The Politics of Virtue:
Post-Liberalism and the Human Future
by john milbank and adrian pabst
rowman and littlefield,
418 pages, $39.95
Among the ideas that compete to determine the world’s future, one can count Catholicism, Islam, and (until recently) Marxism. But only one is dominant, hegemonic, and all-pervasive—liberalism. Even though its ascendancy is relatively recent, we regard its precepts as if they were Platonic archetypes, both self-evident and manifestly good. Even those who do not consider themselves liberals unthinkingly repeat liberal platitudes. Any attempt not to be liberal seems to descend into something more primitive and dangerous, thereby confirming in the eyes of many the rightness and righteousness of liberal belief.
These thoughts came to me while reading the reviews of The Politics of Virtue, by John Milbank and Adrian Pabst. By and large it hasn’t been a well-reviewed book, and by that I do not mean that the reviews were negative. They were in fact (as with all good books) mixed, some laudatory and others declamatory. No, I mean that the reviews themselves have often failed to recognize the main purpose of The Politics of Virtue, which is to challenge the ascendancy of liberalism and recommend a humane post-liberalism that can succeed it.