From the Reading Chair

In using the New Year's weekend to finally start my current reading assignment in earnest, I came across this rather interesting excerpt:

There came a time (Early Modern) when, apparently, life lost the ability to
arrange itself. It had to be arranged. Intellectuals took this as
their job. From, say, Machiavelli's time to our own this arrangement has been the
one great great gorgeous tantalizing misleading disastrous project.

- Humboldt's Gift, Saul Bellow