I’ll be in The City of the Big Shoulders this Thursday and Friday, October 13-14, both to attend and to participate in a conference at the University of Chicago honoring and reflecting on the work of Jean Bethke Elshtain. While I greatly admire Jean, I will be offering a critique of her effort to defend the liberal order with just enough pre- and non-liberal institutions to keep the creaky structure from falling apart (finally not enough for so inherently creaky a structure). My title: “Defending the Indefensible: Jean Bethke Elshtain’s Tragic Defense of the Liberal Consensus.”
From Chicago I’ll make pilgrimage to the University of Notre Dame, where I’ll be a participant at the annual meeting of the Association of Political Theory. I’ll be appearing on Saturday, October 15th at 11 a.m. on a roundtable that will consider the merits (or lack thereof) of Martha Nussbaum’s most recent book, Not For Profit. While I’m still formulating thoughts, I can say with confidence that while I agree with Nussbaum that the humanities are deserving of defense, I will disagree almost entirely with grounds on which she seeks to defend them.
So, into the heartland, God’s country. Come by and say hello if you’re in the neighborhood, and so inclined.
While you’re in South Bend, you should come down and visit Occupy South Bend. It’s a fun group, and I’m trying to work a distributist kind of imagination into the group whenever possible. 😉
Jason, good luck with that. You should try to get them to come to Mass at the Basilica…
I really need to get back to APT one of these years…
Wow, great lineup. As somebody who heard you speak at ISI’s Conservatism on Tap back when I was working on the Hill in DC, and as a current political theory student at UChicago, I’m disappointed I won’t be able to be there for the Friday session.
After some help, if anyone’s able.
First Things recently linked to the May 2010 Cato Unbound Red Tory conversation:
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2010/05/18/patrick-j-deneen/the-dead-end-of-contemporary-liberalism/
But there are no responses on Cato’s site, in fact May 2010 has been excised from the side bar. Any ideas where they are?
I’ve emailed the editor, but my email might have gone into the junk mail.
Cheers.
That link works on my “device”. Send me an email if you can’t access it, and I’ll send it as an attachment. Pdeneen AT yahoo.com
M.,
Regarding that Cato Symposium, unfortuantely it didn’t work out too well, because Philip Blond didn’t and/or wasn’t able to come through with his own contribution. I wrote a post on the aborted discussion on FPR here, with links to both Patrick’s comments as well as those presented by Jacob Levy, with some additional comments of my own. Hope that helps!
Many thanks.
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