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ARCHIVE · ISSUE 4

Liberalism and the Good Life

Autumn 2026 · current

Do liberals need an idea of the good life? The charge against the supposedly “neutral liberals” is a continuity in the history of ideas, one that has made its way from Carl Schmitt into the postliberal theory of the present. Through the Australian philosopher Alexandre Lefebvre, the question of the need for a liberal way of life is back within liberal debate itself.

Liberalism lives on liberals and their liberal convictions. Yet what may sound abstractly plausible (or not) confronts liberalism with concrete problems: How can a good liberal life be determined, and how can a liberal culture be created — bottom up or top down?

Can the liberals’ “Cultural Turn” succeed without itself becoming part of the “illiberal backlash”? Is there a human need for meaning or transcendence, and must the liberal be able to serve it?

Already published
  1. Free Virtues Marius Drozdzewski Editorial

    People look for orientation. They can find it in those who offer them a vision of the good life. In politics, in Germany and beyond, those were for the last few decades above all the Greens and the left. With the New Right and the postliberals, offers now come from the right as well. Illiberal visions of the good life are even enforced by the state, in Xi's China and Orbán's Hungary, for instance. That the competition has taken up the good life so successfully has alarmed liberals. 16 Sept 2026 · 6 min read

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