If interested in presenting a paper at the workshop, send a short bio and an abstract of max 1000 words to [email protected] by 30 September 2019. Registration is free but mandatory (also for attendance only). Successful applicants will be notified by 5 October.
This workshop will celebrate the bicentenary of Benjamin Constant’s famous lecture, ‘The liberty of the ancients compared to that of the moderns’, which he gave in Paris on 2 December 1819. This lecture was a seminal moment in political theory, and Constant’s ideas have reverberated down the generations ever since. Behind the scenes, Constant’s powerful distinction between ancient and modern liberty continues to influence the political thinking of today’s democrats, dictators and demagogues – whether they realise it or not.
Nowadays in the UK, in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, amidst resurgent populism and social media disinformation, we have to address again the tensions between representative and direct democracy, between the need to embrace pluralism but also to offer a robust protection of liberty and the values of toleration and inclusivity associated with it. Questions about the exact nature of liberty and in what fashion democracy generates legitimate political authority are again highly relevant. Constant’s lecture anticipated some of the most significant developments of liberal political thought in Britain and demonstrates the deep unity of the European values and ideas.
The workshop invites papers that engage with the key aspects of Constant’s lecture on ancient and modern liberties including: (1) Constant’s impact on the understanding and protection of liberty in modern times; (2) Constant’s contribution to the understanding and critique of modern political authorities, including democracy; (3) Constant’s exposure of the mechanism of political indoctrination; (4) Constant’s understanding of individuality, pluralism, religion and human flourishing; (5) Affinities between Constant’s understanding of liberty and human agency, on the one hand, and the moral and political philosophy of other modern thinkers, on the other.
The workshop will be spread over two days from 4-5 December, starting with an afternoon then a full day. The event will bring together local, national and international participants. There will be nine speakers: five invited speakers and four speakers via a call for papers, at least 2 of which will be PhD or early career researchers. Invited speakers include Alan Kahan, Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University, Jeremy Jennings, King’s College London, Colin Tyler, University of Hull and Maria Dimova-Cookson, Durham University.
The workshop is sponsored by the Centre for Political Thought, Durham University, the PSA Modern Liberty specialist group and the PSA British idealism specialist group.
