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Why Liberalism Failed

Feb 1, 2018
Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture
1025 E 58th St.
Chicago, IL 60637
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  • Patrick Deneen - Why Liberalism Failed
  • Patrick Deneen - Interview

Free and open to the public.

Cosponsored by the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, the Seminary Coop Bookstore, and the Divinity School Theology Club.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Has liberalism failed because it has succeeded? Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.

You can read recent reviews of Why Liberalism Failed in the Wall Street Journal  and the New York Times.

Professor Deneen also taught a master class on Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America on Friday, February 2.

To view photos of the lecture, visit Lumen Christi's Facebook page.

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