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Lecture

The Lovers' Whirlwind

John Ralston Saul: Morality vs. Ethics How Economics Mistook Itself for God

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  • ABOUT John Ralston Saul

    John Ralston Saul obtained his Ph.D. from the University of London. He has received many awards for his writing, including the Pablo Neruda International Presidential Medal of Honour from the Chilean government. He is known for his commentaries on the nature of individualism, citizenship and the public good; the failures of technocratically led societies; and his critique of contemporary economic arguments. He is general editor of the Penguin "Extraordinary Canadians" project.

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Love and morality are not mechanisms of the public good.       

Novelist and essayist John Ralston Saul discusses the death of globalization after a quarter-century of treating corner-store economics and high marketplace Romanticism as reality. Saul draws upon themes of his many books, among themThe Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World (2005), The Unconscious Civilization (1995), and Voltaire’s Bastards (1992).

Presented in partnership with the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.

Above: Detail from "The Lovers' Whirlwind, Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta" depicting Dante's Divine Comedy, Hell, Canto V, 37-138.  By William Blake (1757-1827), 1824-27.

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Globalization, Ideology, Religion, Ethics, Love

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Lecture

Katie Watson: Gallows Humor Medical Ethics and the Dark Side of Laughter

In this first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary program, Watson draws from psychology, philosophy, theater, literature, and law to consider backstage storytelling in medicine, and the ethics of humor as a coping mechanism in difficult professions.

Lecture

Jeffrey Sachs: Franke Lecture on Economics Bubbles Burst and Bursting

Sachs provides a recent historical context to help us better understand the recent financial meltdown and the origins of the recession, and highlights the predictors that should have forewarned policymakers and bankers of the looming crisis. But, he cautions, we must realize that there are four even more important bubbles requiring our immediate attention—namely, those of environmental degradation, skyrocketing population, extreme poverty, and the growing underclass.

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