Toward a Process Post-Liberalism:
A Civic Creed in Twelve Theses
Community.
Humans are not isolated individuals but persons formed in community - through families, friends, neighbors, communities, and the natural world.
Dignity.
Every person bears inherent dignity as a center of experience.
Compassion.
A good society encourages creativity, adventure, and entrepreneurship, yet it does not equate human worth with success or merit. It is egalitarian in spirit, and shows special concern for the vulnerable and for those in need of care and protection.
Tradition.
A good society is grateful for the best of its past. Traditions carry the accumulated wisdom of communities and deserve thoughtful preservation as well as creative renewal.
Freedom.
Freedom is not mere autonomy but purposeful becoming guided by meaningful aims, including care for the common good of our local communities and the larger world.
Civic Life.
Healthy communities are sustained by families and civic institutions—schools, congregations, voluntary associations, and other forms of shared life. Discourse in such communities is civil and empathic, not coercive or authoritarian.
Common Good.
The common good includes the good of people in local and global settings and also the good of the Earth.
Flourishing.
Flourishing is not shallow happiness but richness of experience in relation to other people, the natural world, the heavens, and oneself—what Alfred North Whitehead called strength of beauty.
Creativity.
Human life participates in the creative advance of the universe, and societies flourish when creativity in the arts, sciences, and civic life is encouraged.
Education.
Education is not merely preparation for employment but the formation of whole persons in virtue and character.
Pluralism.
Healthy societies welcome pluralism and the creative contrasts that enrich common life, joining love of place with loyalty to the wider world and participation in democratic life.
Ideals.
Societies and civilizations flourish when guided by ideals such as truth, goodness, beauty, adventure, and peace. These ideals are woven into the very fabric of the universe and point to a spiritual dimension open to deeper meaning and possibility.
Process Philosophy and the Post-Liberal Turn
Beyond the Conservative and Liberal Divide
The Post-Liberal Turn in Contemporary Political Thought
In recent years a number of political thinkers have argued that the liberal tradition, while historically important, has reached certain limits. Critics from both the left and the right have pointed to problems such as excessive individualism, the weakening of community, ecological degradation, and the loss of shared purposes within society. These discussions are often described as part of a broader post-liberal turn in contemporary political thought. This page offers an image of the post-liberal turn based on process philosophy.
The Recovery of the Common Good
From the perspective of post-liberals on both the right and the left, writes Stefan Borg, politics should be reoriented away from an emphasis on the autonomy of isolated individuals and toward promoting the “common good.” A similar theme appears in the book by John B. Cobb Jr. and Herman Daly, For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future (1989), which calls for a reorientation of economic and political life toward the flourishing of communities and the health of the earth.
Flourishing: Aristotle and Whitehead
The language of flourishing comes from Aristotle, who used the word eudaimonia to describe the highest aim of human life—a life in which human capacities are realized through the cultivation of virtue within a community.
Alfred North Whitehead offers a complementary way of imagining what flourishing might mean. In his philosophy, the aim of life is the deepening of experience itself—a richness of experience characterized by beauty, contrast, intensity, and harmony. If Aristotle helps us see flourishing in terms of virtue and the realization of human potential, Whitehead invites us to see it in terms of the deepening of experience itself. In this sense, flourishing may be understood as a life in which persons and communities participate in rich forms of experience, contributing together to the common good.
Alfred North Whitehead offers a complementary way of imagining what flourishing might mean. In his philosophy, the aim of life is the deepening of experience itself—a richness of experience characterized by beauty, contrast, intensity, and harmony. If Aristotle helps us see flourishing in terms of virtue and the realization of human potential, Whitehead invites us to see it in terms of the deepening of experience itself. In this sense, flourishing may be understood as a life in which persons and communities participate in rich forms of experience, contributing together to the common good.
Why Process Philosophy Has Rarely Entered Political Theory
This might suggest—incorrectly—that process philosophers have been actively involved in contemporary debates among political theorists concerning critiques of hyper-individualism and the search for political visions centered on the common good. In fact, this has rarely been the case.
One reason is that most process philosophers are not primarily political philosophers, even though they may hold strong political convictions. Another is that process philosophy has developed largely within conversations in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, education, aesthetics, cosmology, and theology rather than within the specialized field of political theory. And still another is that Alfred North Whitehead himself did not develop a political philosophy or, for that matter, a systematic ethical theory, even though he was deeply concerned with the history of civilizations and with the ideals that might inspire them—truth, goodness, beauty, and peace, for example.
One reason is that most process philosophers are not primarily political philosophers, even though they may hold strong political convictions. Another is that process philosophy has developed largely within conversations in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, education, aesthetics, cosmology, and theology rather than within the specialized field of political theory. And still another is that Alfred North Whitehead himself did not develop a political philosophy or, for that matter, a systematic ethical theory, even though he was deeply concerned with the history of civilizations and with the ideals that might inspire them—truth, goodness, beauty, and peace, for example.
The Deeper Question: Cultural Reform
The concerns of process philosophers can therefore seem distant from the more technical debates of contemporary political theory—debates about institutional design, constitutional arrangements, and competing theories of justice. Yet the deepest concerns in contemporary political philosophy, on the left and right, are not merely institutional. Increasingly, they center on cultural reform: the renewal of the moral visions, shared purposes, and cultural practices that shape the character of a civilization and guide its ongoing formation.
Whitehead’s Concern for Cultural Transformation
And this—cultural reform—was Whitehead’s deepest concern as well, as it is for many process philosophers. This is one reason they place such emphasis on ideas such as the intrinsic value of life, the reality of beauty as the telos of the universe, and the view that even the energy within the earth can be understood as an expression of lived subjectivity. They hope that such ideas can reshape the cultural imagination and help guide the ongoing formation of civilizations.
Post-Liberal Process Philosophy
What, then, might a process philosophy of politics look like? I suggest that it would contain elements of both conservative and liberal intellectual visions, building upon each while also moving beyond their limitations. In this sense, it may best be understood as a distinctive form of post-liberal—not illiberal—political thinking.
The post-liberal vision of process philosophy is intentionally vague in terms of institutions and policies. It is neither left nor right, liberal nor conservative, progressive nor regressive, given the many meanings of those terms. Nor is it socialist or libertarian. It may well point to a kind of politics that is yet to be born, the seeds of which are found in many circles: socialist, libertarian, conservative, liberal, and progressive.
That was the aim of John Cobb and Herman Daly in For the Common Good. It was to develop a way of thinking about economic life that bypasses antagonisms between the left and right, pointing toward something more creative and humane. Perhaps, in a similar spirit, a post-liberalism in the process spirit does the same.
In what follows, I first consider ways in which process philosophy is sympathetic to important elements of both conservative and liberal traditions, and then turn to the question of how it both resonates with and differs from contemporary post-liberal thought.
The post-liberal vision of process philosophy is intentionally vague in terms of institutions and policies. It is neither left nor right, liberal nor conservative, progressive nor regressive, given the many meanings of those terms. Nor is it socialist or libertarian. It may well point to a kind of politics that is yet to be born, the seeds of which are found in many circles: socialist, libertarian, conservative, liberal, and progressive.
That was the aim of John Cobb and Herman Daly in For the Common Good. It was to develop a way of thinking about economic life that bypasses antagonisms between the left and right, pointing toward something more creative and humane. Perhaps, in a similar spirit, a post-liberalism in the process spirit does the same.
In what follows, I first consider ways in which process philosophy is sympathetic to important elements of both conservative and liberal traditions, and then turn to the question of how it both resonates with and differs from contemporary post-liberal thought.
The Conservative Side of Process Philosophy
Process philosophy resonates with several themes found in intellectual conservatism.
(1) Respect for Tradition
In process philosophy the past is never simply left behind; it is actively inherited in every moment of experience. Traditions therefore carry real wisdom. Social practices and institutions that have endured through time represent accumulated human learning and deserve thoughtful consideration before being abandoned.
(2) The Importance of Community
Process philosophy emphasizes that individuals are formed through relationships with others. Families, neighborhoods, congregations, and civic associations provide the contexts in which persons develop habits of cooperation, responsibility, and care.
(3) The Role of Institutions
Conservative thinkers often stress the importance of institutions that preserve cultural memory and sustain social life. Process philosophy likewise recognizes that institutions such as schools, families, religious communities, and civic organizations play a crucial role in nurturing shared values.
(4) The Cultivation of Virtue
Flourishing societies require citizens who possess virtues such as prudence, justice, courage, moderation, compassion, forgiveness, and civility. Laws and institutions alone cannot sustain social life without the presence of virtuous individuals.
(5) Commitment to the Common Good
Like intellectual conservatism, process philosophy emphasizes that societies should be oriented toward the common good rather than merely toward individual self-interest. In process thought this common good includes not only human communities but the flourishing of the natural world.
(6) Appreciation of the Spiritual Dimension of Life
Process philosophy affirms that human life participates in a larger spiritual reality. The divine presence lures the world toward truth, beauty, goodness, adventure, and peace. This spiritual orientation encourages humility and a sense that social life is part of a larger moral and cosmic order.
(7) Local Loyalty and Rootedness
Finally, process philosophy also recognizes the importance of local attachments—to families, neighborhoods, communities, and cultural traditions. These forms of belonging provide the concrete settings in which people learn responsibility, trust, and care for others. While process thought encourages global concern for the earth and humanity as a whole, it also affirms that such wider concern is often nurtured through the affections and loyalties formed within local communities.
(1) Respect for Tradition
In process philosophy the past is never simply left behind; it is actively inherited in every moment of experience. Traditions therefore carry real wisdom. Social practices and institutions that have endured through time represent accumulated human learning and deserve thoughtful consideration before being abandoned.
(2) The Importance of Community
Process philosophy emphasizes that individuals are formed through relationships with others. Families, neighborhoods, congregations, and civic associations provide the contexts in which persons develop habits of cooperation, responsibility, and care.
(3) The Role of Institutions
Conservative thinkers often stress the importance of institutions that preserve cultural memory and sustain social life. Process philosophy likewise recognizes that institutions such as schools, families, religious communities, and civic organizations play a crucial role in nurturing shared values.
(4) The Cultivation of Virtue
Flourishing societies require citizens who possess virtues such as prudence, justice, courage, moderation, compassion, forgiveness, and civility. Laws and institutions alone cannot sustain social life without the presence of virtuous individuals.
(5) Commitment to the Common Good
Like intellectual conservatism, process philosophy emphasizes that societies should be oriented toward the common good rather than merely toward individual self-interest. In process thought this common good includes not only human communities but the flourishing of the natural world.
(6) Appreciation of the Spiritual Dimension of Life
Process philosophy affirms that human life participates in a larger spiritual reality. The divine presence lures the world toward truth, beauty, goodness, adventure, and peace. This spiritual orientation encourages humility and a sense that social life is part of a larger moral and cosmic order.
(7) Local Loyalty and Rootedness
Finally, process philosophy also recognizes the importance of local attachments—to families, neighborhoods, communities, and cultural traditions. These forms of belonging provide the concrete settings in which people learn responsibility, trust, and care for others. While process thought encourages global concern for the earth and humanity as a whole, it also affirms that such wider concern is often nurtured through the affections and loyalties formed within local communities.
The Liberal Side of Process Philosophy
(1) Freedom and Creative Agency
Process philosophy affirms the importance of freedom, understood not as radical independence but as creative response within relationships. In the philosophy of Whitehead, every moment of experience involves a degree of self-determination: each individual responds to the inherited past while also shaping the future. This vision resonates with liberal commitments to personal freedom, while also correcting the liberal tendency to imagine individuals as self-contained agents.
(2) Pluralism and Diversity
Process philosophy strongly supports pluralism. Because beauty and richness arise from contrast, a healthy society benefits from the presence of different cultures, religions, perspectives, and ways of life. Diversity contributes to the vitality of the social whole rather than threatening it.
(3) Freedom of Inquiry and Expression
Liberal societies traditionally defend freedom of thought, speech, and inquiry. These freedoms also align with the process emphasis on novelty and creativity. New ideas, scientific discoveries, artistic expressions, and cultural innovations require environments in which questioning and experimentation are possible.
(4) Democratic Participation
Many process thinkers support democratic political forms because democracy allows multiple voices to participate in shaping the common life of society. Democracy reflects the deeper relational insight that no single authority should dominate social life.
(5) Protection of Persons
Process philosophy affirms the intrinsic value of individuals as centers of experience. Because persons have inherent worth, social and political institutions should protect them from domination, violence, and exploitation.
(6) Openness to Reform
Process philosophy shares with liberal traditions a willingness to pursue reform when institutions fail to promote flourishing. Since reality itself is a process of creative becoming, societies must remain open to change and improvement.
(7) Cosmopolitan Consciousness (World Loyalty)
Process philosophy also encourages what might be called a cosmopolitan consciousness, or what Whitehead described as world loyalty. While local communities and national identities remain important, our moral concern should not stop at their boundaries.
Process thought invites us to recognize that we belong to a larger planetary community that includes all peoples and the more-than-human world. In this sense, loyalty to the world as a whole complements, rather than replaces, local and national attachments.
Process Post-Liberalism
(1) The Relational Self
Post-liberal thinkers often criticize the liberal image of the individual as an isolated chooser whose identity exists prior to social relationships. Process philosophy offers a different vision. Every person arises out of relationships with others and with the past actual world. The self is not self-contained but relationally constituted. Personal freedom therefore unfolds within networks of interdependence rather than in isolation.
(2) Persons as Persons-in-Community
In a process view, human flourishing occurs within communities of mutual support. Families, neighborhoods, congregations, and civic associations provide the relational contexts in which persons develop character and responsibility. This emphasis resonates with post-liberal calls to recover thicker forms of community life after decades of increasing social fragmentation.
(3) The Relational Self Shaped by the Past Actual World
Process philosophy also emphasizes that each moment of experience inherits a concrete past. Cultures, traditions, and institutions represent accumulated patterns of human response to the world. While they remain open to reform, they deserve respect because they embody historical learning. In this way process thought aligns with post-liberal critiques of cultural amnesia and with calls to recover historical continuity.
(4) Shared Purposes and the Common Good
Post-liberal discussions frequently emphasize the need for societies to recover a sense of shared purpose rather than functioning solely as arenas for competing private interests. Process philosophy likewise affirms the importance of the common good, understood not only as human prosperity, which is immensely important, but also as the flourishing of the wider ecological community.
(5) Ecological Responsibility
One of the most distinctive contributions of process philosophy is its ecological vision. Human communities are embedded within the larger community of life. Social and economic systems must therefore respect the integrity of the earth itself—its lands, waters, plants, and animals. In this respect process philosophy extends the post-liberal concern for community beyond the human sphere to include the more-than-human world.
(6) Complementarity of Local Loyalty and World Loyalty
Finally, process philosophy offers a framework for integrating two commitments that are often treated as opposites: attachment to particular communities and responsibility for the wider world. People naturally develop loyalties to families, neighborhoods, regions, and nations. These loyalties can nurture care and responsibility. At the same time, process philosophy affirms world loyalty—a recognition that humanity shares a common destiny within a fragile planetary ecosystem. Local attachments and global concern are therefore complementary rather than contradictory.
Taken together, these themes suggest that process philosophy can contribute to contemporary post-liberal conversations. It affirms the importance of community, tradition, ecological responsibility, and shared purposes while also preserving the liberal insights of freedom, pluralism, and democratic participation. In this way it offers a relational vision of social life that moves beyond the older opposition between individualism and collectivism.
Appendix:
Stefan Borg on Post-Liberalism
Stefan Borg’s essay “On Post-liberalism and the Return of the Common Good,” published January 29, 2026, discusses the themes of his book The Return of the Common Good: The Postliberal Project Left and Right.
Click here to purchase the book. Click here to read the essay.
In both the book and the essay, Borg aims to provide a careful intellectual history of post-liberal thought rather than a polemical defense or critique of it. His goal is to reconstruct the movement fairly so that both liberals and post-liberals can understand why these ideas have gained traction in recent years. Borg argues that post-liberalism emerges as a critique of modern liberalism’s emphasis on individual autonomy and market-centered social organization. Many post-liberal thinkers believe that this emphasis has weakened the communal, moral, and institutional frameworks that sustain meaningful social life.
A central theme in Borg’s analysis is the renewed appeal of the idea of the common good. Post-liberal thinkers contend that political life should not be organized solely around protecting individual choice but should also cultivate shared goods such as social solidarity, cultural traditions, and institutions that enable human flourishing. What Borg finds especially intriguing is that this critique of liberalism arises from both the political right and the political left. On the right, post-liberal arguments often stress the erosion of moral traditions, family structures, and national communities. On the left, similar critiques focus on the social fragmentation and economic inequality produced by neoliberal capitalism. In this sense, post-liberalism represents a politically ambiguous intellectual current that draws energy from dissatisfaction with the prevailing liberal order.
At the same time, Borg emphasizes that post-liberalism contains internal tensions. Some strands emphasize local communities, civic institutions, and bottom-up renewal of social life. Others advocate stronger state authority or elite guidance in order to steer society toward the common good. These different impulses can pull post-liberal thought in quite different directions, ranging from communitarian democratic reforms to more illiberal political projects. Borg’s work does not attempt to resolve these tensions but instead seeks to illuminate them, inviting readers to take post-liberal ideas seriously as an intellectual phenomenon that reflects widespread concerns about the moral and social foundations of contemporary liberal societies.
Click here to purchase the book. Click here to read the essay.
In both the book and the essay, Borg aims to provide a careful intellectual history of post-liberal thought rather than a polemical defense or critique of it. His goal is to reconstruct the movement fairly so that both liberals and post-liberals can understand why these ideas have gained traction in recent years. Borg argues that post-liberalism emerges as a critique of modern liberalism’s emphasis on individual autonomy and market-centered social organization. Many post-liberal thinkers believe that this emphasis has weakened the communal, moral, and institutional frameworks that sustain meaningful social life.
A central theme in Borg’s analysis is the renewed appeal of the idea of the common good. Post-liberal thinkers contend that political life should not be organized solely around protecting individual choice but should also cultivate shared goods such as social solidarity, cultural traditions, and institutions that enable human flourishing. What Borg finds especially intriguing is that this critique of liberalism arises from both the political right and the political left. On the right, post-liberal arguments often stress the erosion of moral traditions, family structures, and national communities. On the left, similar critiques focus on the social fragmentation and economic inequality produced by neoliberal capitalism. In this sense, post-liberalism represents a politically ambiguous intellectual current that draws energy from dissatisfaction with the prevailing liberal order.
At the same time, Borg emphasizes that post-liberalism contains internal tensions. Some strands emphasize local communities, civic institutions, and bottom-up renewal of social life. Others advocate stronger state authority or elite guidance in order to steer society toward the common good. These different impulses can pull post-liberal thought in quite different directions, ranging from communitarian democratic reforms to more illiberal political projects. Borg’s work does not attempt to resolve these tensions but instead seeks to illuminate them, inviting readers to take post-liberal ideas seriously as an intellectual phenomenon that reflects widespread concerns about the moral and social foundations of contemporary liberal societies.
“On Post-liberalism and the Return of the Common Good"
summary of Borg's Essay
1. What Post-liberalism Is
Post-liberalism is not a single ideology but a cluster of critiques of liberal modernity developed by philosophers, theologians, and political theorists. Key figures include:
- UK thinkers: John Milbank, Adrian Pabst, Maurice Glasman, Philip Blond, David Goodhart, Mary Harrington, Louise Perry.
- US thinkers: Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule, Gladden Pappin, Chad Pecknold, Michael Lind, Sohrab Ahmari, Christine Emba, Erika Bachiochi.
Their ideas draw on earlier critics of liberalism such as Karl Polanyi, James Burnham, Christopher Lasch, and Alasdair MacIntyre, and overlap with communitarian thinkers like Michael Sandel.
2. Origins
- Britain: Post-liberalism is linked to Radical Orthodoxy (especially John Milbank) and the Blue Labour movement, which criticized the market-friendly politics of Tony Blair’s New Labour and emphasized community, local institutions, and working-class solidarity.
- United States: It emerged partly from debates about conservatism after Donald Trump’s first election, alongside other strands such as National Conservatism.
3. How Post-liberals Understand Liberalism
Post-liberals interpret liberalism as both:
- a political theory (associated with thinkers like Hobbes, Locke, Mill, and Rawls), and
- a social project shaping institutions and culture.
In their view, liberalism’s core aim is maximizing individual autonomy—liberating human will from constraints. As a result, institutions such as tradition, religion, family, and community are weakened or treated as obstacles.
4. Three Core Elements of Post-liberal Thought
- Historical critique: Liberalism gradually undermines social bonds, eroding attachment, community, and shared meaning.
- Structural critique: Liberal societies empower a professional-managerial class (PMC)—college-educated elites who dominate institutions and perpetuate their own cultural authority, often at the expense of the working class.
- Political alternative: Politics should move away from pure individual autonomy toward pursuit of the “common good,” understood as objective conditions for human flourishing.
5. Major Criticisms of Post-liberalism
- Misrepresentation of liberalism: Critics argue post-liberals attack a simplified version of liberalism; historically, many liberal thinkers also cared deeply about the common good.
- Risk of authoritarianism: Appeals to the “common good” can justify state coercion, especially in projects like Adrian Vermeule’s “common good constitutionalism.”
- Practical feasibility: Rebuilding strong local communities and civic solidarity may be difficult in modern societies shaped by globalization, digital media, and social pluralism
6. Conclusion
Post-liberalism is a significant and growing intellectual and political movement. Whether one agrees with its critique of liberalism or not, its influence means it will likely remain an important force in contemporary political thought.
About Stefan Borg
Borg is Associate Professor in Political Science at the Swedish Defence University. His current research agenda includes contemporary critics of liberalism, as well as U.S. foreign and security policy. He has previously written a book on the theoretical foundations of European integration called European Integration and the Problem of the State: A Critique of the Bordering of Europe (2015), and has published articles in a number of international journals.