Charles Blattberg

Charles Blattberg is a professor of political philosophy at the Université de Montréal. Blattberg grew up in Toronto and completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto, where he also served as president of its Students’ Administrative Council during the 1989–90 academic year.

Between 1990 and 1992, he attended McGill University where he received an MA studying under the philosopher Charles Taylor. He then went to England and France and was awarded a DEA from the Sorbonne (Université de Paris I) in 1996 and his doctorate the following year from the University of Oxford, where he did his research under Profs. Michael Freeden and Sir Isaiah Berlin. This was followed by two years of post-doctoral research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and then one year as an assistant professor of political philosophy, Tel Aviv University. He has been teaching political philosophy at the Université de Montréal since 2000, except for 2005–06 when he was a Lady Davis Fellow (Visiting Professor) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Blattberg has been developing a political philosophy that he calls 'new patriotism', which he wants to distinguish from nationalism so as to focus on the common good shared by the members of a political as distinct from national community.

Recent commentary on Blattberg's approach can be found in Eric Monpetit, "Easing Dissatisfaction with Canadian Federalism? The Promise of Disjointed Incrementalism," Canadian Political Science Review 2, no. 3 (September 2008), pp. 12–28; Michel Seymour, De la tolérance à la reconnaissance (Montreal: Boréal, 2008), pp. 121–7; and Stéphane Courtois, "Une politique du bien commun au Canada est-elle possible?" International Journal of Canadian Studies, no. 42 (2010), pp. 273–82.