Adam Gopnik on American sophistication.
“Sophistication seems a shared longing more than a set style; it’s the desire to see the world shine brighter than it does while still knowing that all the light that shines from it is the light we bring to it. In a darkening time, maybe it isn’t so shabby an aspiration.”
Also, on the shape of certain scandal. “that liberty required privacy to flourish” via Bernard Constant
“The Constant reproach to the Königsberg case is that candor and confession can become cruelty by another name. The categorical Kantian, in turn, warns that the cult of privacy can shelter abuse, protecting the powerful from the scrutiny that might expose what they have done. The Prussian within us wants to force everything into the open, insisting that anyone with nothing to hide should be willing to put everything on display. Our inner Parisian wants to protect twilight concupiscence, believing it essential to civility. Between Prussian and Parisian lies a permanent argument of our moral modernity, unresolved and probably unresolvable. We can try to recognize malfeasance while resisting malice, but doing so requires patience, proportion, and case-by-case judgment—qualities made nearly impossible by the modern media, already emerging in Königsberg in the form of newspapers and helping to fuel the scandal there.”
