The Elm Institute is a center of philosophical inquiry.

Our work addresses fundamental questions about the nature of reality and about the nature of the good life.

The Institute collaborates with Yale faculty, schools, and programs to promote sustained philosophical inquiry and to foster habits of inquiry and reflection both within the University and beyond.

Summer Reading Group

James Davison Hunter’s Democracy and Solidarity

6/3, 6/5, 6/10 & 6/12 | 5.30-7.30pm | The Library

Liberal democracy in America has long aspired to noble ideals—freedom, justice, equality—yet has struggled to realize them fully. This enduring tension has given rise to deep political and cultural fractures. In Democracy and Solidarity (YUP 2025), sociologist James Davison Hunter argues that the deepest crisis facing American democracy is not polarization itself, but the erosion of the cultural and moral foundations that once made solidarity possible. Drawing on the legacy of America’s “hybrid Enlightenment,” Hunter explores how these shared resources have faded, and what might take their place in a society increasingly defined by division.

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