On Wednesday, September 13, more than 400 students and faculty attended Discourse in Democracy’s annual Constitution Day Lecture. This year’s lecture was delivered by Dr. David Williams, of DePaul University in Chicago. Entitled “The Forgotten Role of Republican Virtue in the American Constitution,” Dr. Williams spoke about the tension between economic inequality and republican virtue.
In addition to the lecture, Dr. Williams hosted a seminar for around 20 undergraduate and graduate students. The seminar explored the theme of economic inequality in the Western intellectual tradition.
Caden Douglass, a graduate student who attended the event, said that “the lecture pointed out a troubling flaw in our republic using classical figures in political thought such as Aristotle to identify potential problems that can arise in Republics like the issue of income inequality.”
Dr. Williams is the author of Rousseau’s Platonic Enlightenment, Rousseau’s ‘Social Contract’: An Introduction, and “The Greatest of All Plagues”: Economic Inequality in Western Political Thought. Dr. Williams’ articles connecting the history of political thought to contemporary political concerns have appeared in a variety of outlets including The Washington Post, The Hill, and Bloomberg News.
