaking lands between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Within little more than half a century, thinkers including Lessing, Kant, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Wilhelm von Humboldt, the Schlegel brothers, Novalis, Schelling, and Hegel transformed debates about reason, freedom, history, culture,

Long conversations abroad with people from different cultures, educational backgrounds, and income groups reveal a difficult truth about human relationships. Before people get to know one another as individuals, they tend to see each other as representatives of the worlds to which they belong. When you meet someone for the first time, they do not initially see you as “you.” They first see your country. They see the image your society carries in the world. Before you even begi