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Donald W. Livingston is a former Professor of Philosophy atEmory University and aDavid Hume scholar.[1] In 2003 he founded the Abbeville Institute, which is devoted to the study ofSouthern culture andpolitical ideas.[2][3]
Livingston was raised inSouth Carolina.[2] He received his doctorate atWashington University in St. Louis in 1965. He has been aNational Endowment for the Humanities fellow and has been on the editorial board ofHume Studies andChronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.[4] Livingston is a convert fromAnglicanism to theEastern Orthodox Church. His wife Marie also received her Ph.D. in philosophy and has studied underEdmund Gettier andAlasdair MacIntyre.
Livingston is a member of theSons of Confederate Veterans.[5]
After teaching in several venues, Livingston became a professor of philosophy atEmory University inAtlanta, Georgia.[6]
He supports the compact theory of the United States, with its concomitant provisions for corporate resistance,nullification, andsecession.[citation needed] He views theAmerican Revolution not as a revolution but an act of secession,[7] which has raised for some the concern "that characterizing the favorably-viewed American Revolution as a secession from Britain confers legitimacy on the later attempt by the Confederate states to secede from the Union (Livingston 1998)°—an attempt that, by most contemporary perspectives, wants for legitimacy (Simpson 2012)."[8]Chris Hedges has called him "one of the intellectual godfathers of the secessionist movement."[9]
Livingston was a member of theLeague of the South's Institute for the Study of Southern Culture and History, but left the group in the early 2000s. According to theSouthern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), "Livingston told theReport that he was put off by the group’s racism and other 'political baggage'".[10]
In 2003, Livingston founded the Abbeville Institute.[2] According to its website, the Institute is "an association of scholars in higher education devoted to a critical study of what is true and valuable in the Southern tradition." The institute's work has been described as neo-Confederate by theSouthern Poverty Law Center and sociologistJames W. Loewen.[10][11] Abbeville Institute scholars have promoted theLost Cause myth, contending that the American Civil War was "not about slavery."[2][12] The Institute is named for the town ofAbbeville, South Carolina, often regarded as the birthplace of theConfederacy.[13]
The Institute adopted as part of its mission statement the following by slavery historianEugene Genovese: "Rarely these days, even on Southern campuses, is it possible to acknowledge the achievements of white people in the South";[2]
As of 2009, the Abbeville Institute had a total of 64 associated scholars from various colleges and disciplines.[2] It operates an annual summer school for graduate students and an annual scholars' conference.[3] It focuses particularly on issues of secession, which its scholars believe is a topic excluded from mainstream academia.[12] In 2010, it held a conference on secession and nullification.[2]
Notable faculty includeThomas DiLorenzo andClyde Wilson.
The Abbeville Institute has a press, an Abbeville Institute Review, and a blog.
