The CU Denver Philosophy’s Haber Lecture Series kicked off the academic year with “The Work of Community in C.S. Pierce and Jane Addams” by Roger Ward of Georgetown College

Abstract:

The standard story of a community in American thinking often begins with English Puritans, and though that worldview is well lost, understanding the demand the community places on us as well as the work or effect of the community are essential tasks for us today. In this context, Ward examines the impulse of the community after the shaking experience of COVID-19, vaccines, vaccine-resisters, January 6 insurrectionists, and the growing wave of white Christian nationalism. The story of the community that emerges in C.S. Peirce and Jane Addams defines two main branches of American philosophical thought. Whatever challenges to individual choices may arise, and however the stability of civil life may be threatened by external violence or internal dissolution, the living character of the community can be discovered, nurtured, and tested; the nature of this good provides a context for individual lives and speculative hope. Peirce and Addams represent an enlivening tension within American philosophy and provide direction for correcting or saving American philosophy from fragmentation and loss of meaning for our current needs.