Professor Dutton works in the field of political theory, reading and
wrestling with ancient, modern and American political thought. Her
research considers what it means to be an
individual and how that meaning gives shape to political relations
and to the quest to live freely. Inspired by writers from Montaigne
to Mill, Tocqueville to Emerson and Rousseau to Shklar, she studies the
dispositions and character traits that aid men and women in their
aspiration to live freely and equally in a world: where a multitude
of choices threaten to reduce liberty to licentiousness; where frenetic
activity threatens to overwhelm self-rule; and where the absence of
reassurances, the lack of certainty and an abundance of disappointments
threaten to exhaust both civic participation and individual autonomy.
Denise
E. Dutton