Patrick Deneen and Michael E. Hartmann discuss American Odyssey in the Giving Review.
Patrick J. Deneen is a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame who teaches and writes about the history of political thought, liberalism, conservatism, and constitutionalism. Before joining Notre Dame in 2012, Deneen taught politics at Princeton University and government at Georgetown University, where he founded the Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy. Earlier, from 1995 to 1997, he served as a special adviser to and speechwriter for Joseph Duffey, director of the U.S. Information Agency during the Clinton administration.
Deneen is regarded as an intellectual leader of “postliberalism”—which considers the contemporary liberal order’s emphasis on individual autonomy to be corrosive of community and traditional institutions like the family, religious and civic institutions, and localities, as well as of shared moral norms on which a healthy society depends. It urges a deeper appreciation of those institutions and their roles—and advocates a more-prominent inclusion of them in public discourse and policy debate about how best to pursue the common good, social solidarity, tradition, and human flourishing.
Some conservative critics worry that postliberalism’s rejection of liberalism goes too far, threatening individual liberty and the American constitutional tradition; postliberals counter that liberalism itself has undermined the institutions and ways of life necessary to sustain that liberty and tradition.
Deneen is the author of six and the co-editor of three books. He also co-edited the “Radical Conservatisms” book series that includes Jeremy Beer‘s 2015 The Philanthropic Revolution: An Alternative History of American Charity. Deneen’s books include 2018’s Why Liberalism Failed, an early version of the title for which was suggested by Beer and which was famously praised by Barack Obama, and 2023’s Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future.
In Deneen’s new American Odyssey: What An Ancient Story Reveals About Our Divided Souls— published by Creed & Culture, which was co-founded by Beer—he offers a compelling and entertaining account of a recurring American tension between rootedness and restlessness that maps unusually well onto issues in and surrounding philanthropy.
