About
Denise Dutton, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy. Her work investigates the audacious aspiration to be free and self-governing.
Inspired by writers from Montaigne to Mill, Tocqueville to Emerson and Rousseau to Shklar, she studies the dispositions and character traits that aid individuals in their aspiration to live freely. What habits of mind does liberty require? What habits of mind does democratic citizenship encourage? What moral obligations are amplified for free and equal citizens, and what creative endeavors do such conditions unleash? Dutton mines ancient and modern political thought both for their answers to these questions and their provocations. Through them she looks anew at the challenges of our own times, and asks: What stories might authorize us to live freely in a world where: a multitude of choices threaten to reduce liberty to licentiousness; where economic insecurity breeds a frenetic work life at odds with individual autonomy; where algorithms threaten to replace independent thought, and where personal branding threatens to supplant civic efficacy?
Education
- Ph.D., Politics, Princeton University
- Dissertation: “Holding out Hope: Cynicism in American Democracy”
- M.A., International Relations, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University
- B.A., English, The University of Tulsa
Research interests and areas of expertise
- Ancient political thought
- Modern political thought
- American political thought
- Questions of democracy
- Democratic individualism
- Enlightenment thought and its critics
- The role of universities in American democratic life
- Politics and literature