Kenyon alumni, families and friends are invited to spend an evening with Fred Baumann, who has taught political science at Kenyon since 1980 and currently teaches courses in political philosophy and political history.
The great historian of the Renaissance Jakob Burkhardt predicted, correctly, that the 20th century would be the age of the great simplifiers. Turns out it was, and their names were Stalin, Hitler and Mao. Like Marx, Burckhardt expected that mass, industrial society would break down distinctions into one great opposition, seen by both sides as total and all-encompassing. The enemy would be wholly evil and have to be exterminated. Hence the great simplifiers also became the great mass murderers. It is in this context that Baumann's lecture on "The Great Simplification" will point to the increasingly simplified and extreme oppositions we are experiencing in current American politics and will ask what this is likely to mean in the not-so-distant future.
Registration is now open for this free virtual event.
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