THE 2016 RENE GIRARD LECTURE IN PARIS
17 OCTOBER 2016
SCIENCES PO, BOUTMY AMPHITHEATER
PIERRE MANENT
"SHAKESPEARE'S JULIUS CAESAR, OR THE TRAGEDY OF THE REPUBLIC"
Political philosopher Pierre Manent will give the 2016 Girard Lecture entitled "Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, or The Tragedy of the Republic" (Le "Jules César" de Shakespeare, ou la Tragédie de la République") October 17th, 2016 at Sciences Po in Paris. National Review has called Manent "the most deeply original, broadly erudite, and genuinely politically engaged thinker alive today." His most recent book is Beyond Radical Secularism (St. Augustine's Press, 2016), which caused a sensation when it was first published in France in 2015. His talk will confront the political situation of France and Europe through a reading of Shakespeare's most powerful political drama.
A Transatlantic Lecture Series
The Girard Lectures are an annual, transatlantic series to honor the late religious anthropologist, French Academician, and Stanford Professor René Girard. The Lectures take place in Paris, France and at Stanford University, Girard's intellectual homes, and aim to highlight thinkers of extraordinary scope and daring.
In his 2013 inaugural René Girard Lecture, historian Timothy Snyder placed the Holocaust in global perspective. "We have scarcely begun to comprehend the Holocaust," he says. "This is [...] a deep danger if we wrongly assume that simply acknowledging the catastrophe is enough to prevent something similar from happening again.”
Essayist and publisher Roberto Calasso delivered the second Girard Lecture, entitled "The Last Superstition," at Stanford University on November 5th, 2014. He argued that although modern societies have lost touch with rituals of sacrifice and the gods they maintain a superstitious belief in their own transcendence.