From our friends at the Eliot Society in D.C.:
A number of recent thinkers have argued that the late modern West is entering into a new and subtle kind of totalitarianism characterized not by an absolute, authoritarian state but by a technocratic order which acknowledges no horizon beyond its own power, a totalitarianism predicated above all upon the denial of transcendence. In this lecture, Michael Hanby explores the contours of this new totalitarianism, the importance of the Christian imagination, and the prophetic role of the arts in illuminating the transcendent horizon which is the ultimate source of human freedom.
Michael Hanby is Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy of Science at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. Before joining the Institute in 2007 he was an Assistant Professor of Theology in the Honors College at Baylor University and the Associate Director of the Baylor Institute for Faith and Learning. He was also the Arthur J. Ennis Fellow in the Humanities at Villanova University. He has studied at the University of Colorado, Duke University, Cambridge University, and the University of Virginia.