The great English essayist and linguist Samuel Johnson was writing during the Enlightenment – the period some historians identify as the beginning of the modern age. American author and philosopher David Foster Wallace worked more than two centuries later, in the “post-modern” style. But these two writers shared a common problem: once modernity fractured society’s sense of shared moral norms, how could you write persuasively about morality? This episode looks at how Johnson and Wallace attempted to solve this problem; what struggles plagued their solutions; and why our modern, pluralistic landscape makes their work more valuable than ever.

Researcher, writer, and episode producer: Kirsten Hall Herlin

Featured Scholars: 

• Jack Lynch, Professor of English, Rutgers University

• D. T. Max, Staff Writer, The New Yorker, author of Every Love Story is a Ghost Story 

• Matt Bucher, Managing Editor of The Journal of David Foster Wallace Studies, co-host of the podcast Concavity Show, board member for The International David Foster Wallace Society   

• Walter Jackson Bate (1918-1999), former English professor at Harvard University, Pulitzer-prize winning biographer 

Special thanks: Dutton Kearney, Professor of English, Hillsdale College

For transcript, teaching aids, and other resources, click here.