Out Now: Liberalism's Inner Life

The day is finally here. The first episode of my new podcast, The Inner Life of Liberalism , co-hosted with Jason Canon.

When I hit publish this morning, I realized this show, and the intellectual project it exists to develop and explore, is what the whole of my scholarly career has been building towards.

For years, I've been circling the same question across essays and on my ReImagining Liberty podcast: what does liberalism feel like from the inside? Not the policy commitments, but instead the perceptual posture. What you notice. What registers as morally salient. How you experience the people around you.

Jason Canon ( @uncanonical.net ) and I have been having conversations about this for at least two years. Because it turned out he was was arriving at the same place from a different angle: practice theory in sociology, his PhD work on 18th-century theories of empathy, the Scottish sentimentalists. Those years of conversation made it obvious we were building the same project. So, with this new show, we're build ingit together.

Our claim is simple, but I think true and profound: the perspectives and practices that make individual lives go better also reinforce a liberal society. These aren't separate problems with separate solutions. They’re one problem with a shared answer. Liberalism and a good life share machinery. One supports the other, and one enriches the other, because in important ways, they're doing the same thing.

For example, toleration is a classic liberal virtue, but it's brittle. Everyone has a breaking point. Sympathetic joy goes further: actually delighting in someone else's flourishing, even when their life looks nothing like yours. Good for you, and a much sturdier foundation for pluralism.

One thing that makes this show different from those I've hosted before is that it's both conceptual and practical. It's about ideas, but also about practices. Jason and I will draw on practice theory, moral psychology, the history of liberalism, Buddhist ethics, and the Scottish sentimentalists. It's a show about virtues, perspectives, and behaviors, and which lead us to flourishing and contentment, and how we can cultivate them.

The first episode is out now. It's an introduction to our liberal practice project, why we're launching the show, and what you can expect from future episodes. Coming soon is our conversation with Christian Miller about the virtue and practice of honesty. And we'll follow that up with more deep conversations with fascinating people doing work on questions key to liberalism's inner life, as well as more discussions between just Jason and me.