Anyone who’s had an argument about politics with a friend may walk away wondering how this friend could possibly hold the beliefs they do. A few self-reflective people might even wonder about their own political beliefs after such an argument. This conversation between a political scientist and a political philosopher will explore the reasons that people have, and could have, for political beliefs: the evidence they might draw on, the psychological sources of their views, and the question of how we ought to form our political beliefs if we want to be rational.
The event will focus in particular on the nature of ideology as a particularly charged form of political belief. Why has ideology in the modern era become so divisive, and how can we better orient ourselves amidst the confusing and disorientating terrain of competing ideologies?
Jason Blakely is Associate Professor of Political Science at Pepperdine University in California. His books include We Built Reality: How Social Science Infiltrated Culture, Politics, and Power (2020) and, most recently, Lost in Ideology: Interpreting Modern Political Life (2024). In addition, Blakely is considered a leading scholar of contemporary “communitarian” and post-liberal thought, especially the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor.
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Oliver Traldi is a postdoctoral fellow at the James Madison Program at Princeton University. His PhD is from the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses on questions about the nature of epistemic norms and the epistemology of the social world, especially the epistemology of politics. His first book is Political Beliefs: A Philosophical Introduction (2024).
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