Please join us at the University of Texas at Austin
“The Problem with Liberalism—and Conservatism.”
with J. Budziszewski
time
5:30 p.m.
Thursday, April 27th,
location
University of Texas at Austin,
Flawn Academic Center (FAC) Room 21
2304 Whitis Ave #338
Austin, TX 78712
A good many Christians treat either liberal or conservative ideology as the authentic political expression of Christianity. For example, the left tends to view having compassion for the poor as practically identical with being liberal, and the right tends to view having respect for “traditional values” as more or less the same thing as being conservative. From a more carefully considered Christian perspective, the common versions of both liberalism and conservatism seem deeply problematic. If only we could achieve it, a genuinely Christian perspective on politics would be much more challenging.
J. Budziszewski's essay “The Problem with Liberalism” appeared in the March 1996 issue of First Things, followed by “The Problem with Conservatism” in April 1996. In each, he outlined the moral errors Christians make when they subordinate their faith to political ideologies. Our primary task, as Christians, is to “go on being Christians: our eyes lifted up not to the spectacular idol of political salvation, but to the Cross.” These essays may be over twenty years old, but the concerns they raise are no less pertinent today than when they were first published.
Interested, but can't make the trek? We're providing a video live stream of the lecture here:
J. Budziszewski (Ph.D. Yale, 1981) is a professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. His area of specialization is the natural moral law, and he is most well-known for his work on “the revenge of conscience”—what happens when we tell ourselves that we don't know what we really do. However, he is interested in everything at the intersection of ethics, politics, and religion. His most recent books are Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and On the Meaning of Sex (ISI Books, 2012). His Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Virtue Ethics will be published this spring.
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