Departments & Services (A-Z)
Academics

Political Science




                   The Tocqueville Program


Every year, the Tocqueville Program sponsors a course and brings prominent scholars and public intellectuals to Furman’s campus with the aim encouraging serious and open engagement with the moral questions at the heart of political life.

The program takes its name from Alexis de Tocqueville, perhaps the greatest student of modern democracy, who understood both the difficulty and the necessity of reminding citizens of a decent and prosperous regime about questions of truth, nobility and eternity. These questions are not always comfortable to discuss and are never easily resolved; but, as Tocqueville understood, these questions cannot be ignored by human beings who seek to live lives of freedom and dignity. 

This year, the Tocqueville Program will continue to focus on the theme of Liberal Education and Liberal Democracy. From the beginning of the American Republic, our best statesman and thinkers have seen an essential connection between liberal democracy and liberal education. According to Thomas Jefferson, the extensive educational plan he proposed for his native Virginia was a necessary means for “rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty.” The rigorous education in politics and history Jefferson envisioned, however, has little relation to what is taught in American universities today. In spite of a price tag that strains the limits of middle-class credulity, our universities and colleges often offer curricula with little apparent coherence and seem increasingly incapable of articulating the high and noble purpose of liberal education in a democratic society. Now is thus an auspicious moment to take up the question at the heart of this year’s program, “What is liberal education?”

2012 Lectures 


John Agresto
"Do American Colleges Today Serve Any Public Function? "
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
4:30pm
Watkins Room, University Center
Furman University
Reception follows immediately after the address.




Harvey Mansfield
"Science and Liberal Education"
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
4:30pm
Watkins Room, University Center
Furman University
Reception follows immediately after the address.




Anthony Kronman
"Liberal Education and Political Liberalism"
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
4:30pm
Watkins Room, University Center
Furman University
Reception follows immediately after the address.

Connect With Furman

     
3300 Poinsett Highway, Greenville, SC, 29613
Phone: 864-294-2000

Site Errors or Feedback