Doublethink / Doubletalk: Naturalizing Second Thoughts and Twofold Speech

by Eva Brann

Philosopher Eva Brann describes the concept of doublethink/doubletalk as "a flanking approach toward comprehending a pervasively duplex world, a world that sometimes flashes fleeting signs of covert wholeness." In this, her second collection of aphorisms and observations, Brann shines a light on our world—on "the way things are"—and she does it with characteristic wit and insight. Eva Brann is a member of the senior faculty at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where she has taught for fifty-seven years. She is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. This is her ninth book with Paul Dry Books.

311 pages, Paperback

First published August 9, 2016

About the author

Eva T. H. Brann was an American scholar, classicist, and the longest-serving tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. Born in Berlin in 1929 and later immigrating to the U.S., she earned degrees from Brooklyn College and Yale University. Brann devoted over six decades to teaching and writing, becoming a key figure in the Great Books tradition and serving as dean of St. John’s College.
Her wide-ranging works include Paradoxes of Education in a Republic, What, Then, Is Time?, and The Music of the Republic. She also co-translated several Platonic dialogues and received the National Humanities Medal in 2005. Brann passed away in 2024 at the age of 95, leaving behind a lasting legacy of intellectual rigor and philosophical inquiry.