Christian democracy has played a fundamental role in shaping European politics after World War II. In his lecture, Jan-Werner Müller will explore the historical developments leading to the formation of this ideology that reconciles Catholicism and modern democracy, focusing on a number of philosophers and political figures. Müller will pose the question if anything remains of Christian democracy today; he will also ask how two recent strands of thought—on the one hand, populism; on the other, the ideologies usually grouped under the label of “post-liberalism”—relate to Christian democracy, whose legacy is claimed by representatives of both strands.
Jan-Werner Müller is Roger Williams Straus Professor of Social Sciences at Princeton University, where he also leads the Program in Political Philosophy. From 1996 until 2003, he was a fellow at the University of Oxford’s All Souls College, before moving to St. Antony’s College, where he held a fellowship at the European Studies Centre until 2005. Müller is also co-founder of the European College of Liberal Arts (ECLA) in Berlin, for which he served as founding research director. His recent publications include What Is Populism? (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), Furcht und Freiheit: Für einen anderen Liberalismus (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2019), and Democracy Rules (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2021). His public affairs commentary and essays have appeared in the London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, The New York Times, and Project Syndicate.
Ludger Hagedorn, IWM Permanent Fellow, will moderate the lecture.
