In 2019, Macrina sprang from a network of relationships among philosophically inclined Christians nurtured on social media. As an online platform devoted to long-form analysis and reflection, we recognize the needs of our moment in the ironies at the heart of our own history as a journal. We live in an age of rapid change, attention disruption, and relentless stasis in action, a reality typified by the social networking sites where we founders and editors first came together. Our desire is to publish analyses, investigations, and explorations that find themselves arising from a similar place, a need to critically attend to a world driven by ecstatic dynamism. In doing so, we seek to better understand the conditions of contemporary life.
We need look no further than our namesake to underline our identity. Macrina the Younger is a fourth-century Christian saint known for her asceticism. Born to wealth, she founded a community in which free and enslaved alike enjoyed equal rights. Nurtured in an unequal world, Macrina devoted herself to the ascetical separation necessary to understand it, to rise above it. Above all, her commitment to philosophy as a way of life, as a broad engagement with the world in thought and deed informs our hopes. Our Macrina finds its cause and goal in this mission: to contemplate, to go beyond, and to make better—even if in small ways—the world as we find it now.
