Pursuing Happyness: The American Dream and the Threat of Cultural Nihilism

A viewing of the film "Thirteen Conversations About One Thing" followed by a brief lecture by Dr. Thomas Hibbs entitled "Pursuing Happyness: The American Dream and the Threat of Cultural Nihilism"

With Dr. Thomas S. HIBBS, Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Culture and Dean of the Honors College at Baylor University

Presented by Crossroads Cultural Center and The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Tocqueville Forum

To the degree that a society has been overtaken by a sense of malaise rather than exuberance, by fragmentation rather than wholeness, the vocation of the artist, whether novelist, poet, playwright, filmmaker, can perhaps be said to come that much closer to that of the diagnostician rather than the artist’s celebration of life in a triumphant age. Something is indeed wrong, and one of the tasks of the serious novelist is, if not to isolate the bacillus under the microscope, at least to give the sickness a name, to render the unspeakable speakable. Not to overwork the comparison, the artist’s work in such times is assuredly not that of the pathologist whose subject matter is a corpse and whose question is not ‘What is wrong?’ but ‘What did the patient die of?" For I take it as going without saying that the entire enterprise of literature is like that of a physician undertaken in hope. Otherwise, why would be here? Why bother to read, write, teach, study, if the patient is already dead?––for, in this case, the patient is the culture itself.–Walker Percy, Diagnosing the Modern Malaise

The event is open to the public and free of charge.

About this Event

Date: Friday, March 4, 2011
Time: 6:30 pm
Location: Georgetown University
Healy Hall, Room 103
37th and O Street, N.W.
Washington, DC
directions

About the Speaker

Dr. Thomas S. Hibbs
Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Culture and Dean of the Honors College at Baylor University

Invitation

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Transcript

Not available