The Main Argument for Postliberalism
The No Alternative Objection
In my experience, all postliberals reject liberalism in part on the following grounds: there’s no alternative to government imposing a substantive value system or religion on the populace. Postliberals claim liberalism is a false and pernicious religion. Then, they divide up based on their preferred remedies but share a starting point. Call it the No Alternative Objection.
The No Alternative Objection is attractive to those who would impose their faith or ideology on those who disagree. Such impositions seem morally unobjectionable if they’re unavoidable.
I think the No Alternative objection dramatically underspecifies its key concepts. To help us focus, let’s explore the claim that there’s no alternative to religious establishment. Here, the idea is that every society has some dominant religion, whether it recognizes this or not. Further, every society has some establishment of this religion via governmental endorsement.
Consider now two questions: What is religion? And what is establishment? After all, there are thousands of religions and many forms of establishment. We can define a No Alternative Formula by abstracting from particular answers to those questions. This formula can generate any No Alternative Objection. The Formula contains two sets, the first a set of laws and policies, and the second a set of doctrines or worldviews.
The No Alternative Formula: There is no alternative to {x} establishment of {y} religion.
From what I can tell, {x} and {y} are large sets. Governments can establish religion in many ways, from extreme thought control to vague cultural approval. Religions number in the thousands, and {y} balloons further if we count religion-like moral doctrines and ideologies.
Thus, the No Alternative Objection requires tremendous specification. And the plausibility of the objection turns on that specification.
In my view, most specifications of {x} and {y} render the no alternative objection either false or banal. Suppose the objection is that there’s no alternative to the coercive establishment of theistic religion. That’s false. Historic India and China, all the way to the present, are counterexamples. Suppose the claim is that all societies have shared values and norms enforced by ostracism. That claim is true but uninteresting.
To vindicate a No Alternative Objection, the postliberal must locate subsets of {x} and {y} that make the objection both true and interesting. I’ve not seen this done. If liberalism is a “religion,” then everything depends on one’s account of religion. (On this, see my Is Wokism a Religion? post.) If establishment involves social ostracism or coercion of some form, then everything depends on how the postliberal specifies ostracism and coercion.
The unspecified No Alternative Objection seems intuitive. But it is misleading. That’s why analytic political philosophers approach the objection differently. Anti-neutralists specify intuitive neutralitarian principles and then reject the arguments for those principles. But that approach will not help the post-liberal much. Suppose all plausible neutralitarian principles are false. How should we respond? It’s unclear; maybe we only need to depart from them slightly. And so, the No Alternative Objection may not bring us closer to postliberalism.
So, when a postliberal says, “There’s no alternative to imposing values/religion,” ask which values and what impositions are inevitable.
I think the point of the postlberals is that *some* moral infrastructure is inevitable. Whether or not one wants to call it a religion is beside the point. No government can exist without fundamental commitments about what constitutes the good, the true, and the beautiful, or at least principled limits on what is acceptable. Take, for example, Locke's view of religous tolerance. It depends on the idea that the government has no jurisdiction over religion and that citizens are free to enter or leave religious communities as they wish free of government coercion. But what about children? Is it not contrary to Locke's idea of freedom that children, in certain religious traditions, must undergo rituals that either change their bodies without their consent (e.g., circumcision) or are juridically committed to a religous authority they did not explicitly choose (e.g., Catholic baptism). One way that the secular state may secure the childrens' religious liberty is to legally ban such rituals. But how is that not taking sides on a metaphysical/moral question about which some religions offer an answer?
I find pointing out and naming the argument distinctly helps. However, isn’t this exactly what the postliberal argument wants? That is, the argument is supposed to be a retort to liberalisms when they claim neutrality. So, to ask a postliberal “which values and what impositions are inevitable” is just to further the conversation they want to have.
At any rate, I found the post very helpful!