Memory and Identity Past events New York
Chesterton and Freedom
Wednesday, October 7, 2020 at 2:30 PM Past event
An online conference exploring Chestertonian liberty, then and now
With Dr. Carlo Lancellotti, Professor of Mathematics at the College of Staten Island and Faculty in Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center; and Dr. Dermot Quinn, Professor of History at Seton Hall University, and Editor of The Chesterton Review
Presented by Crossroads Cultural Center and The G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture at Seton Hall University
‘The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.’ Chesterton loved liberty and he devoted his life to ensuring that it be enjoyed by as many people as possible. But he also loved limits, the boundaries or fences that contain the things we hold dear, and, by containing them, make them even more precious. The truly free person is the person who knows when to stop.
This conference will explore Chestertonian liberty, then and now. In Chesterton’s time, challenges to liberty came from the state, from the political class, from cultural elites, from petty bureaucrats, and, of course, from tyrants large and small. How did Chesterton answer the challenges? And are the challenges, and the answers, the same today as they were then?