Tocqueville’s Democratic Historians
We’ve decided to experiment with a new feature on the blog called “close-reading Tocqueville.” The premise is simple: we’ll periodically select one chapter from Tocqueville’s corpus and comment on what […]
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Danielle Charette
Danielle Charette is a PhD candidate with the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought, where she studies political theory and is writing a dissertation on the political thought of David Hume. Her work has appeared in The History of Political Thought, The History of European Ideas, and popular outlets such as The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Point, The Chronicle Review, and the Hedgehog Review. She graduated from Swarthmore College in 2014 with a BA in English Literature.Staging Saul Bellow’s Democracy
In a 1972 speech at the Chicago Public Library, the novelist Saul Bellow described the Westside branch where he borrowed books as a boy. The regulars at the Humbolt […]
MoreBook Forum: Sophia Rosenfeld’s Democracy and Truth
This is the launch of our book forum for Sophia Rosenfeld’s Democracy and Truth: A Short History (University of Pennsylvania Press 2019). Populist and “post-truth” politics have a long pedigree. Pamphlets […]
MoreOn Judith Shklar, snobbery, and the SAT
The SAT was back in the news last week, thanks to the College Board’s introduction of something called an “adversity score.” Admissions officers will now see a number, between […]
MoreComputer programmers and Quentin Compson: American Stoics?
The New York Times recently ran an entertaining—if somewhat unnerving—piece on Silicon Valley’s fascination with Stoicism. A number of prominent tech entrepreneurs claim to follow the philosophy of self-mastery taught by […]
MorePressman on When the American Press Became Modern
Review of Matthew Pressman, On Press: The Liberal Values That Shaped the News (Harvard University Press, 2018) Readers imagining the history of the American news media might think of […]
MoreDavid Runciman : La démocratie en crise de milieu de vie
David Runciman s’est rendu à l’Université de Chicago en février 2019 pour y donner une conférence sur la notion d’ « artificialité » chez Hobbes et présenter son dernier livre, How Democracy Ends. […]
MoreReasoning with the Greeks
Danielle Charette and Robert Stone sat down this week with Josiah Ober, the Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Professor of classics and political science at Stanford University. They discussed Professor Ober’s latest book, Demopolis (Cambridge, […]
MoreTherapy for Middle-Aged Democracies
Jacob Hamburger and Danielle Charette sat down with David Runciman at the University of Chicago, just after his Political Theory Workshop presentation, where he connected ideas of artificiality and corporatism […]
MoreThe Administrative Hunch: Is Cass Sunstein a Tocquevillian?
Stephen Sawyer’s post in January on the democratic paradoxes of the administrative state got me thinking, somewhat tangentially, about the Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein. Like many non-lawyers, I first came […]
MoreA Tocquevillian Take on Moyn and Law Schools
Last month, Samuel Moyn declared in The Chronicle of Higher Education that law schools might be bad for democracy. He seems to have struck a nerve. Moyn, a prominent human […]
MoreReading Kamel Daoud in America
Review of Kamel Daoud, Chroniques: Selected Columns, 2010-2016 (Other Press, 2018) Translated by Elisabeth Zerofsky I’m a latecomer to the Affaire Daoud. I overlooked the fawning coverage that Kamel Daoud’s novel, […]
MoreStunning Sympathy
The evolution of photography seems to correspond with our modern capacity for sympathy. Someone in a Facetime conversation feels more present than a news clip from a month ago, while […]
MoreMister Rogers’ Television
Until watching Morgan Neville’s documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, it had been a long while since I’d given Mister Rogers much thought. If he came up at all in […]
MoreCulture and War: Edith Wharton’s 1918
This past February, the Times Literary Supplement published a translation of Edith Wharton’s lecture, “France and Its Allies at War: The Witnesses Speak.” It’s a curious little speech, delivered in […]
MoreL’Education des jeunes filles aux Etats-Unis
Film review: Lady Bird, written and directed by Greta Gerwig; The Florida Project, written by Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch, directed by Sean Baker Tocqueville’s observations on raising girls in the United […]
MoreThe Allure of the City
Danielle Charette is a PhD Student with the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, where she studies political theory. She graduated from Swarthmore College with a BA in […]
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