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What role should religious conviction play in democratic policy-making? Features of modern democratic societies intersect to render this question both essential and problematic. Government policy in a democracy is supposed to reflect the will of the citizens, and in those societies citizens are free to practice any religion that they choose. So why shouldn’t democratic laws be based on, say, the moral teachings of the Bible, if the majority of the citizens desire it? Well, modern citizens often disagree about religion, both in terms of its truth and its relevance. Does this fact of religious disagreement mean that each citizen should avoid voting on the basis of their own religious conviction, or would that make modern democracy objectionably secular, inconsistent with the religious freedom a democratic society is supposed to secure? In this talk, Robert Talisse explores these questions and defends the view that, indeed, religious citizens have a moral duty to avoid voting on the basis of their religious conviction, but that this constraint is not inconsistent with freedom of religion.

Thursday, June 9 at 6pm. This event is part of the Philosophy Series at The Cornelia Street Café, located at 29 Cornelia Street, New York, NY 10014 (near Sixth Avenue and West 4th St.). Admission is $9, which includes the price of one drink. Reservations are recommended (212. 989.9319)

Robert B.Talisse is Jones Professor of Philosophy and Chairperson of the Philosophy Department at Vanderbilt University. He specializes in political philosophy, democratic theory, and ethics. He is the author of many scholarly essays and several books, including Democracy and Moral Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and, most recently, Engaging Political Philosophy (Routledge, 2016). Talisse earned his PhD in Philosophy in 2001 from the City University of New York.

5/18 – Chris Lebron on the philosophy of Black Lives Matter @ the Dweck Center // 7:00 P.M.

Late in life, William F. Buckley made a confession to Corey Robin. Capitalism is “boring,” said the founding father of the American right. “Devoting your life to it,” as conservatives do, “is horrifying if only because it’s so repetitious. It’s like sex.” With this unlikely conversation began Robin’s decade-long foray into the conservative mind. What is conservatism, and what’s truly at stake for its proponents? If capitalism bores them, what excites them?

Written by a keen, highly regarded observer of the contemporary political scene, Robin’s newly reissued The Reactionary Mind ranges widely, from Edmund Burke to Antonin Scalia, from John C. Calhoun to Ayn Rand. It advances the notion that all rightwing ideologies, from the eighteenth century through today, are historical improvisations on a theme: the felt experience of having power, seeing it threatened, and trying to win it back. The new edition includes a chapter on Donald Trump.

Mr. Robin will be in conversation with Eddie Glaude, a professor of Religion and African-American Studies at Princeton. His books on religion and philosophy include African American Religion: A Very Short Introduction and Exodus! Religion, Race and Nation in Early 19th Century Black America, which was awarded the Modern Language Association’s William Sanders Scarborough Book Prize. His most well-known books, Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul, and In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America, take a wide look at black communities and reveal complexities, vulnerabilities, and opportunities for hope.

“Is Truth Dead?” asked Time Magazine last year. Since people clearly care about the truth, at least in mundane matters, truth is alive. If an airline agent tells you the flight to Dallas is leaving from Gate B16, you expect the flight to Dallas to be leaving from Gate B16, and complain sorely if it’s not.

But if the truth does still matter, why do we elect people who don’t seem to care what the truth is?

The answer to this question, argues philosopher Louise Antony, has partly to do with the structure of human knowledge, and partly to do with the structure of our society. We can’t do anything about the first matter, but we can do plenty about the second.

Louise Antony is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is the author of numerous essays on the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and feminist theory. She is also a past president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association.

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Join us as Harper’s Magazine and Book Culture on Columbus present D.D. Guttenplan on his new book The Next Republic: The Rise of a New Radical Majority on Tuesday, October 2nd at 7pm! D.D. Guttenplan will be joined in conversation by Harper’s president Rick Macarthur!

Who are the new progressive leaders emerging to lead the post-Trump return to democracy in America? National political correspondent and award-winning author D.D. Guttenplan’s The Next Republic is an extraordinarily intense and wide-ranging account of the recent fall and incipient rise of democracy in America.

The Next Republic profiles nine successful activists who are changing the course of American history right now. Additionally, the introduction to The Next Republic ties in the election and first year of the Trump presidency to the current rise of populism of the left, and there are three historical chapters that describe key moments in American history that shed light on current events: the Whiskey Rebellion, the Lincoln Republic, and the Roosevelt Republic. Guttenplan understands the magnitude of the problem of democracy, and at the same time the great possibilities for its resurgence. Like a cross between George Packer’s The Unwinding and John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, The Next Republic is both unyielding and deeply hopeful, the first book to come out of the Trump ascendency that stakes a claim for seeing beyond it.

As the lead Nation election correspondent throughout the 2015-16 election season, D.D. Guttenplan set the highest standard for election reporting, traveling across the country throughout the primary season, present at the major speeches and rallies of all the candidates, offering deep as well as topical coverage in dozens of articles including many that graced the Nation magazine’s cover. Guttenplan’s first book, The Holocaust on Trial, was highly praised in The New Yorker and elsewhere. His biography of I.F. Stone, American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stone won the Sperber Prize for Biography. Guttenplan wrote and presented two radio documentaries for the BBC, Guns: An American Love Affair, and War, Lies and Audiotape, about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, as well as producing an acclaimed film, Edward Said: The Last Interview. A former editor at Vanity Fair, senior editor at the Village Voice, and media columnist at New York Newsday, Guttenplan’s reporting on the Happy Land Social Club fire in the Bronx won a Page One Award from the New York Newspaper Guild. His investigative reporting on New York City’s fire code was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He divides his time between homes in the U.S. in Vermont and London, England.