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Paul Ham

Historian and Lecturer, Sciences Po, France

Paul Ham is a historian and lecturer in narrative history at Sciences Po in France. He is the author of the book The Soul: A History of the Human Mind, to be published by Penguin Random House in July 2024, and the creator of the forthcoming substack column ‘Who Made Our Minds?’

Website

Written by Paul Ham

Graffiti in French reading “L’ART C’EST DE LA MERDE” is painted on a concrete wall. The words are written in black, casual handwriting, with a smaller, less legible text scribbled underneath. A piece of paper is fixed to the top right side of the wall.

Communication and language

idea

Censoring offensive language threatens our freedom to think

The modern obsession with textual purity stems from a misapplication of the philosophies of Wittgenstein and Derrida

by Paul Ham