Venice 2025: Virtue and Democratic Resilience

The 2026 Venice Seminars and Summer School will explore the relation-ship between civic virtue, character formation, and public ethics at amoment when liberal democracies face mounting pressures from autocratic actors, identity-driven polarization, and opportunistic leadership. Our premise is that institutions alone are not enough: democratic resilience also depends on shared moral cultures and forms of citizenship grounded in responsibility, temperance, competence, and a commitment to the common good. We aim to understand how “virtuous” leaders and communities emerge, which mechanisms encourage ethical behavior, and how religious and secular traditions can contribute to character formation within pluralistic societies. Recognizing that religion is often manipulated as a tool of exclusion, the seminar examines both the political misuse of the sacred and the positive potential of faith traditions for social cohesion, care, solidarity, trust-building and reconciliation. Through real-world case studies, interdisciplinary contributions, and global perspectives, Venice becomes a laboratory for rethinking virtue as a shared social practice capable of addressing the clear signs of a crisis or decline in liberal democracy: from elite indifference to resentment, from corrosive polarization to institutional fragility. The goal is to outline a renewed vision of leadership and citizenship rooted in character, integrity, and reciprocity, showing how ethical revitalization can become a decisive resource for democracy’s future. 

Cosponsored by Reset Dialogues on Civilizations, Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy, and Templeton Religion Trust.