DONDENA Seminar - David L. Williams

You may follow the seminar at the following link.

“The Greater of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx.” 

SPEAKER: David Lay Williams (DePaul University).

ABSTRACT:

Economic inequality is one of the most daunting challenges of our time, with public debate often turning to questions of whether it is an inevitable outcome of economic systems and what, if anything, can be done about it. But why, exactly, should inequality worry us? The Greatest of All Plagues demonstrates that this underlying question has been a central preoccupation of some of the most eminent political thinkers of the Western intellectual tradition.
David Lay Williams shares bold new perspectives on the writings and ideas of Plato, Jesus, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx. He shows how they describe economic inequality as a source of political instability and a corrupter of character and soul, and how they view unchecked inequality as a threat to their most cherished values, such as justice, faith, civic harmony, peace, democracy, and freedom. Williams draws insights into the societal problems generated by what Plato called “the greatest of all plagues,” and examines the solutions employed through the centuries.
The seminar recovers a forgotten past for some of the most timeless books in the Western canon, revealing how economic inequality has been a paramount problem throughout the history of political thought.

BIO: 

David Lay Williams is Professor of Political Science at DePaul University at Affiliate at the University of Chicago’s Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility.  He is the author of three books, including most recently, The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx, published by Princeton University Press in 2024.  He has published extensively on the history of political thought, including two books on Jean-Jacques Rousseau.