Where's the Virtue in the Humanities?

Whether in banks or on the battlefield, in the NHS or in national newspapers, the need for virtuous leadership is now patent. An education in the humanities is, in fact, an education in virtues that are at once intellectual and civic, underscoring its importance for non-economic public flourishing. Such moral formation would be much more effective, however, were it openly professed and discussed. But the predominant liberal ideal, aspiring to neutrality on the Good Life, tends to suppress such profession. How, then, can Liberal Humanities own up to – and promote – its public service as a matrix of civic virtue?

Presenter: Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, and Director of the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life, University of Oxford

Respondents: Dr. Donald Drakeman (author of The Value of the Humanities)
Steven Biel, Executive Director of the Humanities Centre at Harvard University

Chair: Jonathan Bate, Provost of Worcester College and Professor of English Literature at University of Oxford (author of The Public Value of the Humanities)

Lunch will be provided.

This seminar is part of "Humanities and the Public Good", a special series of events bringing together leading scholars in the arts and sciences and influential figures beyond academia, to consider the role of the Humanities in addressing contemporary challenges.