We are All Postliberals Now

A conversation with Professors Patrick Deneen and Bryan Garsten.

Patrick J. Deneen is Professor of Political Science and holds the David A. Potenziani Memorial Chair of Constitutional Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Prior to joining the faculty of Notre Dame in 2012, he taught at Princeton University (1997-2005) and Georgetown University (2005-2012), where he held the Markos and Eleni Tsakapoulos-Kounalakis Chair in Hellenic Studies.  From 2005-2007 he served as principle Speechwriter and Special Assistant to the Director of the U.S. Information Agency, Joseph Duffey. Deneen's intellectual interests and publications are ranging, including ancient political thought, American political thought, liberalism, conservatism, religion and politics and literature and politics.  He has written five books and edited three others.  His books include The Odyssey of Political Theory, Democratic Faith, Conserving America?, Why Liberalism Failed, and Regime Change. 

Bryan Garsten is Professor of Political Science and the Humanities at Yale University. He is the author of Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment (Harvard University Press, 2006) as well as articles on political rhetoric and deliberation, the meaning of representative government, the relationship of politics and religion, and the place of emotions in political life. Garsten is now finishing a book called The Heart of a Heartless World that examines the ethical, political and religious core of early nineteenth century liberalism in the United States and France. He has also edited Rousseau, the Enlightenment, and Their Legacies, a collection of essays by the Rousseau scholar Robert Wokler (Princeton University Press, 2012). His writings have won various awards, including the First Book Prize of the Foundations of Political Theory section of the American Political Science Association.