Countway Longwood Author Series: "To Arrive Where We Started" by Ian Marcus Corbin

Countway Library
Floor 1, Room 103
10 Shattuck St.
Boston
Thu., Oct. 22, 2026, 5 – 6:30 p.m.



In his new book, "To Arrive Where We Started: Belonging in the Modern World," In this ambitious book, Dr. Ian Marcus Corbin engages the fundamental questions surrounding friendship with oneself, one’s family, friends, community, nation, and species. Corbin begins with a deep humanistic and scientific dive into how humans inherit and refine their picture of the world in community, including what makes this process more or less successful. He goes on to examine some human cultures—Native American, African, and early American—that seem to have excelled at making their people feel at home. He contrasts these cultures with contemporary America in particular, a society characterized by a facsimile of belonging that substitutes a paranoid, self-protective culture of ownership for the self-opening practice of friendship. The book’s coda is a call to abandon the illusion of ownership and to reopen ourselves to friendship with each other, nature, and even the deepest sources of existence.

Gazette Classification: Ethics, Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences
Organization/Sponsor: Hosted by Countway Library. Co-organized by the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School.
Speaker(s): Ian Marcus Corbin, PhD
Cost: Free
Ticket Web Link: countway.info…
Harvard Key Required: No
More info: countway.info…