Eric Nelson 'The Theology of Liberalism'

Eric Nelson is the Robert M. Beren Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he was an undergraduate before earning his PhD at the University of Cambridge. His books include The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding (2014); The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (2010); and The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought ( 2004). He also edited Hobbes’s translations of the Iliad and Odyssey for the Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes (2008). His most recent book is The Theology of Liberalism: Political Philosophy and the Justice of God (2019).

Learn more about Eric Nelson

For more information and lectures, visit George Washington Forum

[cnoyes]

In searching for some other ground upon which to negotiate this argument, I think it's regrettable at 56:45 that the conversation turns to Adrian Vermeule instead of Judith Shklar, whose reflections on the "liberalism of fear, " and the prioritization of mercy over justice as a virtue, offers a more promising path forward.

[mariellewills]

Work is meant to produce an excess which we are to freely give to the needy.

[mariellewills]

To know evil is to be tempted to do it. To do evil, is to feed the stray dog; who lies at your doorstep asking to be fed again. Man is meant to recognize the one God, and not to offend one another. "Punishment" is either training or expulsion. Life is eternal and heaven would not be heaven if the rebellious were there.

[mariellewills]

(Sorry. Pain medication and lack of sleep makes me talkative.)