This course in American economic thought seeks to understand philosophically the relationship between politics and economics. We will begin by exploring the fundamental theories of economic life in the West through the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Pope Leo XIII, paying particular attention to arguments for and against commercial society. We will then turn to the development of the American market and its role in shaping the character of individuals and the meaning of citizenship. Readings are drawn from, among others, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Douglass, Wilson, Dewey, and DuBois. The course will end by considering the relationship between citizen and government in the contemporary United States. Throughout, we consider the ethics of the market economy, the system of production and exchange within which we live. Are its tremendous inequalities and accumulations just? How can we cultivate moderation amid consumerism? What role do virtue and leisure play in this system? Our task is to learn to produce and purchase in the service of a good life.

This class aims to understand liberal education-the ancient idea that learning is valuable for its own sakeand its relation to the human capacity to live freely. Can the pursuit of the truth make us better citizens, improve our character, or perhaps even save our souls? Or does civic piety only trap us deeper in the Cave? For students of both the liberal arts and politics, these questions are existential. Once liberal education was thought the characteristic marker of the leisured, ruling class, making it aristocratic, not democratic. To better understand whether liberal education offers something that contemporary America needs, this class traces its history: developing from Plato and Aristotle to the medieval university and the Renaissance humanists, it undergoes a profound critique in the early modern period and finds an uneasy home in the modern Western research university. While this model has come under repeated attack, it remains prestigious and envied across the world. Along the way, we will ask whether the university is necessarily secular or religious and consider Notre Dame's Catholic mission. In the context of today's opposition between populists and elitists, can elite graduates serve the common good?

This is the gateway course to the Constitutional Studies program at Notre Dame. It attempts to understand the nature of the American regime and her most important principles. It explores the American Constitution and the philosophical and political ideas that animated its creation and subsequent development. It proceeds by examining select statesmen and critical historical periods—specifically, the Founding era, Lincoln and the slavery crisis, and the Progressives.

This class will seek to tackle two interrelated questions. The first is about ourselves, as students and teachers of the humanities and of politics: does our education in these “useless” arts, which lack direct practical application, nevertheless contribute to political and social life? The second is an ancient question: can knowledge make people better? Once the liberal arts were thought the characteristic marker of the leisured, ruling class, making their relationship to modern democracy full of tension. To gain purchase on our driving questions to better understand whether liberal education can offer something our contemporary regimes need, this class takes a deep dive into the history of liberal education: starting with Plato and Aristotle, it traces the medieval development of the liberal arts, to the Renaissance ideal and its challengers, to an array of critics and defenders of the modern Western research university. While this model has come under repeated attack, it remains prestigious and envied across the world.

In a time of growing anxiety about both the self-interested power wielded by an unaccountable few and simultaneously about the instability caused by those claiming to speak in the people’s name, the classical question of the proper relationship between the many and the few in politics bears revisiting. To gain purchase and perspective on the contemporary language of elitism and populism, we will examine together a series of texts articulating the continued relevance of the aristocratic principle in a democratic age. This class demands a commitment to reading the primary texts closely and to engaging with them both in oral discussion and in written analysis.