Rethinking Liberalism, Libertas (Freedom), and Self-Cultivation
The Toby and Herbert Stolzer Annual Lecture
Three distinguished scholars of the Enlightenment—Susan Neiman (Einstein Forum, Berlin), Helena Rosenblatt (CUNY Graduate Center), and David Sorkin (Yale University)—will join Professor Nancy Sinkoff, academic director of the Bildner Center, to reassess the values of the European Enlightenment and the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment) and their relevance for our present moment.
We are living in an unenlightened age—if by “enlightened” we mean respect for reason and science, confidence in the possibility of human progress, and the ability, even the obligation, to criticize our current social and political reality in the hope of making it better. There are myriad reasons why we have arrived at this moment. Rather than diagnose that process, however, this panel will reassess the relationship among Enlightenment liberalism, libertas (a concept of freedom rooted in Roman antiquity), and the ideal of self-cultivation.