A fortnight ago, Russian theater director Konstantin Bogomolov published an essay in Russia’s leading liberal (“anti-Kremlin”) newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, arguing that contemporary Europe had been “raped” or “abducted.” The progressivism of the “Me Too,” gay rights, BLM, and transgender movements, says Bogomolov, is transforming a European civilization that had once prized liberty into a post-human dystopia with an all-pervasive form of mind control at its center …
Read MoreThe terms “fascist” and “fascism” are continuously bandied about today. But those who use these words most seem to understand them least, such that many of today’s self-styled anti-fascists paradoxically take on the central features of fascism to an extraordinary degree.
Read MoreBoris Mezhuev: From what we know in Russia, in the US you are considered to be one of the leaders of an intellectual movement known as post-liberalism which stands distinct from mainstream conservatism. Would you agree with this and if yes, can you describe the key points of post-liberalism? Does it indeed base itself on rejecting the liberal legacy of John Locke and to a certain extent that of the Founding Fathers?
Patrick Deneen: I am often identified as one of a number of more conservative thinkers who support moving toward “post-liberalism.” These include a number of thinkers in the U.S., England, and Europe who have recently risen to prominence. My book Why Liberalism Failed, provided a relatively early diagnosis of the crisis of liberalism that is now evident to every observer of politics in the West …
Read MoreDespite decades of pronouncements from Brussels and Strasbourg on the primacy of pan-European solidarity and cross-border cooperation, the European Union’s uneven response to the coronavirus pandemic has only strengthened a trend already well under way in Italy, Hungary, and elsewhere, toward a renewal of national sovereignty on the continent.
Read MoreSvetlana Lourié’s essay “The Road to Transhumanism” is in the vein of philosophy of history. It aims to make sense of seemingly scattered geopolitical and technological innovations, as advancing an amorphous and ultimately sinister “Project”: “the Man-God, who, with help from modern medicine and artificial intelligence, is being designed to live forever …
Read MoreThe crisis of the conservative mainstream, both in the Western world and in our own country, has recently given rise to new and interesting trends, which, even if they are still at the stage of schools of thought or intellectual persuasion, in the future are no doubt destined to play a significant role on the historical stage. This latter holds true in particular for post-liberalism, a school which has a number of interesting theorists, and includes the political and religious philosopher Patrick Deneen and the philosopher and historian of political thought David C. Schindler.
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