Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Breyten Neill ’27.5 is an undergraduate pursuing an independent concentration in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. He is interested in how alternative forms of collective life and economic organization give rise to distinct possibilities for freedom and forms of collective meaning. His work engages debates about liberalism, communitarianism, alienation, and the tension between individual autonomy and communal obligation. His thesis, provisionally titled “The Shape of the Good Life: Freedom, Community, and the Liberal Imagination,” investigates concerns surrounding the erosion of collective life and a shared epistemology. It turns to intentional communities as sites for examining whether these conditions, often treated as constitutive features of liberal-capitalist modernity, are in fact contingent and capable of transformation. Informed by his time spent with the Bruderhof, Catholic Worker communities, and intentional communes in Spain, the project explores whether such alternative forms of social organization sacrifice ideals of individual freedom or reflect an expansion of the liberal imagination. Outside of his thesis work, he is a Writing Fellow and a Fellow with Brown’s Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.