The Tanner Lectures on Human Values are presented annually at a select list of universities around the world. The University Center serves as host to these lectures, in which an eminent scholar from philosophy, religion, the humanities, sciences, creative arts or learned professions, or a person eminent in political or social life, is invited to present a series of lectures reflecting on scholarly and scientific learning related to “the entire range of values pertinent to the human condition.”
Fintan O’Toole, a journalist, author, and columnist for the Irish Times, will consider the relationship between democracy and art, and call for the reassertion of art as necessary for democratic citizenship.
In Lecture I: Against Artfulness, O’Toole will explore how art and democracy have shifted simultaneously in opposite directions. On one hand, very few people still believe that aesthetic experience has a positive political value. Yet, on the other, democratic practice is increasingly saturated with performativity and fictional narratives of identity. Ideas that once belonged to artists—provocation, invention, and knowingness—have become the stuff of reactionary politics.
More information here.
This lecture is part of a series. O’Toole will deliver Lecture II: Negative Capability on Thursday, November 10.
SPONSORS
Center for Collaborative History
Department of Anthropology
Department of Art & Archaeology
Department of English
Department of Philosophy
Department of Politics
Lewis Center for the Arts
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Princeton University Art Museum
Princeton University Humanities Council
Princeton University Public Lectures
The Program in Creative Writing at Princeton
The Program in Journalism at Princeton
