From Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write, a collection of essays, which will be published next month by W. W. Norton.

We live in an era crippled by our devotion to capitalism. We are beleaguered by hopelessness (what is the opioid epidemic if not the symptom of a people duped by false dreams?) and by rigorous utilitarianism (formed by a late-capitalist mindset, we ask always: What’s in it for me?). We inhabit a time and place in which falsehood and truth are fatally commingled; in which our ideals appear shattered and abandoned by leaders and…