The Hollowed Crown

Public life used to be organized around things: a town square, a printed paper, a factory floor, a shared object people could point to and argue about. What happens to public life in a world without things?

In this essay, our co-founder Joseph Terry follows Hannah Arendt's account of the public realm into a present where the shared objects are dissolving into feeds and dashboards, and asks what leaders owe the people who still need something to gather around.

Read the full essay on Substack: scholasophia.substack.com

Published January 19, 2026.