Transcripts For CSPAN2 Discussion 20131225

Example, adult diabetes, Childhood Obesity and so on, other things that qatar is now trying to position itself as a Global Leader in addressing. I hate to end tonights discussion with the mention of diseases, but its been a pleasure and an honor being here. Thank you all, and my thanks again to osama. Thank you. [applause] before you turn if you dont mind i would like to say that have the professor for two more days here. You will be appearing at the Carnegie Endowment tomorrow at 1 p. M. To give his thoughts. Been back here for a conference on religious and secular trends in the region of north africa and the will be a paper on qatar involved with some of these religious developments in the region. So please, join us again tomorrow and the day after. But for now, please join us outside for some snacks and feel free to continue the conversation with professor mehran kamrava. Thank you all very much. [applause] is there a Nonfiction Author a book you would like to see featured on booktv . Send us an email at booktv cspan. Org or tweet us at twitter. Com booktv. Brad gregory is the author of the unintended reformation. He present his book on the impact of the protestant reformation on western society and culture. Professor gregory is the recipient of the 2013 isi henry and Anne Paolucci book award. This is a little over one hour. All right. Well, good evening and welcome. Welcome to the 2013 isi henry and Anne Paolucci book award presentation. My name is mark henry and then Senior Vice President and chief academic officer at the institute. For those of you who may be new to us, isi is a National Educational organization founded in 1953 in philadelphia and headquartered since 1996 on centerville road in greenville. Isis mission is to educate for liberty, Inspiring College students to discover, embrace, and advance the principles and virtues that make america free and prosperous. With thousands of students and faculty members on virtually every College Campus in the country, isi each year produces a class of young and energetic leaders who, thanks to isis programs and publications, embark on their careers with a particularly deep understanding of and commitment to the american ideal of liberty. Isi annually conducts over 200 Educational Programs around the country including lectures, debates, student conferences, seminars and summer schools. Isi also offers graduate fellowships for Aspiring College teachers. Through our collegiate network we support dozens of independent newspapers. We also publish the quarterly journal, and under our imprint isi books we have brought both academic and the general reader some of the most thoughtful and penetrating conservative insights of recent decades. The isi henry and Anne Paolucci book award is named for two remarkable individuals who, together, constitute an extraordinary couple. Henry was a University Professor and prolific writer who possessed a broad master of the history of political thought as well as a keen sense of the influence of the past upon present political and economic realities. A polymath scholar, his interests ranged from mathematics and astronomy to literary theory and political philosophy, from greek and roman antiquities to American History and christian doctrine. And author of a Staggering Number of books, he taught English Literature at iona college, roman history at city college in brooklyn college, government and politics at st. Johns university, and medieval culture at columbia university. He was also a key figure in and a candidate for the conservative party of new york. He passed away in 1999. Henrys wife, and intellectual partner of more than 50 years, was trying to commend her career was no less a lustrous. She was an internationally acclaimed scholar in multicompared to the livery studies as well as an awardwinning playwright, poet and fiction writer. Her most enduring critical contributions were seminal works on the playwright edward albee. In addition to leading the council on national literatures for 30 years, she served on the National Council for the humanities and is a trustee and chairman of the board of trustees at the City University of new york. She passed away in 2012. It was trying to became the isi in the early 2000s because she recognized isi as a conservative institution with an enduring commitment to culture and to the lessons of mind. She also recognized that isi is a faithful steward of all its undertakings. Her final benefaction both and downs this book award in perpetuity and will allow isi to expand its program in the area of national literatures. The isi henry and Anne Paolucci book award of 5000 presented each year to a deserving scholar whose intellectual achievement in the form of a book published in the Previous Year embodies the spirit, range and scholarly rigor of the awards namesakes. And so our main event. Bradley gregory is professor of history and dorothy g. Griffin and collegiate chair at the university of notre dame where he was also recently named director of the Notre Dame Institute for advanced study. He has had a meteoric academic career. In 1996 to 2003 he taught at Stanford University where he received early tenure in 2001. Before teaching at stanford he earned his ph. D in history at princeton university, and was a junior fell in the Harvard Society of fellows. He also holds two degrees in philosophy, both earned at the Catholic University in belgium. He has delivered lectures and many of the most prestigious universities in the United States as well as in england, scotland, ireland, norway, belgium, the netherlands, italy, israel and taiwan. He is also a standout teacher having received to Teaching Awards at stanford and three at notre dame. The unintended reformation is brads most recent book. And it is a Tour De Force of historical interpretation and sympathies. It is also a very controversial book. A book making very strong claims, however ironic. It is a very big book, though there are those who believe it ought to have been still longer in order to carry its argument. The book is in a certain sense history turned upside down. That is to say, most of us carried around in our heads something of historical cartoon inherited perhaps from edward gibbons, among others. In which the middle age are seen as a time of darkness and stagnation. A turning point occurs in the 16th century, perhaps indeed in the reformation. After which there is a leap of Human Progress First Northwestern europe but at length everywhere across the globe. Indeed, the historical forces unleashed in that modern terms are such that progress becomes inevitable. History bounce ever higher, and there are no genuine losses associated with modern games. Brads book contests this basically on two counts. On the one hand, he observes that there are indeed losses as well as gains in modern progress, and that some level everyone will have especially conservatives knows this. On the other hand and this is what is intellectually exciting about the book, he demonstrate that there is very little inevitable about the contours of our contemporary world. In fact, the road by which the past became the president is filled with contingencies, with things that did not have to turn out quite the way they did. Alternatives are indeed imaginable. That is not to say that brad gregory business to get. But the glory. In fact, his concluding chapter is entitled against nostalgia. There he observes that quote, judged on their own terms and with respect to the objectives of their own leading protagonists, medieval christian dump failed. The reformation failed. Confession was to europe failed. And western modernity is failing. But each in different ways and with different consequences. Did i mention that the book was controversial . Ladies and gentlemen, brad gregory. [applause] thanks very much, mark, for the gracious introduction. Thanks to all of you for being here, for coming this evening. You can tell from the last quoted line that mark offer that the book is a real upbeat and encouraging diagnosis of the situation which we find ourselves. Its an extraordinary honor and a privilege to receive this years book award, to be added to a list of award receptions at in the last five years alone includes pauline maier, Philip Hamburger and Charles Taylor is humbling to say the least. Im grateful to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute for selecting my book from among any from among many others which im sure also worthy. I would like to express my particular gratitude in public to mark henry for his standout hospitality. I will speak for public about 30 minutes or so, and would be happy afterwards to answer any questions that anyone might have. Needless to say, a brief presentation like this one cannot hope to convey the fullness of a book thats nearly 600 pages long. But i do hope it will give some of you who have not yet had a chance to read the book some sense of its console aims and arduous. And i should just say that the actual size of the book is somewhat smaller than the representation. You need not worry to get home with you should you buy a copy to the unintended reformation is a work of historical analysis that takes the present that its point of departure. It does not aspire to be comprehensive, but the book does in the first instance to be as explanatory powerful as possible while making as few theoretical and methodological assumptions as necessary. Assume as little as possible, try to explain as much as possible. Secondarily, the book addresses some major contemporary concerns based on this historical analysis. And my remarks this evening are going to be mostly about the first ambition, the explanatory powerful aspect of ingenuity and i will say if h if you things at the second, speaking to the contemporary concerns on the basis of that historical analysis. I endeavor in the unintended reformation to answer a very basic but also a very big question. How did contemporary ideological and institutional realities being north america and europe come to be the way that they are . The book intends to characterize these realities matteroffactly. In ideological terms they include an open ended range of secular and religious truth claims by individuals about matters pertaining to human meaning, morality, purpose and priorities, including some religious truth claims articulated with great intellectual sophistication by theologians and philosophers of religion. Insofar as the present is a product of the past, any adequate historical accounts must be able to Pay Attention to and to explain all of these claims. The modern liberal institutions variously characteristic of all contemporary western states permit this ideological heterogeneity through the legal and political protection of individual citizens to believe and live as they please, so long as they obey established laws. So thats what needs to be accounted for. These institutions and the ideological had a navy that the present to the books explanation of the past became the present questions, as mark mentioned, many widely held assumptions. The reason is simple. Typical americans, common conceptions of change over time, and ordinary historical methodologies cannot answer the books central question. They fail to do justice to the full range of moral and metaphysical commitment encompasses under the first person plural, we. When it is used implicitly of all presentday europeans and north americans. We . We should not underestimate the importance of this question and the content of the answer. Predominant largescale historical narratives in which catholicism is thought to have been superceded by the protestant reformation which was in turn superceded by enlightened modernity only to be superceded in turn by the postmodern present would seem to imply that now we are all secular skeptical fragmented selves that we are not. I am not and i suspect that many of you gathered here this evening are not either. This inaccurate generalization then does not describe even highly educated westerners because it fails to account for the wide variety also of secular moderate rationalist or contemporary religious believers. What needs to be explained then is not a nonexistent uniform secularism that doesnt exist but a heterogeneous pluralism of individuals who hold rival secular and religious truth claims that diversely influence their actions and then contribute collectively to public life. Complex questions of historical explanation confront anyone who seeks to know what people today believe, where their beliefs come from and what their beliefs are based on. This is not only because individuals change over time and are usually complicated hybrids. Not only the beliefs but also their related assumptions arose through historical processes. The believe is are also embodied practitioners who enact behaviors within social relationships of Political Institutions all of which can and do change over time in complicated ways. No explanatory narrative could consider all of the relative evidence. Which other intellectual disciplines her own aims and presuppositions. All of which are also part of what needs to be explained because they too are historical products. Paradoxical as it might sound bad, particularly for historians to say, a nurse to answer the question of how the pass became the president , we have to bracket some of the ways in which historians ordinarily perceive. We need a more promising method. One that could in principle, if never in fact integrate all the relative bank gains a specialized historical scholarship while simultaneously recognizing not only this research but all knowledge making depends on assumptions that are themselves part of what requires explanation. This line of thought lies behind the unusual method and approach of the unintended reformation. In its attempt to explain how the pass became the president , the book is both more analytical and more synthetic than most works of history. It is more analytical first because it deliberately selective use of reconstructed descriptions of past individuals, institutions and ideas is subordinated to explanation in what is a relentlessly argument driven book. Second, its fairly analytical because its chapter structures based on nick actual disentangling a different domains of human life that were not linked separately from one another but are more easily grasp when considered one at a time. Ill Say Something more that each of the book six chapters in a moment. Human beings act on certain desires rather than others. The police some things but not others. They inhabit particular socioeconomic and political positions rather than others. And yet, it is difficult all at once to see these things and to pursue their changes over sometime. Hence, six chapters each of which concentrates a different concern. The unintended reformation is more synthetic than most works of history. In the first and thats because each of its job is contributes to the collective argument of the whole. No chapters on tcm milan despite their diverse foci. The book seeks to show intellectual, political, social and economic history cannot be neatly separated from one another because human beings embedded within social and political relationships cannot desires and relationship to the Natural World influenced by beliefs and ideas. Moreover, the book synthesizes much specialized historical scholarship about the reformation era and less extensively about the middle ages and modern era in a manner consistent with its overall explanatory objective. The specific and particular human pastor inc. Not by directly including enormous numbers of individual examples. Rather i synthesized and incorporated the analytical narrative a considerable body of more specialized than conventional historical scholarship. Now, answering a seemingly straightforward question about how to pass became the president turns out also to place considerable demands on the reader. Please do not let this deter you from buying and reading the book. I think it is quite written. Its not an easy read, but thats because the pass is not easy to understand. This multiple resents why places demands on the reader. Different domains of human life are analytically distinguished from one another. The six chapters. But theyre also synthetically related to one another as intertwined parts of a single overarching argument. This simultaneous distinguishing and relating covers a chronological span of more than half a millennium. Why . Restricting ourselves to the modern era cannot explain how the pass became the president. It requires particular attention to the reformation era. The book thats transgresses common boundaries of historical periodization insensitively the book incorporates a highly compressed way the relationship among science, metaphysics and conceptions of god, catholic, protestant and not philosophical fundamental matters of human meaning, values and purpose. The public exercise of institutional power. Moral theories and practices in relationship to political theories and institutions. Humidifiers in relationship to capitalism and consumption and the character and institutional sites of knowledge making across the full breadth of human intellectual inquiry. I toss readers minibus so to speak and i ask you to keep chuckling. Let me say a bit more about each of the books six chapters. Chapter one, excluding god. Explore the longterm consequences of what was initially a subtle rejection of the longstanding christian view of gods relationship to creation beginning in the late middle ages. This rejection tacitly and yet far from subtly continues to dominate modern intellectual life. Among the most significant consequences has been the pervasive modern spread of the view that increasingly powerful scientific explanations of natural regularities but we ordinarily call science provide progressively compelling evidence against the claims of revealed religion as such. So the more science explains, it is the outcome of the less room there is for god. This view turns out to be the result of contingent and often unknowingly held metaphysical assumptions with medieval roots in which god is in fact conflated with creation. The historical significance of these assumptions became unexpectedly important start in the 17th century because of the ways in which doctrinal controversy in the reformation era unintentionally marginalized theological discourse about god in the Natural World. That leaves scientific and philosophical is the only transformational way of trying to talk about god. In chapter two, relative icing doctrines. The protestant reformation and modern philosophy are analyzed as the two most important and related means by which attempts are made to ground truth claims by those who reject a medieval christianity as embodied in the Roman Catholic church. This has led and an unintended divergent ways since the 16th century to unintended pluralism space respectively on the bible in recent years doctrinal impasse in the reformation era pulp to foster the renaissance of ancient epistemological skepticism and to inspire modern philosophical foundationalism. Historically and empirically, reason alone has proved no more capable than scripture alone since luther by providing a basis for reaching shared answers to questions about what is true, how people should live or what they should care about. The longterm result is the openended multiplication of truth claims about such issues that proliferate within modern western states today and that collectively contribute to what i call in the book western hyper pluralism. Another phrase i used in the book in the kingdom of whatever. Chapter three, controlling the church is shows how the reformation transformed the already growing late medieval oversight of ecclesiastical or dictations by nonecclesiastical authorities, which eventually left a Lasting Legacy of the modern state control of religion and the vegetable periphery of secularization the religious toleration. Among those christians who reject the roman church, only politically supported forms of protestantism are able to have a wide lasting influence alongside catholic regimes in the early modern period. Inconclusive early geopolitical conflicts prompted the eventual political protection of individual revisionist freedom in exchange for religious privatization. Of those states today control churches no less although very differently than did confessional states in early modern europe. The subject of chapter four is subjected by the morality is the transition from the devout christianity that accept the good to modern liberalisms politics of right. This transition came about through the disagreements and disruptions about the christian good during the reformation era. Because christian, social ecclesial divisions reflected disputes about the good and implications for human life, modern world of political discourse transfer in the traditional rights and left determination of the good parts are individuals whose rights they say would protect. Advanced secularization has exposed the extent to which modern moral and political communities continue to rely about the good derived from christianity. The abandonment of this police has precipitated divisions among citizens today that an increasing pressure on the liberal democracies that enables us very divisions. One result is the notable rancor and stability of our Public Discourse. Not to mention our Dysfunctional Congress in recent years. But there were not, we think this is accurately referred to as a culture were. Chapter five, manufacturing the good life coming to the clever title among the six concentrates on consumption in conjunction with capitalism and take allergy in the middle ages to the renaissance to the 17th century dutch republic republic and the industrial revolution. This forged an ideology and related practices that dominate western modernity and increasingly through globalization of the world. Given the distractive rootlessness of collegial complex, catholics and protestants alike built on trends that preceded the reformation and quite frankly decided to go shopping instead of continuing to fight about religion. Passover so doing. In combination with the exercise of power by hegemonic liberal states, its an biosis of capitalism and consumerism is today more than anything else the cultural clue that holds the heterogeneity of western hyper pluralism. The final chapter secularizing knowledge analyzes the relationship among different sorts of knowledge together with the sites were no knowledge has been transplanted from the middle ages to the present. The confessional station at universities in the reformation era included a provision of theology with theologians remain knowledge, the pursuit of which migrated outside universities in early modern europe. Persistent doctrinal disagreements among christians as intellectual weakness on protection with 18th century innovations, heyday of the european enlightenment. Knowledge making was centralized in Research Universities beginning in germany. Theology was marginalized. This process is complete to the early 20th century except among catholic universities from which largely followed suit in the late 20th century. So much for the overview. Again, none of the chapters is meant to stand alone from the others. Together, they comprise a whole that endeavors to explain many features of the western world at the unintended longterm outcome of diverse rejections as well as variegated retentions and appropriations of medieval christianity is. The book seeks not only to study the distant past and continuing influence on the president , but also shed new light on the care care of some present problems into question the basic assumptions that frame life by understanding by those assumptions come from and what they are based on. The conclusion differs the view of this chat is an optically and offers them find the reflections. Like the book as a whole, it hopes him make good on the words of john admin, looking intently at the past can improve our present vision. Not many readers are likely to be accustomed to thinking about relationships among 70 different areas of human life. Distilled in such a condensed manner and analyzer is a a long period of time. Ill simultaneously been asked to rate inc. Many seemingly settled cornerstones of modern intellectual life. This is what we must do it seems to me if were to understand how the weather much north american and european feel to be today seem to be as it is. The unintended reformation is a demanding, intricate book because the human past is complex, just as human life is complex. Human decisions and actions taken many centuries ago continue to influence the president in ways that often go unrecognized. But bush decided genealogical historical analysis embodied in the book can discern entries. The book was written with care and it must be read with care and words to be understood, not least because the analysis of many historical realities is threaded through and distributed across multiple chapters instead of being treated in only one place. At the heart of the narrative is the reformation era because its on result doctrinal disagreements and concrete with a geopolitical distractions are the key to answering the books central question. The ongoing consequences of those controversies and conflicts continue to influence all western women and men today regardless of anyones particular commitments. The book is not primarily an argument about an instance of the aspects to two vectorize max weber would have it, indirect. I say explicitly in the book out of satanism as such did not disenchant the world. Much more important were the ongoing disputes between catholics and protestants, which prompted ideological alternatives in modern secular thoughts and their violent conflicts come which catalyzed institutional innovations that eventually accommodated religious as well as secular pluralism. Because they believe that christianity was not religion in the modern sense, a discrete domain of life separate from Political Economic exchange and so forth were brought there as they say in the book is far from homogeneous yet institutionalized worldview that for good or influence than was intended to mock domains of human life because of that the rejections of the Roman Catholic church Roman Catholic churchs authority by protestant reformers affected nearly everything. This included transformations that were already underway before the reformation such as conceptions of metaphysics, the increased dangers actual control of Ecclesiastical Affairs by none ecclesiastical authorities in the spread of marketing commerce in what was certainly in urban areas already highly monetized economy. The book traces the processes by which conflicts over true christianity prompted novel conceptions of religion is separate inseparable from the rest of life. It then analyzes the different betting of religion from science, the public exercise of power, modern moral and political theories, economic views and practices in Higher Education. An emphasis on doctrinal disagreement is not barely wanted but i think necessary if we are to understand the reformation era in consequences. The socially and politically divisive disagreements about what was true, how one not to live and what matters most in life immersed within a christian context in the early 1520th have never gone away. Instead, theyve been transformed. Theyve been modified. They and expanded in terms of content and character come even as efforts have been made to contain and manage the unintended and enormous effects. The most important institutional facilitators of this process have been and remain matters of the state, which solve the problems of early modern conventional coexistence very three circumscribed understanding of religion and political protection of individual rights to freedom of religious belief and worship. As i noted the introduction of the book, the unintended reformation expands upon and develops conclusions of a reach at the end of my first book, salvation that state, christian martyrdom in case you want to read another book of mine after you read this. He was already clear to me than the critical aspects of the reformation era and influence on modernity can be seen only as early modern christianity is that it comparatively across confessional boundaries inc. Statesupported protestants, radical protestants and cat. It would be an exaggeration i wrote at the conclusion of salvation state to say that unresolved religious disagreement caused the enlightenment, rise of modern science and philosophy, early modern renaissance of skepticism and the birth of modern relativism. Yet its important for some of these major reason modern but its clear to the unintended reformation seeks to delineate how this is so retracing trajectories on doctrinal disagreements through these and other early modern realities to our contemporary hyperpower listen not to virgin villages and take their truth claims. In salvation as they come towards the institutionalized it to the analysis that i pursue in the reformation. I wrote there, because the prospects for peaceful coexistence among christians were tenuous at best, all but nonreligious values could serve as the basis was able social and political life. Individuals would eventually have the right to believe and worship as they saw fit. Or they might not choose to worship at all. Or they might eventually campaign against religion as a source of intolerance and oppression throughout human history. All these activities to be protected by the modern state, which permits virtually anything that it has rendered private and that it can control. My new book is directed not only against modern reductionist theories of religion applied to religious believers in the safely distant premodern past as the salvation of state, a book about 60 entry christians willing to kill and die for religious views. This book, much more is that they might exposes the faithbased confessional or of contemporary secular ideologies with their historical roots and modern responses to reformation era doctrinal controversies. No one likes having the most recent release challenged whether those beliefs are religious or secular. It is just that most academics whose lease or secular art used to it were as religious believers in the academy have to confront it all the time. Besides its primary aim of seeking to explain how weve arrived historically where we are today coming the unintended reformation uses historical analysis to highlight contemporary concerns. This is the second at the two points i mentioned at the outset. This is a pack to go corollary of the fact the president is a product of the past, understanding makings of the contemporary world should give us insight into some of his problems. I should say they seem to need to be problems and i think they do too many other people. These include issues as disparate as our interminable and apparently irresolvable moral disagreements in the social rancor and political friction they sometimes generate. Our lack of any substantive, good and the seeming impossibility of devising one. The inability to articulate any convincing reason to believe human rights or persons are real if we assume metaphysical naturalism that covers Public Discourse in the attempt to understand how different types of knowledge might fit together, which both masks the incompatibilities among the true claims a different academic disciplines and contributes to the incoherence of undergraduate university education. The unintended reformation argues that all these features of presentday western life in order for unintended projects that tangled historical trajectories that derive from and resolve doctrinal controversies and the eventual additional solution to the concrete early geopolitical controversies at the 16th and 17th centuries. How one evaluates them, whether one finds cause for concern or celebration is a matter separate from the persuasiveness of an historical analysis that purports to explain how weve arrived at that. In other words, one could agree the analytical narrative but praise these features of presentday western life, our exuberant multiculturalism for exam will. They seem to me traveling for recent of which i expanded the book notwithstanding numerous positive aspects of modernity with which they coexist in which i also acknowledge. Describe the ways in which some readers have misread the book, it is not a lament for an allegedly golden age of medieval christian to that we have lost. But nor does it naively assume because modernity has brought certain unquestionable gains, therefore everything about it is commendable and we should ignore the problems it has also created, some of which have only become clear in recent decades. The payoff of my book i would hope has multiple aspects. Reconceptualize is the reformation by historically reintegrating those protestant to did not receive Political Support with those who did. In fact, the key to understanding the reformation as there will is looking at the full range of interpretations of scripture among those who rejected Roman Catholicism, not just the threads are reformed protestants. By challenging conceptions of change over time and schemes of historical periodization, the book offers fresh insight into how weve reached the situation in which we find ourselves today in north america and europe and contributes to greater selfawareness. I hope not only historians but other scholars and scientists as well as educated readers in general will be inspired by the book to the beyond areas of expertise adventures and indeed beyond interdisciplinary to questions about the relationships among the different kinds of knowledge generated in the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. I hope the book will convince colleagues at the exclusion of intellectually sophisticated religious factors for research of these is inconsistent with the openmindedness that should characterize the supposed commitment to you in intellectual inquiry without ideological restrictions. I am well aware also been entrenched in frequently unacknowledged prejudices are unlikely to make this likely. But many readers were and are proud not to like the unintended reformation is about pain and has been clear from some reviews of the book. It is far too unsettling and subversive to garner any day of perching unanimous approval. What matters to me is whether those who dislike the book have understood it and if so, whether they have persuasive counterarguments to knock against it. Once again, it is enormously gratifying to be receiving this is how the keyword in the Intercollegiate Studies Institute for my book. It shows that there are at least some readers who get it. Thank you. [applause] weve got time for questions. Given the reduced number of students who are pursuing the study of the humanities, is the faculty and the university is at high risk that universities will no longer support large humanities faculties and only reduce the supply of information, which is so vitally needed. At the big question come important question about the sustainability, viability and strength of the humanities in americas colleges and universities. The question i think is difficult one to answer in kind of general terms because american Higher Education is so diverse and so enormous compared to other countries. My sense is that humanities for the foreseeable future will be fine and elite colleges and universities. What i worry about much more our state universities that are more strapped in press for funding by state legislatures try to contend with rising costs in so many other concerns. Higher education be one among them. I worry about the communities particularly at less wellfunded , less wellequipped liberal arts colleges and so forth. The overwhelming pressures towards economic production, the bottom line means the socalled stem disciplines and mathematics will continue to receive increasing funding in the future. It is not clear to me for many of americas future university and College Students that theyre necessarily going to have a very robust humanities education at their disposal, which is a huge problem. The kinds of questions im talking about, how do you think about values commending what kind of life should be lived. Those questions cant be answered by science or engineering or this ethical questions, normative questions. You can get that from how we can understand subatomic particles or was the most efficient way to increase production of a manufactured good. Speed not one of the other issues regarding humanities is not perhaps the number, but also the kind of material on the knowledgebase approach of the humanities south. I touched on it very briefly near the end of my talk, one dimension of that, by talking about what seems to me a very widespread, often unmake knowledge ideological restriction on Academic Freedom in many colleges and universities. That is its not so much a kind of hard and fast prohibition as a sort of understood restriction that intellectually sophisticated religious perspectives are not welcome in universities and colleges. To me thats restriction on Academic Freedom. So thats one thing basically if you want to know the punchline, what does he recommend . Is a pretty dire situation of where we go from here. I could preempt that by saying im an historian, not a policymaker or profit. The only thing i say it began to sprinkle some of my colleagues is the academy should be a secularized because the assumptions of the 19th century that were made to exclude religion from academic discourse i think can be shown now to have been highly contingent, not in fact a once for all decisions made. For me, thats the one area i have particularly pressed on. So thats a pretty controversial thing to say actually in the academy today. Anybody who is familiar with it is that. Are you familiar with the term western hyper pluralism . Yes. The pluralism, but even more. Of course some people said how is hyper perl is in or this is clearly polemical terms as opposed to just pluralism. I mean unprecedentedly wide range of different views about whats valuable in a human life, what kinds of morality i would have . What should you might look like, for example . What practices are acceptable . What should people devote leisure time to . How should we organize our institutions and so forth . The range of views about that it seems to me rather late in early 21st century is much more than it was in the late 19th century when at the time, the exuberant wide range of different forms we see when we look across not only western europe, but the world. Interactions among peoples and cultures and so forth and the increased use of traveling the world we live in today increases that even more. And in of itself, is not necessarily problematic thing. It depends on the content of what those particular views and actions embodied by the zero and depending on how people exercise are politically protected rights and ready to believe and act the way they want to, there might be not so many problems. There might be really serious problems. So hyper pluralism is meant as a kind of description of the enormous variety and range of ways in which people answer what i call in the book lays questions. How should we live . What should we care about . What are your priorities . What matters to you . Does that help . I think one of your questions is how then shall we live. We cant get the answers to that strictly out of academia. Academia has problems addressing that. But the think tanks are not subject to that type of restraint and i think they had a useful among specifically the American Enterprise institute, where theyve looked at it from a political viewpoint and theyve come up largely with a simple formula that is not faith based. Starting with Charles Murray and now being pushed, i believe that the current president , Arthur Brooke comes down to this. The essentials of a Meaningful Life our family, faith, what you do yourself as youre involved in civil society. Indeed, to have a really rewarding, satisfying place he looked back on and say it was great. The secular idea that you can do without faith, that tries to say thats wrong. We have the empirical evidence here again that we must compel the Wishful Thinking people to face up to the fact that you must accept and face the empirical evidence. The other guys have theories. We must compel the recognition of empirical evidence. I agree with you that i think think tanks offer in porton supplementary necessary for this in discourse Public Discourse in the United States. Just to go along with the way youve set it up, the difficulty as far as answering the question of how now shall we live is of course they are also at ink tanks on the left who have their respective answers and their studies they draw on and they say those people on the right, those ideologues are really the problem. The point is yes, you tanks are part of the picture, but they also participate in the kind of at least in the United States, at the current moment, the ideologically divided and problematic character. Even the question of family. Family is important, but therell be people on on the left to say hi do you define family . Does that mean a heterosexual marriage between one man and one woman . Why can it include gay marriage . You know the arguments, those kinds of im not defending not. I am saying in the structures that we have, we have political protection for people to argue for those things. In the current situation, it has led to a kind of tension, division and a real unwilling to to find resort. Thats what concerns me. I think its another opportunity for us to say lets have it out. This gap in public and lets define the question him and present, present alternatives as again were going to hurt a lot of feelings, but we had the compelling evidence. Youre not domestic gentlemen. Im less sanguine. Professor gregory come i havent read your book. Im struck by a remark which he said some of your colleagues crystallized at the University Needs to be in secularized. In the United States, not only there, the university is very much a statesupported and stateowned enterprise in many places. Where its not owned, supported by the state. Does it follow that the state that should be in secularized and where does the threat of that take you . Thats a great point. I dont think i sandison about. I set it at some point, somewhere, that i think the exclusion of religion from Higher Educational context in fact is a sort of reflection of parallel to the traditional separation of church and state. That is, just as we have this distinction, very broad, very contested, some its impossible to resolve than satisfactory ways. Insofar as we have it, its in a legal reality that is reflect in Higher Education by saying this is an academic is to should come as a religion doesnt belong here. Are there different political theorist and so forth have argued us about as long has somebody can make their religiouslybased argument in the public sphere and a political forum, they ought not be excluded from doing that simply because the arguments are religious. To me, the same logic as well you really have to exclude secular arguments from the public sphere. Secular commitments are not nontheological. They are theological claims. They are but the on court tints are nonexistent or the bracket ability of religious claims. So i dont see any difficulty with that whatsoever. I think it behooves those who do want to make religiouslybased or religiously inflected arguments in the public sphere for political purposes to do so in such a way that is going to be intellectually and persuasive and compelling to others. Really bad idea to say in terms of being persuasive essay my personal savior, so therefore i dont think thats going to follow very quickly. You have to know your audience is and how to argue it. Any priority exclusion doesnt make sense to me. [inaudible] and my question is, effectively have two series of claims. I have a hard time relating. One is you have the polemic against the we, that we postmodern man three years ago, Charles Taylor is here. He basically says, we are these people for whom faith is a choice in a way that is not true for people in the past. So you have said we are catholic protestants, secularists, whatever. On the other hand, youre also arguing we are all inheritors of the reformation. So help me out on the diversity of who we are today versus the fact we are somehow great question. I do think its possible to answer that. We are all affected by the consequences of the reformation era. But to take it or not, regardless of what we individually affirm with another paper pluralism. As we live within western liberal Political Institutions. Everybody who lives in a western country lives in this kind of a structure with a variation, we also all live within capitalistic market economies part of an interconnected Global Market network regardless of even the people in the most intentional i want to get off the bridge and rural missouri, they still have to enter back with markets in certain ways. In that sense, we are within this institutional structures regardless of the particular ways in which you either affirm or dont affirm or had very kind of race in which we answer those questions. Since you mentioned Charles Taylor, give us the ways in which churros taylor Charles Taylor is a great thinker, but he is my mind a frustrating way of using the first person and sources of this out years ago from my thinking about this. If you think this country and see if it has a disagreement that actually help us explain more about the political and cultural realities. Whenever taylor says we, as could you name . I dont recognize myself. I started to pull on that thread. Im struck by a comment you said that there hasnt been much change in the states influence from a confession state to a privatized version of religion that bestows those individual right. My question in terms of lucky not to send says society as a smartphone as a whole, the political and theological intertwine, what do you do with the fact that the structures and institutions that used to make a possible now formally sued for the individuated right to lets say religious freedom. Partygoer fat . If youre asking specifically about the relationship of the cat church to the individual support of religious freedom in the Digital Rights understood in that way, it is a complicated question. Also conceptually. Short answer would say this. The way in which postvatican catholicism thinks about individual rights and freedom is never divorced from a wider conception of the human person and still understood teleological eight, ultimately as having its halos that is not to be answered in this life. It is not the kind of voluntarist, preferential understanding of iowa choose what is good for me. This is not john rawls been approved. Its an understanding of the advisability of the individual has created an image and and likeness of god. It is wrong about fundamental matters of belief and conviction. Not according to the church has to be understood in relationship to a broad section of the person under good as the teleological rational being in community with the supernatural destiny. Thats the short answer. Its a good question, a complicated one. To mark questions. Was you say one of the gunmen and the consequences of the reformation is what we see manifested today in a world becoming a place where everything is gray. And theres no absolutes of right or wrong. In a conversation with someone a few ago. I turned to them and i said you dont believe in absoluteness. I can have a conversation with you. I said your leg just for the sake of arguing. Would she say thats one of the consequences of attack name here . Its a great question. The short answer to this one is shorter than the one i just gave. The answer is yes. But in complicated ways, what i try to do in the book suggests there are some very germanic and deep consequences of days that have a long time ago. But the ways in which they have turned out to be is not a simple straight line. I will say this but maybe its a little bit more positive than what you suggested. In my experience, almost everyone, even the people who claim not to believe its absolute ask somebody if you get in a situation, under certain circumstances permit genocide is except to go were selling 12yearold girls into slavery or having children tortured in front of their parents. Thank goodness. Those people all think we make the case obviously choosing and then hopping on the other side of the line. But if you actually get in conversations people about this, ask them coming in now, its not like you mean it cant mistreatment say it has to be people you have a relationship with. Most people would press to think that there really are certain thing really wrong. Universally wrong. More and more people are embracing the end justified the means and that i think is one of the consequences. Is very pervasive. Its an instrumental with a cane. But the fact theyre utilitarian economic minded way of inking that pervades so much of the society. A lot of ideas have come to my mind while youve been sharing these concepts. One of the things ive thought about for a long time is what is stopping individual and putting together money and hiring professors to teach their children because right now if the administration has its way, the less expensive universities will not have the kind of education if they dont teach logic. How are we going to have these discussions if we have no logic in that room is a feeling . Has that been done . Have different groups of people getting together and hiring may be five professors to have a decent education . Take homeschooling to the next level essentially. There may be people here who know the answer. I empirically dont know whether thats the time. There is a form done in early modern europe called hiring a tutor. You actually have an inhouse tutor that would educate your children all the way up through. While it could be cheap, humanities professors dont make as much as lawyers and doctors do. But we do okay. Probably not many people want to pay our salaries. Not to be flippant. I think its a serious question. Im very concerned as an academic and intellectual, im very kind turned i dont thought ulster politics at the ignorance of the american electorate. Its distressing in the extreme to see the level of which crucially it portends National Issues are reduced to a series of propagandistic bolus points to a series of slogans that depending whether youre on the right or left to put the appropriate Bumper Sticker on your car. The world we created for ourselves is an incredibly complicated route. Its not a word you can simply reduced to a few spoken and think im just going to bulldoze my way over the other side. But we dont have an electorate that is receptive to that. We dont have a public good nothing to see this in an elitist way. I think it isnt correctly demonstrable. When Jay Leno Posada masks people, whos the Vice President of the United States . But i have people dont know thats dyer. Its indicative of a total lack of awareness in the shoulder shrugging attitude. Who cares dishonestly can hang out with my friend and my smartphone is charged. Its a bit cynical, but i think you know what i mean. Anyway, on a happy note. [applause] so we have to present to brad gregory [inaudible] author of the unintended reformation. [inaudible] we also have to remb