John Milbank on The Politics of Virtue—A Postliberal Manifesto

From the 2024 Postliberalism Conference

In this video, we present John Milbank’s keynote address “The Politics of Virtue—A Postliberal Manifesto,” from day 2 of Political Economy and the Good Life: The 2024 Postliberalism Conference. Milbank is Emeritus Professor of Religion, Politics and Ethics, University of Nottingham, as well as author of Theology and Social Theory (1990) and The Politics of Virtue (2016, with Adrian Pabst).

The panel discussion was moderated by Michael Gove, Editor of The Spectator and a Conservative Cabinet Minister (2010–2014), and it featured responses to Milbank’s lecture from the following three speakers:

• Susannah Black Roberts, Senior Editor at Plough and New Polity;

• John Ritzema, Associate Faculty Member and Pharos Foundation Marshall Research Fellow, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford; and

• Imogen Sinclair, Director of the New Social Covenant Unit.

The 2024 Postliberalism Conference took place on December 13–14, 2024, in the McCrum Lecture Theatre, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, UK. Co-sponsored by the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute, the Centre for Social Renewal, Energeia, and Plough, the conference brought together leading academics, politicians, policymakers, and journalists to explore the errors and excesses of liberalism and to conceptualize constructive alternatives to its worldview and to the dominant theoretical models that underpin it.

On day 1, our focus was on political economy, in particular the nature of the crisis of liberalism, the contradictions of capitalism, and a shift from globalization, the “knowledge economy,” debt and speculation toward national resilience, vocations and crafts, investment and production. The discussion also included new ideas about foreign policy and ecology with an emphasis on realist approaches to interests and the exercise of power.

Day 2 expanded our conversation to new thinking about politics, including virtue politics and left conservatism, but also how to combat the machine by re-humanizing technology, how to purse the good life in relation to our demographic and ecological crises, as well as how to renew the West in the face of Western self-hatred and hostile foreign powers.

Would you like to contribute to the conversation? Write to us to propose a response to any of the conference presentations.

Topics: Beyond State and Market • The 2024 Postliberalism Conference