Post-Liberalism

Matt Sleat (Author), Matt Sleat (Author)

9781509562206, Polity Press

Paperback / softback, published 12 December 2025

240 pages
21.3 x 13.7 x 2 cm, 0.295 kg

"Matt Sleat's Post-Liberalism is desperately needed. It provides a dispassionate but engaged account of whether those seeking to overturn two and a half centuries of liberalism have coherent and compelling arguments, and whether their notion of a 'common good' would be good for the people. It should be widely read."
Paul Tucker, author of Global Discord and research fellow, Harvard Kennedy School

"Post-Liberalism is a rigorous and accessible inquiry into the post-liberal mindset. Sleat brilliantly shows that some post-liberals have no real quarrel with important strands of liberalism while others ignore these strands altogether in their zeal to destroy their main enemy."
David Dyzenhaus, University of Toronto

"Sleat is too deep and careful a thinker to rest with an easy win... What makes his book distinctive is its willingness to acknowledge the valid longing for community and higher ideals that motivates postliberalism — and to chastise liberals for failing to live up to these ideals."
Jacobin

"timely and necessary"
Vic Duggan, The Irish Times

"Sleat shows – in devastating fashion, enhanced by how calmly it is delivered – both sides of this bizarre political coin are intellectually hopeless."
Times Literary Supplement

"[Sleat's] most valuable contribution is a challenge issued to liberals themselves: Stop hiding behind claims of neutrality that cannot bear scrutiny, and be willing to defend the actual vision of the good that liberalism advances... Once liberals admit that they too advance a substantive vision of the good, the honest debate can begin—both sides at last arguing about what really divides them."
First Things

"Highly readable"
Church Times

Liberalism has long been the dominant ideology of the modern West. In recent years, however, post-liberalism has emerged as a central movement within the 'New Right' and a formidable intellectual challenge to the mainstream. Even American Vice-President J.D. Vance has described himself as part of the 'post-liberal right'.

Matt Sleat presents the first comprehensive and critical analysis of post-liberalism. Engaging with the work of key theorists such as Patrick Deneen and Adrian Vermeule, he explores the theological influences on the movement, as well as its affinities and tensions with related New Right projects like National Conservatism. Sleat argues that post-liberalism's politics of the common good rests on a mistaken diagnosis of our soical malaise. Its project, in turn, is not only incoherent and dangerous but likely achievable only through authoritarian and deeply coercive means. He also considers how liberals might respond to post-liberalism, and what its rise reveals about the future of conservative politics.

Post-Liberalism is an essential work for students and scholars of political science and philosophy, as well as anyone concerned with the forces reshaping western politics today.

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Post-Liberal Moment?
1. (Mis)Representing Liberalism: The Post-Liberal Critique
2. The Distinctiveness of Post-Liberalism
3. Post-Liberalism as Common Good Conservatism: Patrick Deneen and the Question of Authoritarian Illiberalism
4. Post-Liberalism as Common Good Constitutionalism: Adrian Vermeule and the Fantasies of Political Catholicism
5. Freedom Rediscovered? Liberty in Conditions of Modernity
6. The Prospects of Liberal Perfectionism
Conclusion: Post-Liberalism and the Future of the Right

Notes
References
Index

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP]