Events and News
News:
Events:
January 27, 2012.
Prof. Jennifer Pitts (Political Science, University of Chicago), 218 Woodburn Hall, 12-1.30 pm
February 3, 2012.
Prof. Allan Wood (Philosophy, Indiana University), 218 Woodburn Hall, 3-4.30 pm
February 24 2012.
Ryan Hanley (Political Science, Marquette University), 218 Woodburn Hall, 12-1.30 pm
November 4, 2012
Professor Ronald Beiner (Political Science, University of Toronto)
Civil Religion: A Window into Perennial Themes of Political Philosophy
Civil religion is a notable theme within our tradition of political thought because many of the leading thinkers of modernity – Machiavelli, Hobbes, Harrington, Spinoza, Locke, Bayle, Montesquieu, Rousseau – came to the view that religion poses a decisive political problem, and were determined to seek out a variety of strategies for domesticating religion politically, civil religion (the political appropriation of religion in the service of the ends of politics, not those of religion) being one of those strategies. The full story is told in my book on Civil Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2011). In this talk, I sketch some major themes of the book. But I also try to pose some broader questions: What form of intellectual activity is enacted in reading and interpreting such texts? Is the purpose necessarily to solve specific practical predicaments in a particular time and place, or are the thinkers of the theory canon oriented towards more universal concerns? Arguably, civil religion as formulated by, for instance, Hobbes and Harrington was fairly quickly trumped by competing strategies of domesticating religion within the liberal tradition. Why, then, do the texts in which the civil-religion idea was articulated continue, centuries later, to exercise the degree of fascination that they do?
Ronald Beiner is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His books include Political Judgment (1983); What's the Matter with Liberalism? (1992); Philosophy in a Time of Lost Spirit (1997); and Liberalism, Nationalism, Citizenship (2003). His latest book, Civil Religion (2011), explores how thinkers from Machiavelli to Rawls have addressed the problem of politics and religion. He is also editor of Hannah Arendt's Lectures on Kant's Political Philo
Speakers for Fall 2012.
Prof. Patrick Deneen (Government, Georgetown University) will present a lecture on liberal education today.
Prof. Jonathan Allen (Political Science, University of Northern Michigan), will present a lecture on Tocqueville's visit to upper Michigan.
