2025-01-24
49 分钟Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet.
I'm producer Leila Ismail.
Our guest today is Samuel Moyne, who is Chancellor Kent professor of Law and History at Yale University and the author of many books on the history of ideas and politics in the 20th century.
His latest book is Liberalism Against Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times.
And joining him in conversation to talk about it is researcher and writer Adam McCauley.
Let's join Adam now with more.
Welcome to Intelligence Squared.
I'm your host, Adam McCauley.
Today I'm honored to be speaking with Samuel Moyn.
Today we have the unique opportunity to bring his latest or most recent book, Liberalism Against Itself, into conversation alongside the latest inflection point in American politics, the return of President Donald Trump.
At the heart of Moyn's recent work is a deft and devastating act of critical reflection, a kind of philosophical due diligence about the very character of liberalism.
Moyn trains his attention on key intellectuals in the 20th century and works to unpack how their efforts to shore up liberalism's defenses against Cold War enemies ultimately hollowed out the revolutionary and potentially hope inspiring nature of the wider liberal project.
To be clear, Moyn doesn't assert that liberalism is dead.
Instead, he highlights how its slow and steady decline has been the result of self inflicted wounds.
And that work for its restoration demands imagining a liberalism attentive to its wider history and born anew.
To address the challenges of today, it is my pleasure to welcome Sam Moyn to Intelligence Squared.
So, Sam, I wonder if I could take you or us back to the start.
Your scholarship has delved deeply and engaged thoroughly with liberal philosophical thought across time.
But where did the motivation and spark of insight for this book come from?
Well, it came from the first election of Donald Trump, which blindsided liberals and not just American liberals.