001: Liberalism's Inner Life

I'm so excited about this.

So my own thinking about this specific question actually dates back to a conversation that you and I had a couple years ago now.

And I remember us sort of thinking through this question around the communitarian critics of liberalism and the post-liberal moment that we're in, and how everybody complains that liberalism just doesn't have enough.

It doesn't bring a theory of the good life.

It doesn't, uh, teach people how to live.

And a lot of people think that that's a real failing.

And I remember saying in that conversation, "It feels like there is a third element that's missing, that is blank liberal democracy, and liberalism can't supply everything that people need to live a good, happy, free life.

Democracy can't either.

And there's a third element to this triad that is absolutely essential," but at the time, I didn't know what to call that thing.

And then you and I just did our own things for a long time.

I, I was working on this dissertation on empathy in the 18th century, and none of it really seemed to sort of click until a few months ago.

It was really the beginning of this year, I think, where we were having a series of conversations, um, at work about this kind of thing, uh, when, when I was your colleague.

And then at the same time, I was really getting into this practice theory literature in sociology.

And that highlighted for me what that third element is.

And as I was thinking about it, I started to think of it in terms of integrative practices, the kinds of practices that don't just give us a coherent kind of inner life that supports our values and beliefs and aligns all of that with our actions, but then also does the same thing for liberalism.

So that's the short version of this history.

I'm curious for your version of why you've been thinking about this stuff lately, but then I'm also really interested to hear about why you've been thinking about this stuff for so long.