David Walsh, Woolman Lecture I: "The Priority of the Person"

2600 Cleveland Avenue Northwest,Canton OH 44709

17 March, 2021

Description

Prof. Walsh will outline his argument that the differentiation of the idea of the person is one of the signal modern achievements. Prof. Walsh will outline his argument that the differentiation of the idea of the person is one of the signal modern achievements. It is fair to say that Christianity is the most important source for the understanding of the person, not least in the dogmas of the Trinity and Christology. But the elevation of the person to the central focus of political order is a later development. Rather than seeing the modern world as marked by the rise of the individual, it is preferable to view its elevation of the person, the bearer of responsibility, as its political centerpiece. Biography: David Walsh is Professor of Politics with teaching and research interests in the field of political theory broadly conceived. His focus has been on the question that the modern world poses for itself at its deepest level. Does our civilization possess the moral and spiritual resources to survive? In response to that question Walsh has traced the modern retrieval order in a trilogy of works. First, is the catharsis evoked by the totalitarian crisis that called forth an affirmation of truth beyond the abyss. This is explored in After Ideology: Recovering the Spiritual Foundations of Freedom (1990). Second, there is the emergence of a minimal order within the abbreviations that became the liberal democratic form. The Growth of the Liberal Soul (1997) tracks both the contemporary debates and the historical unfolding of the principles that maximize individual liberty while also sustaining civic virtue. Finally, The Modern Philosophical Revolution: The Luminosity of Existence (2008) reflects on the overarching philosophical horizon of modernity. It finds that the narrative is best characterized as a re-founding of the classical and Christian understanding rather than a radical departure from it. One of the results of these studies has been a renewed interest in the centrality of the person from whom order radiates into social and political existence. The first phase of this new direction has appeared in Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being (2016), and a companion volume, The Priority of the Person (2020).