A Philosophical Happy Hour on the meaning of the postliberal, the postmodern, and the postacademic—and what we signify by “post-”.
We do not think often enough about the meanings of words, especially those that have entered into the popular lexicon. The term ‘postmodern’ provides a good example of this unthinking, and in two ways. First 1) very few people seem to have any clear conception as to what is meant by the “modern”, aside from some vague contrast with the “medieval” and the “ancient”. Second 2) ‘post’ receives a shallow understanding as signifying only “later”, as in, “what is subsequent in time”.
If we, by this term intend description of the suprasubjective phenomenon of a ‘cultural reality’, then mere chronological sequence will prove radically insufficient. So too, many, by ‘postliberal’ seem to intend either a an object so vague as to be wholly (or almost wholly) unspecified or what is in fact rather a mere return to preliberal forms and modes of government.
Yet these terms, despite their confused suage, do not signify nothing, nor do they lack a meaningful resonance. Indeed, their resonance seems only to increase, month after month, one year after the next. This increase in resonance suggests a real change in the suprasubjective reality of culture—a change realized in the minds and beliefs of the many.
The Meaning of “Post”
This resonance invites us to ask: what in fact do we signify by describing these phenomena as “post–”?
We can, I believe, discount as satisfactory the facile fact of some temporal posteriority; this is, at most, a merely-incidental necessity to name a reality more fundamental. For it is not as though the ‘liberal’ and the ‘modern’ no longer exist, or that they no longer name extant phenomena themselves. Rather, it seems to indicate that the paradigms of thought built from their principles no longer go unchallenged for cultural supremacy. Put otherwise, modernity and liberalism have long been such structurally-dominant concepts in society that the only objectors to them were regarded as avant-gardes or cranks. Today, increasingly, the objectors to these paradigms are regarded as serious people, no longer ostracized to the margins but having obtained strong platforms.
Yet, despite the recognition, neither phenomenon as yet names a positively-identified coherent doctrine or set of doctrines. Instead, it signifies only a movement away from the prior paradigms. And so we ask: do these terms signify mere negation? Are they purely apophatic? Hopelessly vague? Do they mean only “no longer”? Or do they also mean “beyond”? Do they signify negation or abnegation?
The Postmodern and Postliberal
Perhaps we can be aided in our inquiry if we better understand the terms being negated. This task cannot be completed here; it is too complex. For one, we use the term “modern” broadly. By it, we designate phenomena philosophical, cultural, economic, technological, and governmental. “Liberal” applies more narrowly—to certain principled beliefs about the human being and his sovereignty—but this narrower application cannot be disentangled from all the uses of “modern”, and so it too proves difficult to grasp.
As a common root of both phenomena, however, we can identify the radical emphasis upon the individual human being. Politically, this emphasis results in the adherence to individual rights as the basis of social contracts, by which are formed and governed all intercourse of economy and government. Philosophically—or, more broadly under the oft-nebulously-used term “culturally”—this emphasis places the principles of thinking in the individual mind rather than in the intelligibility of things.
Patrick Deneen, one of the chief proponents of “postliberalism”, has argued that liberalism’s demise is a result of staying true to its own principles—that it has failed because it succeeded, those principles leading inevitably to the manifestation of their self-contradictions.
But this critique, fair though it is in many ways, may oversimplify a complex reality. We tend to reduce these phenomena to their principles, as we might a philosophical demonstration. Yet the nature of social human behavior exhibits always an irreducible complexity. Modernity and liberalism both emerged for a reason, both resonate with something in the human being—with something in the nature that they tried largely to overcome. (In the words of Pierre Manent: “unable to create himself with his own hands, man divides himself: he makes his nature responsible for creating his sovereignty, and his sovereignty responsible for creating or recreating his nature.”) One might likewise reduce this desire for self-creation to a Miltonic non serviam—and likely strike a true note there, too—but let us not silence the symphony for its false notes.
Put otherwise, it seems perhaps we ought to move beyond the liberal and the modern—that we ought to strive for them no longer (and perhaps never should have!). But we must recognize what it is we reject if we are not to ruin ourselves in the process.
The Postacademic
Finally, I want to pick up the theme suggested by these better-known terms to add a third—one especially relevant to the Lyceum Institute—namely, the “postacademic”. To paraphrase from a presentation given for the American Maritain Association on 4 April 2025:
On the one hand, there remains the perennial concept of the academy that seems to identify an extension of human nature and that ought always therefore to remain. As such, there is a certain possibility for extension beyond the limited structure of our long-extant academic institutions; that is, a sense of the “postacademic” which builds on the academy—which goes beyond but does not abrogate the institution. On the other hand, there is the more limited sense of the “academy” as conceived and installed in the modern world, centered around the Enlightenment concept of the university; an institution that we might term—to coin and perhaps quickly to discard an ugly neologism—an “epistocracy”—which rules by “knowledge” rather than wisdom, and which epistocratic institution itself often further serves as merely an instrument in the broader technocratic order dominating our yet ultramodern and libertine culture.
Thus, by the term postacademic we signify both a negating—namely of the epistocratic—and a positive extension. The reasons for negating the epistrocratic academy of today hardly need more said. It is and always was a mortal structure; something that “belongs to the realm of time”—and we keep it alive today only through extraordinary and unjustifiable means. Conversely, the possibility of positively extending the academy—of taking what has always truly been good in the pursuit of education—the possibility of positively extending the academy has never been greater than it is today.Further Signs
Can we, in fact, extend beyond the liberal, the modern, the academy? Must we negate—“no-longer be”—the positive essences named by those terms? There are no easy answers: and we do well not to seek immediate solutions to centuries’-long problems. Instead, let us gather together this Wednesday (16 April 2025 from 5:45–7:15+ PM ET) for a Philosophical Happy Hour that strives, through these questions, to dig deep for new foundations.