Does Liberalism Have Anything to Teach Us about Happiness?

Conservatism today, whether animated by concern for lost political greatness or by dismay over the evisceration of traditional morality, has grown skeptical of the case for personal liberty and for market freedom. Individual liberty is condemned on account of the excesses of radical autonomy, the free market on account of corrupt practices of wealthy corporations. Drawing on insights from leading figures in the liberal tradition, Professor James Stoner will argue that a balanced account of human happiness and the common good includes ample room for personal freedom and free enterprise, in the context of moral law and political right.

Professor James R. Stoner, Jr., is the Hermann Moyse, Jr., Professor and Director of the Eric Voegelin Institute in the Department of Political Science at LSU. He is the author of Common-Law Liberty: Rethinking American Constitutionalism (Kansas, 2003) and Common Law and Liberal Theory: Coke, Hobbes, and the Origins of American Constitutionalism (Kansas, 1992), as well as a number of articles and essays. In 2009 he was named a Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, New Jersey; he has co-edited three books published by Witherspoon, The Thriving Society: On the Social Conditions of Human Flourishing (with Harold James, 2015), The Social Costs of Pornography: A Collection of Papers (with Donna M. Hughes, 2010), and Rethinking Business Management: Examining the Foundations of Business Education (with Samuel Gregg, 2008). He was the 2010 recipient of the Honors College Sternberg Professorship at LSU. He is a senior fellow of the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture.  Dr. Stoner has taught at LSU since 1988, chaired the Department of Political Science from 2007 to 2013, and served as Acting Dean of the Honors College in fall 2010. He was a member of the National Council on the Humanities from 2002 to 2006. In 2002-03 he was a visiting fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, where he returned in the 2013-14 academic year as Garwood Visiting Professor in the fall and Visiting Fellow in the spring. He has teaching and research interests in political theory, English common law, and American constitutionalism.