MMM lecture on the The Thought of Robert Nisbet, the American sociologist and author of over a dozen books including The Quest for Community and the Twilight of Authority.  

This is a lecture I gave a while back on this important and thoughtful sociologist and social philosopher.  I was having dinner the other night and Nisbet came up in conversation and so I thought I'd put this lecture up on the blog.

If you don't know Nisbet's work I highly recommend it and this lecture would be a good summary introduction.  He is considered a type of communitarian thinker, but influenced by Burke and Tocqueville and not Rousseau like most communitarians--that is, he doesn't reduce community to the political community. He thinks Rousseau's statism and destruction of local communities has been a disaster for human flourishing

If you want to get a better picture on a lot of what is going on in the current political order and some ideas about how to think about it Nisbet is a reliable guide.  Start with this lecture and then read the Quest for Community

You can see more of Nisbet's books on the Books I Like page. 

Outline and Summary

Below is an outline and summary of my lecture. Download and print to make it easier to follow along.