Friday, March 21, 2025

Liberalism’s catastrophic spider

In my latest essay at Postliberal Order, I argue that, whatever Kant’s own intentions, the Kantian rhetoric of autonomy and respect for persons has allowed modern liberalism to cloak a radical subversion of natural law and Christian moral theology behind the veil of “human dignity.”

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51 comments:

  1. AnonymousMarch 21, 2025 at 11:46 AM

    What are the concrete changes these "post-liberals" want for the Western political system, and how do they imagine carrying it out?

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    1. AnonymousMarch 22, 2025 at 10:26 AM

      A very pertinent question!

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    2. AnonymousMarch 23, 2025 at 6:24 AM

      Reading between the lines, they want "democratic backsliding" where the US and other Western governments remain nominally democratic, but in practice are single-party states with partially or totally rigged elections and limited rights for the opposition. The model for this would be Hungary under Orban and Turkey under Erdogan, and ultimately what Russia is under Putin. Once that happens, the ruling right-wing party can put in place social conservative policies that are unpopular and would not be viable under a system with real elections and a liberal-leaning media environment and education system (re-banning SSM, strict abortion laws).

      Some also have center-left views on economics and think things like the welfare state and unions could benefit family formation, and point to some of Orban's policies in Hungary. Europe has a very different political tradition that the US, however. As we are seeing under Trump, what would really happen in the US if we had democratic backsliding under the GOP would be the exact opposite kind of economic agenda. Libertarians are in a similar spot to social conservatives in that their policies are broadly unpopular and can't be enacted in an unqualified way without major electoral setbacks, so both groups benefit by an alliance behind democratic backsliding. (The Democratic Party as an organization is very unpopular now, but issue by issue, the center-left policies tend to poll better).

      Some post-liberal outfits pushing the "pro-worker" variation (Compact mag, American Affairs) get funding from a combination of conservative and liberal donors (George Soros is among the funders for Compact, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/progressive-mega-donor-funding-right-wing-ideas). The non-pro worker variation more concerned about ending democracy as quickly as possible is probably getting funding from normal conservative/libertarian sources.

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    3. TonyMarch 23, 2025 at 11:58 AM

      Once that happens, the ruling right-wing party can put in place social conservative policies that are unpopular and would not be viable under a system with real elections and a liberal-leaning media environment and education system (re-banning SSM, strict abortion laws).

      Hahahaha, that's funny. So, reading the last part first, what you are saying is that in the environment of the past 40+ years in both the US and Europe, we have had effectively one-party systems, (e.g. in the US, the GOP was right-liberal, and Dems were left-liberal, both being liberal). The media has been solidly liberal, and the schools and universities - lockstep liberals - explicitly taught as the very definition of so-called "level playing field" what liberalism teaches, so that all other non-liberal approaches were considered verbotten, beyond the pale of civilized thought. And pushing agendas that could not garner majority support when presented fairly and without propaganda (e.g. wokism, and even being anti-nuclear power when that is far greener than anything else they pushed). So yeah, in THAT environment, everyone else (i.e. non-liberals) you automatically reckon to be "right" and they automatically have "undemocratic" goals and ideals, by which you effectively mean merely "not liberal".

      Now, it is true that there are people and groups that are against democratic forms, even against democratic republican forms, who actually want monarchies or aristocracies. But the default thinking that "to be non-liberal" just is to be anti-democratic is part of what the left-liberals have foisted on you in their K-12+B.A. through Ph.D. system of propaganda. Got news for you: The Greeks and Romans had democratic systems but they weren't liberals. The Swiss had democracy and republicanism before Hobbes and Locke, and they weren't liberals back then. (Even if most of them are now.)

      Open your eyes and read something pre-1500 on political theory. A political position can be non-liberal without being anti-democratic. More to the point, a position can be against what liberalism has become without being anti-democratic, especially because liberalism has been living off of media lies and edu-ganda for decades.

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    4. MPMarch 23, 2025 at 6:03 PM

      If we'd avoid just making stuff up (is that what "Reading between the lines" supposed to mean here?), the answer is that at this stage we are only starting to think about "concrete changes".

      After all, that's why the discussion happens in the blog of a philosopher.

      In fact, as the summary of the essay hints, we are mostly at the stage where the liberal assumptions are questioned.

      As for the term "post-liberals", it would seem to include not just Catholics, but also "right-wing Pagans". One should not expect a set of unanimously agreed comprehensive and coherent policies from the group that includes people whose views are so different.

      And it's a pity that you chose to comment as "Anonymous"... It would have been fun to wait until you'd attack some "post-liberals" as "populists" after saying that they want "social conservative policies that are unpopular and would not be viable under a system with real elections and a liberal-leaning media environment and education system"...

      Not to mention that such complaints seem to be rather hypocritical. Everyone (and yes, pretty much certainly that does include you) wants the policies he likes to be implemented, be they popular or unpopular. After all, to a large extent, that's what liking a policy means...

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    5. Michael FMarch 23, 2025 at 8:28 PM

      Whoever opposes welfare and claims to be Christian is a hypocrite!

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    6. MPMarch 25, 2025 at 5:54 PM

      "Whoever opposes welfare and claims to be Christian is a hypocrite!"?

      Actually, St. John Paul II in his encyclical "Centesimus annus" condemns "Social Assistance State". That condemnation is repeated in the "Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church".

      You have to give alms from the resources you have. You can't evade that responsibility by merely encouraging someone else to take money from someone third by force and give it to the poor.

      Not to mention that in reality much of that money ends up being given to the rich in various ways. For example, it is not the poor who get the money given to build "wind farms".

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  2. Michael FMarch 21, 2025 at 8:40 PM

    Nobody just naturally thinks LGBT rights or masturbation are evil and that those who support them deserve to be cast into hell. You have to be brainwashed into it.

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    1. AnonymousMarch 22, 2025 at 10:25 AM

      1) Strawman

      2) Nonsense

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    2. AnymouseMarch 22, 2025 at 2:47 PM

      Nobody naturally thinks that lopping off body parts and having everyone else pretend you are the other sex is a basic human right. You have to be brainwashed into it.

      Nobody naturally thinks making others pay for your choice to get mutilated is a basic human right, you have to be brain dead to think it.

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    3. Michael FMarch 22, 2025 at 4:48 PM

      Strawman? I went to Catholic School and got confirmed in 2016, I know what I’m talking about.

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    4. ccmnxcMarch 23, 2025 at 7:08 AM

      Pal, the "I went to Catholic School" trope is veritable bingo card material, the kind of things those who are active in these conversations laugh at rather than take seriously. Many of us here also went to Catholic school and came to eventually realize that in a best-case scenario, you'd simply get a pretty small piece of the pie when it came to understanding Catholicism. More often, that slice was rather distorted and sometimes explicitly contrary the what the Church teaches.

      Now at the end of the day, maybe you're right, and we're just brainwashed. But rest assured, you are not right *because* your Catholic education and Confirmation classes made you competent to speak on these matters. It'd simply be a happy accident.

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    5. Colin CauseyMarch 23, 2025 at 7:55 AM

      "I went to Catholic School and got confirmed in 2016, I know what I’m talking about."

      This surely must be satire.

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    6. Fr. MatthewMarch 23, 2025 at 9:09 AM

      Michael, What do you mean by "naturally" and how do you determine what is "natural"? For instance, I am thinking of whether you are simply estimating the result of a majority vote on the subject, or thinking of the goal or purpose of the sexual organs themselves. I would argue, from the design of the organs, and from the use of them (pleasure stops when the act fit for conception is complete) that nature indeed prohibits the use of these organs for acts that imitate conception while being intentionally thwarted from that end. Whether doing so deserves an eternal punishment I concede may not be known from nature alone. But even Socrates, who lived in a culture that thought nothing of homosexual relations, argued that such an act was against nature (in his Laws.) But I would be interested to listen to how you understand that word "naturally" and how you might determine what is natural?

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    7. CameronMarch 23, 2025 at 11:22 AM

      The thing is, Michael, if that were really true, it would seem that contemporary liberal sexual ethics should be the norm in most places at most points in history.

      Yet we actually see the opposite. Some revulsion at such acts (regardless of whether you think this revulsion appropriate) is, historically, the norm. How do you explain that?

      (Mind you this is besides the point. The relevant question is how we *ought* to feel about such acts, that is, whether they are actually good or bad. You surely do not hold that “untrained instincts” should be the basis of morality).

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    8. AnonymousMarch 23, 2025 at 3:46 PM

      ." I would argue, from the design of the organs, and from the use of them (pleasure stops when the act fit for conception is complete) "

      That does not apply to women. Their clitoris can be stimulated repeatedly and has nothing to do with conception.

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    9. Vini TadeoMarch 23, 2025 at 6:16 PM

      "Nobody just naturally thinks LGBT rights or masturbation are evil and that those who support them deserve to be cast into hell. You have to be brainwashed into it."

      Nobody just naturally thinks hormone blockers and drag rallies for kids are good and that those who support them do not deserve to be in jail. You have to be brainwashed into it.

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    10. Michael FMarch 23, 2025 at 8:31 PM

      By natural I mean common sense logical, as opposed to imposed from the outside by brainwashing. Nature is an inanimate thing and therefore doesn’t give prohibitions.

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    11. Michael FMarch 23, 2025 at 8:35 PM

      For many trans youth, not having hormone blockers during puberty leads to intense feelings of “body horror” and “torture”, even suicidal thoughts. The science is settled: conversation therapy doesn’t work. So hormone blockers are an important right.

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    12. Michael FMarch 23, 2025 at 8:37 PM

      Are you guys saying that Catholicism does not teach that homosexual acts, masturbation, and trans medical care are grave sins that cause God to send the soul to hell?

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    13. Michael FMarch 23, 2025 at 8:38 PM

      Because if not, then what straw man do you say I’m making?

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    14. Michael FMarch 23, 2025 at 9:00 PM

      Imagine someone saying that stabbing someone in the chest is wrong “because it interferes with the heart pumping blood or the lungs to convert oxygen and carbon monoxide” instead of that it painfully ends a person’s life and leaves behind devastated friends and family. That’s how weird Fr. Matthew’s post looks.

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    15. AnonymousMarch 24, 2025 at 6:34 AM

      @Michael F:

      "Imagine someone saying that stabbing someone in the chest is wrong “because it interferes with the heart pumping blood or the lungs to convert oxygen and carbon monoxide” instead of that it painfully ends a person’s life and leaves behind devastated friends and family. "

      You Sir, are a liar.

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    16. grodriguesMarch 24, 2025 at 10:25 AM

      The above comment was mine, by mistake it appeared anonymous.

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    17. Michael FMarch 24, 2025 at 2:03 PM

      That’s how I genuinely feel about Fr. Matthew’s bizzare post.

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    18. thefederalistMarch 24, 2025 at 3:34 PM

      @Michael F:
      I can't imagine someone saying that, because that's not the natural law argument against willful murder. It IS the argument against masturbation and perverse sexual behavior and contraceptive sexual intercourse. Also the argument against engaging in nutritive behavior and intentionally frustrating the nutritive effect; e.g., binging and purging.

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    19. AnonymousMarch 24, 2025 at 9:18 PM

      Yes Michael to stab someone is wrong for all those reasons, but when you say “it painfully ends a person’s life…etc.” I’d just ask what does that mean, spell out what the end of life is. And then you’d just be describing the end of all functions. Functions can be very meaningful, above and beyond biological organs, since everything we do is literally to utilize some ability of the human being. Thus friendship, love, etc can all be described as the exercise of a part of the human person. Not really a critique of natural law if that’s what you were going for. I think natural law proponents are too quick to discuss the most fundamental and basic bodily functions, which makes it appear that we are obsessed with technicalities rather than simply trying to explain the more complex with the more simple.

      Nature tells us all kinds of things. It tells us we’re not meant to live alone. We’re meant to live in groups, tribes, civilizations of some kind. That would entail some kind of behaviour to get along, that is: respect. It’s not hard to go from nature to moral conduct, you see. You can say the same of sexual organs and certain aspects of sexual acts. Listen, to be blunt, if you’re already immersed in such sexual actions as the Church prohibits, you probably won’t notice their error. It’s not until you live in a small town that you realize just how busy the city is, and so too you can’t realize how distorted masturbation is until you’re fully immersed in healthy and natural sexual intercourse (or abstinence). But over time you become sensitive to just how powerful it is in bonding spouses, and just how awe-inspiring is conceiving children and you start to see sex as important and not a toy you play with. Good luck in your pursuit of truth.

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    20. AnonymousMarch 25, 2025 at 5:20 AM

      @Michael F:

      "That’s how I genuinely feel about Fr. Matthew’s bizzare post."

      There is nothing bizarre about Fr. Matthew's post, as it is just a standard application of natural law reasoning to the domain of sexual ethics -- as opposed to your slanderous lies about it.

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    21. Michael FMarch 25, 2025 at 9:45 AM

      Masturbation doesn’t hurt anyone. There’s no reason to punish people for it. So by definition it’s not logical to call it immoral.

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    22. Michael FMarch 25, 2025 at 9:48 AM

      @the federalist: it’s an analogy. It’s weird to reduce morality to pipes and pumps that have no thoughts or wills. @anonymous. The anatomical functions are inanimate pipes and pumps with no thoughts, they create life, and are not life themselves as they have no minds or feelings.

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    23. Michael FMarch 25, 2025 at 9:49 AM

      Also @anonymous. “Awe inspiring” and “immoral to avoid” are not the same thing.

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    24. AnonymousMarch 27, 2025 at 6:49 PM

      Michael, yes when something is as awe-inspiring as the human reproductive faculty, you are de facto acting contrary to reason when you use it like a toy. I mean, imagine what it would be like to think “this is my power to create life” when one is masturbating. Do you not see how that’s just strange and perverse? How you’re acting one way while thinking another? On the contrary, having that same thought while having sex with your spouse makes the act all the more meaningful. Don’t you see this?

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    25. AnonymousMarch 27, 2025 at 6:52 PM

      And no, functions refer to any human action, even including making friends, loving, etc. they’re all functions of a part of human beings.

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    26. Michael FMarch 28, 2025 at 2:43 PM

      We don’t throw people into prison for choosing not to something meaningful. Much less say that their actions “cry out to heaven for vengeance!”. And nobody thinks about creating life while masturbating, and it doesn’t hurt anyone if they do. No reason to punish anyone for it or call them wicked and evil.

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    27. AnymouseMarch 31, 2025 at 6:56 AM

      For many trans youth, not having hormone blockers during puberty leads to intense feelings of “body horror” and “torture”, even suicidal thoughts. The science is settled: conversation therapy doesn’t work. So hormone blockers are an important right.

      Thank you for putting quotes around "body horror" and "torture", so we don't have to. It is "torture".

      Science is in its youth, and mental science is in infancy - it still doesn't even know what it doesn't know. We don't know what it will eventually discover, including eventual cures for things that are not now curable. But we do know that this "if conversion doesn't work then blockers must be right" is invalid. They can both be bad "solutions".

      We don’t throw people into prison for choosing not to something meaningful.

      Turning a function designed by God to be giving to another, loving of another, into self-love is going to harm your own ability to love others well, and then harm that other whom you marry because your love for her will be deformed.

      Much less say that their actions “cry out to heaven for vengeance!”.

      God is the one who expressed that. I'll let the designer speak for his handiwork, and tell us what destroys it.

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  3. DictatortotMarch 22, 2025 at 6:52 PM

    The disapproval of both throughout human history and their perennial unfitness for polite discussion seem very odd, then. You'd think that the allegedly "non-brainwashed" take on these subjects would be the overwhelming rule through the centuries, rather than exceptions. Odd, that.

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    1. Michael FMarch 23, 2025 at 8:33 PM

      Sex in general isn’t dinner table conversation. And show me 5 cultures not influenced in some degree or another by the Abrahamic religions that says masturbation is a wicked, evil, immoral deed

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    2. DictatortotMarch 25, 2025 at 5:16 PM

      You know what, Michael, I've been reading your posts above and I apologize. As the man once said: I wasn't really familiar with your game.

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    3. Michael FMarch 25, 2025 at 7:56 PM

      Apology accepted!

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  4. AnonymousMarch 23, 2025 at 3:05 PM

    As the topic is post-liberalism, I wonder if you have any thoughts on the recently passed law in Orban‘s Hungary banning the Pride Parade.

    In your ideal version of post-liberalism, would this kind of thing happen, or is it too much of an assault on freedom of speech and freedom of assembly?

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  5. NLRMarch 24, 2025 at 5:14 AM

    "any civilization needs an inspiring vision in order to preserve itself once built"

    This is a crucial point. And this means inspiring in a stronger sense than just emotionally compelling. It means something that people really believe in.

    Once a civilization stops believing in its initial ethos, it can continue by inertia for some time, but not indefinitely. It has been a popular idea for a century or more that this can be solved by psyching people into believing something they don't actually believe in. But that doesn't actually work.

    So there needs to be a new ethos, one that people actually believe in.

    That's the situation we're in now. Actually, the civilizational ethos has been being degraded for some time. In the WWII era, people widely believed in civic virtues and Christianity. But since then our ethos has become some mish-mash of ideas that don't actually work as a societal ethos.

    Ideas like, things just keep going up and up and up; freedom doesn't mean autonomy with responsibility, it means indulging one's whims; as long as we have entertainment everything is good, and many others.

    To some people, America seems to mean Hollywood, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola plus the military-industrial complex.

    Well, obviously that's no basis for a societal ethos, that's not the kind of thing any normal human can actually value.

    Our society can't just continue by inertia, it needs something different and good.

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  6. MJRMarch 24, 2025 at 12:20 PM

    You are right, Michael F.
    "Are you guys saying that Catholicism does not teach that homosexual acts, masturbation, and trans medical care are grave sins that cause God to send the soul to hell?"
    That is indeed what the Catholic Church teaches, although for one to be eternally damned for a mortal sin, there must be full consent of the will, and it's possible that psychological issues may prevent full consent of the will from being given. I am sure Dr. Feser will elaborate on that in the book of sexual morality that he is working on now.

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  7. Miguel CervantesMarch 27, 2025 at 11:02 PM

    The Christian West was displaced by the Enlightenment establishments (and the seventeenth-century philosophical and political revolutions on which they were based) later defended by Burke and de Maistre's Conservatism. They fully accepted Hobbe's enlightenment belief that nature per se was savage, and that society was a human artefact to remedy created "nature". The eighteenth-century argument between ancien regime and parliamentary establishments, and liberalism, was a debate among enlighteners who all believed in society as the only absolute. They opposed the Christian Western viewpoint that society was subject to natural law, and that men's rights were based on nature, not society. This was well explained at the end of the century (when revolution had removed the threat of the ancien regimes against the Catholic Church) in Nicola Spedalieri's "The Rights of Man", endorsed by Pius VI. It was the beginning of the reassertion of scholasticism which blossomed the following century. We need to move beyond the sterile liberalism/conservative debate and confront both these aspects of the Enlightenment with scholastic social theory: Aquinas, Suarez, Bellarmine.

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    1. Michael FMarch 28, 2025 at 2:40 PM

      Define “The West”. What are its borders? What is it West of?

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    2. AnonymousMarch 28, 2025 at 10:17 PM

      I think eighteenth-century Liberalism did argue that human rights were based on natural law.

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    3. NLRMarch 29, 2025 at 6:35 AM

      The term "The West" has been used in different ways, but what I think Miguel Cervantes means is the historically Roman Catholic West, that is to say, the countries that were part of the Western Roman Empire. As opposed to the Eastern Roman empire, which was historically Eastern Orthodox. And even before the schism of 1054 there were cultural differences. For instance, the lingua franca of the West was Latin, and it was Greek in the East.

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  8. Miguel CervantesMarch 29, 2025 at 10:00 PM

    Yes, it's true that liberalism did argue that human rights were based on natural law, and assumed that society was subject to universal rational principles. This was at the base of their disagreement with conservative Enlighteners. As you can see, it provides liberalism with a point of similarity with the worldview of the Christian West from the time of its its arrival with Theodosius the Great. However, while the old West (especially its scholastic expression) was at odds with Conservatism's scepticism and socio-political absolutism, it was equally against liberalism's version of natural law and many of the rights ensuing from this. Both Liberalism and Conservatism are secularist because they make civil society the only absolute. Burke and de Maistre's Conservatism did not alter this by simply asserting that civil societies were divine, because they made societies unaccountable to anything beyond themselves; the "sacred" regarded this world, and religious doctrines were socially determined (literally by acts of Parliament, as Burke claimed).

    The big debate isn't between individualism and society, but between the otherwordly ends of the individual to which both he and society must submit, and societies that behave like absolute, unaccountable persons (mere collective versions of liberalism's absolute individual). The latter goal is shared by Enlighteners of liberal and conservative varieties.

    Never mind if intra-Enlightenment disputes have distracted attention from the Christian West's long argument with liberal and conservative Enlightenners. The so-called Dark Enlightenment beloved of Vance and his mentors like Yarvin (and Yarvin's mate, Nick Land), Thiel, Musk etc., will make it all rather obvious, rather soon.

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  9. NormApril 6, 2025 at 8:46 PM

    There's a comment of mine on tariffs, which I think is on topic since it does fall under post liberal economics, but I think that it has not made it through. Any reason for that Prof ?

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    1. Edward FeserApril 6, 2025 at 11:44 PM

      Hi Norm, the reason is that it seemed to me too far off topic, since the essay above is really about more general moral philosophy and not about economics. I do plan a post on the tariff controversy, though, where it would be appropriate.

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    2. NormApril 7, 2025 at 5:48 AM

      That's alright Prof! No worries!

      "In Locke’s state of nature, individuals possess a right of self-ownership that entails wide-ranging liberty to do what they like with the fruits of their labor."

      I was under the impression the mention of "fruits of labour" gave me the permission to post something related to economics but I think it was a mistaken impression, my bad.

      Crass Economic Reductionism on my part :)

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  10. Miguel CervantesApril 8, 2025 at 12:55 AM

    The possibility of a non-liberal Catholic alternative to the Trumps, Musks and Millers is being demonstrated: Catholic Justice Amy Coney has dissented forthrightly from the handpicked U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold Trump's threat to millions of hard-working Catholic "illegals" by making practically any of them liable to be deported as enemy aliens. Demented. Some of the last group illegally deported as members of a gang which supposedly threatened the existence of the United States was picked on because he had a tat supporting Real Madrid, the greatest football team in the world!

    Here is Real Madrid presenting its Champions League trophy to the Patroness of Madrid, Our Lady of Almudena, as it does with every victory.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-kc32TUmE0

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