Event Details
Thu, May 29, 2025
18:00 – 19:30
LIMONAIA
Villa La Pietra
Via Bolognese, 120
50139 Florence, Italy
A book presentation by Michael Lamb and in conversation with Prof. Debora Spini, NYU Florence Lecturer.
When it comes to politics, Augustine of Hippo is renowned as one of history’s great pessimists, with his sights set firmly on the heavenly city rather than the public square. Many have enlisted him to chasten political hopes, highlighting the realities of evil and encouraging citizens instead to cast their hopes on heaven. A Commonwealth of Hope challenges prevailing interpretations of Augustinian pessimism, offering a new vision of his political thought that can also help today’s citizens sustain hope in the face of despair.
Amid rising inequality, injustice, and political division, many citizens wonder what to hope for in politics and whether it is possible to forge common hopes in a deeply polarized society. Michael Lamb takes up this challenge, offering the first in-depth analysis of Augustine’s virtue of hope and its profound implications for political life. He draws on a wide range of Augustine’s writings—including neglected sermons, letters, and treatises—and integrates insights from political theory, religious studies, theology, and philosophy. Lamb shows how diverse citizens, both religious and secular, can unite around common hopes for the commonwealth.
Recovering this understudied virtue and situating Augustine within his political, rhetorical, and religious contexts, A Commonwealth of Hope reveals how Augustine’s virtue of hope can help us resist the politics of presumption and despair and confront the challenges of our time.
Featured Biographies
Michael Lamb
F. M. KIRBY FOUNDATION CHAIR OF LEADERSHIP AND CHARACTER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE PROGRAM FOR LEADERSHIP AND CHARACTER, AND ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF INTERDISCIPLINARY HUMANITIES AT WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY
Michael Lamb is F. M. Kirby Foundation Chair of Leadership and Character, Executive Director of the Program for Leadership and Character, and Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities at Wake Forest University. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Oxford Character Project. He earned a Ph.D. from Princeton University, a BA from Rhodes College, and a second BA from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. A recipient of teaching awards from Princeton, Oxford, and Wake Forest, he teaches courses and pursues research on leadership, character, and the role of virtues in public life. He is the author of A Commonwealth of Hope: Augustine’s Political Thought, which Cornel West has praised as “magisterial.” He is also co-editor of The Arts of Leading: Perspectives from the Humanities and the Liberal Arts, Cultivating Virtue in the University, and Everyday Ethics: Moral Theology and the Practices of Ordinary Life. He is currently leading more than $50 million in grants to develop leaders of character at Wake Forest and to create the Educating Character Initiative, which is catalyzing a national movement focused on character in higher education in the U.S.
Debora Spini
NYU FLORENCE LECTURER
Spini currently teaches at New York University in Florence and Syracuse University in Florence. Spini has been adjunct faculty at the School of Political Sciences in Florence, where she taught Philosophy of Social Sciences for the Master degree in Sociology in the Academic years 2017-2019 and Social Philosophy from 2007-2011, as well as Philosophy of the Public Sphere in the years 2003-2007 for the Master Degree in Sociology and Social Research. She also taught at New York University Shanghai for 2 semesters, from Fall 2020 to Spring 2021.
Spini is a member of the Società Italiana di Filosofia Politica (Italian Society of Political Philosophy) and of the Società Italiana di Teoria Critica (Italian Society of Critical Theory).
She is a member of the Commissione Study of the Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy and is currently the President of the Centro Culturale Protestante “Pier Martire Vermigli”.
Spini’s current research focuses on religious groups in the public sphere, secularisation/post secularisation, monotheism and violence, and the rise of authoritarian populism, with a specific focus on gender issues as well as on the role of religion. She is also working on the political legacy of the Protestant reformation. Among her more recent publications, the following essays and book chapters: Gender, citizenship, religious identity: innovative approaches to autonomy and political agency, in I. Valenzi, a cd., Women, Agency and Religion. Social and Legal Issues in the Mediterranean Public Space, Routledge, 2025. The Religious Legacy of and within Populism in M. Bernhard, A. Kreppel, C. de la Torre, eds Still the Age of Populism? Re-examining Theories and Concepts, Routledge 2024; Decolonising postsecularization, in «Annali di Studi Religiosi», 21, 2020, 167-179. Provincializzare la secolarizzazione. La critica post- e decoloniale al dibattito sulla secolarizzazione e la sua crisi in «La società degli individui», 2023, Issue 2022/75: 74-86.