ABSTRACT
Growing numbers of right-wing intellectuals are describing themselves as “postliberals.” But are they post-liberty and post-freedom? In this chapter, I explore the challenges that the language of liberty and freedom pose to the emergent postliberal right, with a focus on the two preeminent postliberal scholars in the United States, Patrick Deneen and Adrian Vermeule. Both rework the concept of liberty for their postliberal vision. Deneen does this by rejecting traditional liberal conceptions of freedom in favor of positive and ancient ideals that he deems to be truer, without fully accounting for the political forms or structures that he hopes to install. Vermeule works to diminish the status of freedom relative to other ideals from America’s constitutional past. Both thinkers reject what political theorists call negative liberty—including its emphasis on limiting state coercion—and embrace positive, virtue-based liberty, but without the traditional emphasis on republican and democratic engagement. This revamp of liberty makes ample room for expansive state action and is arguably an important tool in efforts to erect illiberal political forms.
