The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute, in association with Energeia and the Centre for Social Renewal, presents:
Political Economy and the Good Life:
The 2024 Postliberalism Conference
December 13–14, 2024
McCrum Lecture Theatre, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge
About the Conference
What will replace the liberal order that is unraveling? Neither populist revolutions nor technocratic restoration can offer a postliberal vision of the good life and human flourishing. This conference seeks to reclaim postliberalism by charting an alternative to both an empty centrism and an atavistic ethnonationalism. The postliberal vision we explore combines economic transformation with social reconciliation. Beyond the emptiness of liberalism, our politics orients freedom toward the common good. It supports the social solidarity that begins with the family but extends beyond it to larger “families” of belonging—communities, free associations, countries, and the family of nations.
Our economic vision seeks to reconcile the estranged interests of capital and labor in a negotiated settlement anchored in stronger state capacity and a greater involvement of local government and civic bodies. Linked to this is a renewed partnership between government, business, trade unions, and communities to break with neoliberal market globalization and central state nationalization in favor of a more communitarian, corporatist model. We need an ecological politics that reconciles humanity with the natural world, rather than the post-human vision of progressive environmentalism.
Social reconciliation means that we reject extreme identity politics and the culture wars in favor of renewing the sphere of shared meaning—a recognition that individual fulfilment depends on mutual flourishing. Against a culture that is by turns tiresomely priggish and obtusely crass, we uphold complex connections between religion, knowledge, art, popular belief, and folk tradition. Our cultural vision values social virtues, conviviality, inherited craft, and the pursuit of the good life.
The conference will focus on “Political Economy and the Good Life,” and it will bring together some of the key postliberal thinkers in the UK and beyond. On the first day, the keynote address will be given by Michael Lind, who is the author of the 2020 book The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite. His keynote will be on “Pluralism and the Social Constitution.”
Other confirmed speakers on day one include Claire Ainsley, Jon Cruddas, Frances Foley, Brian Griffiths, Sohrab Ahmari, David Goodhart, Mary Harrington, Wolfgang Streeck, Will Hutton, Munira Mirza, Maurice Glasman, and Aris Roussinos. In the evening of the first day, we will have a conference dinner at Ridley Hall in Cambridge, and we have invited Charles Taylor as our guest of honor to say a few words.
On the second day, we will start with a lecture by John Milbank and a series of panels that will feature Susannah Black Roberts, Imogen Sinclair, Dan Hitchens, Katja Hoyer, Paul Kingsnorth, Tara Isabella Burton, James Noyes, José Alberto Garibaldi, Tobias Phibbs, Tom Holland, and Lola Salem.
Please click here to see the full conference program with all the confirmed speakers and panels.
If you are interested in attending this event, please register below.
Conference Registration
If you wish to attend the conference, please click the “Pay Now” button below to register. You will be redirected to the PayPal website, where you can enter your name, address, and payment information.
The registration fee of £175 covers conference material, coffee breaks, lunch on both days, and the conference dinner.
If you have any questions regarding the conference, please contact Adrian Pabst at a.pabst@kent.ac.uk.