In the following course, a paradox needs to be examined that is contained in our title question. How can “liberty” (the idea of freedom being unchained, able to live as we wish) be something that is also “ordered” (confined to a set of rules that does not infringe another’s liberty)? This is perhaps the singular most important question in our modern politic. How can citizens enjoy liberty without it costing other people their liberties and happiness? In the following lecture, coproduced by the Leadership Institute and Thinker Education, Dr. Patrick Deneen, professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, speaks to these issues in a talk entitled, “Traditionalism and ‘Ordered Liberty’.”

The Presenter

Patrick  Deneen teaches political theory at the University of Notre Dame. He previously taught at Georgetown University, where he was the Founding Director of the Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy and at Princeton University from 1997-2005.  He received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Rutgers University, where he studied with and drank bourbon in the company of the late, great Wilson Carey McWilliams.  He is the author of two books: The Odyssey of Political Theory and Democratic Faith and co-editor of Democracy’s Literature. He is also co-editor (along with Susan J. McWilliams) of two collections of the essays by Wilson Carey McWilliams: The Democratic Soul (Kentucky, 2011) and Redeeming Democracy in America (Kansas, 2011).  He is also the author of a number of articles and reviews on ancient and American political thought as well as areas of religion and politics and literature and politics.  He also posts online at What I Saw in America.

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