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Integral [+] Facticity

Last entry 2 November 2026

Podcast1 h 39 min

Matteo Bortolini on Robert Bellah & his Legacy for the Left

Integral [+] Facticity, episode 14 of 21, with Matteo Bortolini

First published on Acast, 29 October 2022, with show notes on Medium. All 21 episodes

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Date
Length
1 h 39 min
Type
PodcastIntegral [+] Facticity, episode 14 of 21
People
Contents
  1. Overview
  2. Description
  3. Original episode
  4. References & Further Reading
Listen to episode 14, 1 h 39 min. The recording is served by Acast.

Overview

A discussion of Robert Bellah’s intellectual biography and political thought through Matteo Bortolini’s A Joyfully Serious Man. Topics include Bellah’s relation to Talcott Parsons, the counterculture, Habits of the Heart, socialism and capitalism. The interview also addresses Religion in Human Evolution, comparative accounts of religion, nationalism and academic precarity.

Description

A biography can change shape when an intellectual life becomes something more than a collection of ideas. Matteo Bortolini began with a study of Talcott Parsons's students—including Robert Bellah and Clifford Geertz—but later came to know Bellah personally. After Bellah's death, reading his diaries led Matteo to discard 250 pages and write A Joyfully Serious Man as a narrative life. In our conversation, he recalls that change and helps explain why Bellah's work occupies such different places in sociology and religious studies.

We revisit Bellah's Berkeley counterculture years, the four strands of American culture in Habits of the Heart, and his socialist engagement with capitalism. Matteo questions loose generalizations about religion, compares Italy's new right-wing government at the time with Christian nationalism elsewhere, and reads Religion in Human Evolution against Huntington's clash of civilizations. We finish by considering tenure and the precariousness of academic life.

Original episode

Title as published
Matteo Bortolini on Robert Bellah & his Legacy for the Left
Published
Length
1 h 39 min
Guest
Matteo Bortolini
Series
Integral [+] Facticity, episode 14 of 21

References & Further Reading