The Civitas Podcast Episode 39: The Return of the Common Good - A Conversation with Stefan Borg
14 snips
Jan 30, 2026 Stefan Borg, Associate Professor at the Swedish Defence University and author of The Return of the Common Good, explores post-liberal thought and its ties to communitarian social liberalism. He traces post-liberalism’s intellectual roots, teases apart left and right strands, and debates migration, feminism, capitalism, and whether post-liberalism needs theological foundations.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Critique Allows Multiple Political Outcomes
- The same post-liberal critique can yield authoritarian or left-leaning solutions based on different emphases.
- Borg highlights this flexibility as central to understanding the movement's diversity.
Communitarian Roots Without Relativism
- Borg links communitarianism and post-liberalism through thinkers like Alasdair MacIntyre and shared Aristotelian anthropology.
- He notes post-liberals reject communitarian cultural relativism while keeping relational humanism.
Nationalism Isn't The Same As Post-Liberalism
- Borg argues nationalism generally falls outside post-liberalism because it centralizes power and can devolve into ethno-nationalism.
- He sees many post-liberals (e.g., Milbank, Pabst) as explicitly non-nationalist.
