Matthew's proposal defense this week

On Wednesday at 3:30 Matthew will defend his dissertation proposal. Please pray that he'll be healthy, well-rested, confident, and that there'd be no glitches. We don't expect there to be, but of course we're not taking anything for granted.

I asked him if I could post a brief summary of his proposal, which he wrote for his advisor, J. Budziszewski, as an exercise in concise-ness. It's a general statement & justification for his project without going into detail. And that's what I think a lot of people want to know about what Matthew is doing - more detail without too much detail. :) So here you go!

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What question will this dissertation answer?
(1) Is a society's political common good a constituent of full human flourishing—not merely a means to this end?

Why is the answer to this question important?
(2) The answer to this question will make a substantive contribution to the ongoing reconsideration and critique of the Enlightenment’s comprehensive elevation of individual autonomy over against the claims various human communities make to moral, religious, or political primacy. The following concerns are among those directly implicated by this project: (a) the degree of responsibility the state takes for the moral development of its citizens if the political common good is conceived of as being, to some degree, a substantive partnership in virtue, (b) the relative legitimacy of a monolithic, bureaucratized state (which tends to preclude the possibility of such civic partnership), and perhaps most importantly, (c) a heightened stewardship of political life incumbent at all levels of society when politics is understood as integral to the goods pursued in subpolitical contexts.

How will I go about finding the answer to this question?
(3) I will pursue the answer to this question by exploring the various aspects of the good of human sociability as realized in the diverse forms of human association, asking the following: (a) What can we learn about the character of human sociability from all forms of subpolitical association, and what does that tell us about the nature of the good to which political society must be directed? (b) Does the political common good provide a goodness different in kind from those of subpolitical associations or is its goodness limited to the aggregation of subpolitical goods? (c) If the political common good is distinctive, is it something rationally worthy of pursuit for its own sake, based on its ability to cultivate the natural goodness of human sociability in either a unique way or one richer than other kinds of human association? (4) Success will be attained when a convincing account of human sociability is given, and the importance of the political common good relative to friendship, family, and all other forms of subpolitical association is explicated.

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