The Divided Souls of Americans

Professor Patrick Deneen delivered a lecture entitled American Odyssey: What an Ancient Story Reveals About our Divided Souls on August 27 in the Eck Center Visitors Atrium, hosted by the Center for Constitutional Citizenship & Government. 

Deneen’s talk came on the heels of his new book by the same name, published in July. He outlined the book’s central themes, aligning the story of Odysseus with American identity through the lens of a central tension within both: the simultaneous longing to go elsewhere, to a new place, a new world and the longing for home, the place where we find rest. 

“It is a distinctive mark of the American people that we are a people on the move, a nation characterized by what Alexis de Tocqueville called restlessness, inquietude, the inability to be still,” Deneen asserted. He continued, “At the same time, however, we became heirs of another deep longing that equally animated our ancestors, no less than their progeny—the aching yearning for home, the place where we could find rest, where we might live among people whom we deeply know and love.”