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Clarification on Moral Philosophy Reflections Rescuing the Liberal Project Through Objective Normative Values The denial of objective ethical normative values is a core problem for modern liberalism, and I say this as someone who want to see the liberal project rescued. The term "post-liberalism" makes me very queasy; instead of abandoning it, we should continue the very incomplete project of extending freedom. However, for this project to succeed, it must be morally substantiated. To achieve this, there is something vital to be drawn from "conservative" or liberalism-critical thinkers, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Simone Weil, Stanley Hauerwas, and Gillian Rose. MacIntyre and Weil are particularly interesting as heterodox Marxists informed by classical moral philosophy—MacIntyre as a Marxist-Thomist-Aristotelian, and Weil as a Marxist-Christian-Platonist. The Concept of Telos and the Democratization of Flourishing For classical thinkers like Aristotle, Plato, and Aquinas, humans possess a telos: the realization of human flourishing through the rational perfection of the "soul." While we must reject their original formulations—which were elitist, patriarchal, theocratic, and anti-democratic—Aristotle’s theory of human flourishing directly influenced Karl Marx. Marx believed that all humans should be enabled to flourish, yet were impeded from doing so by capitalist political economy. Furthermore, liberal reformers justly extended rights to women and other formerly excluded groups so they could participate equally in traditions and institutions of intellectual development and political participation. This expansion and democratization of flourishing should be the driving force of the modern, emancipatory project. Yet, it can only succeed if it is substantiated with a normative concept of flourishing and political virtue. The Limits of Pure Rights and Emotivism Without normative ethical concepts—relying instead only on abstract rights claims (as seen in John Rawls) and emotivist expressions of moral approval or disapproval (as seen in David Hume, A.J. Ayer, and Charles Stevenson)—liberalism self-subverts into its opposite. Indeed, Trumpism should arguably be viewed not as anti-liberalism, but as liberalism gone hideously awry. It relies heavily on emotivist logic ("Hooray" for the demagogue, "Boo" for the enemy) and warped liberal concepts of "free speech" and "the will of the people." Under this un-substantiated framework, if it is "the will of the people" that a man is executed live for the public to see, and blocking this is deemed an infringement on "free expression," the liberal is left with no rational argument for why this is wrong and why it should not happen. Furthermore, if we ethically rely solely upon rights claims—not that rights cannot serve an important function, but rights in their narrowly abstract, legalistic sense—we witness a proliferation of irresolvable legal rights claims ultimately predicated on violence. What eventuates is the dark "friend/enemy" vision of Carl Schmitt. Backed only by state mechanisms of law, such rights claims can only be resolved with the "cancellation"—and ultimately, the annihilation—of the other, to whom society feels no prior obligation. Embracing the "Broken Middle" and Humility As a caveat, I do not agree with everything MacIntyre or Weil propose. We should question and sit critically with their moral proposals; this critical engagement is itself a virtue. Here, we can look to Gillian Rose, who enjoined us to inhabit a "broken middle" of anxiety, equivocation, and uncertainty—the complex mess of life. There is a tragic, contingent dimension to the world that forbids us from ever arriving at a final moral conclusion regarding everything in life, lest we fall into totalitarianism. Christian thinkers might term this refrain from asserting absolute knowledge "humility," but an atheist can reframe it to mean: "I don’t know everything; reality is incomplete." Regardless of the framing, humility itself is—or should be—a normative virtue of the wise, critically aware human being. The Spiritual Conception of Humanity and Modern Technology Regarding religion, this is not an argument for theism. However, we have ended up with an awful "New Atheism" that presupposes science, utilitarianism, and consequentialism can serve as a new ground for ethics, entirely lacking a spiritual conception of the human being. You can be an atheist in the obvious sense of not believing in an ontological God in the sky, but in terms of values, you do not get to bypass religious concepts straight to scientific rationalism. On close examination, one finds that liberal secular concepts of rights and the value of personhood possess a deep Judeo-Christian inheritance that requires critical engagement. We are currently at a moment of profound moral and meaning crisis—an interregnum quite unusual in the history of human civilization. Even when looking at modern technology, much of the reaction against it comes from a deep-seated feeling that it is detrimental to the human soul and human flourishing. While that precise vocabulary might not always be used explicitly, that underlying moral intuition is exactly what rightly comes across.