In recent years, a debate has more and more come to the fore about whether we have entered a decadent phase of Western liberal society and of liberal democracy.

Many think the signs point to yes.

What triggered this decline and whether it was inevitable?

And what the prognosis for the future is.

That is, what can we expect to unfold and is there some way to miss? inevitable, and what the prognosis for the future is.

That is, what can we expect to unfold,

and is there some way to mitigate the decline?

I will assume that many of you are familiar with these questions already.

Yet I'd like to highlight at the outset one prominent point

of Patrick Deneen's argument in his recent book, Why Liberalism Failed, a major cause of what he argues is the present failure of liberalism is the Enlightenment exaltation of individual autonomy and the dangerous political form, he thinks, it takes in liberal regimes that aim

principally at securing the rights of individuals.

I would like to offer a different perspective, the longer-term perspective of a Dominican

tomist.

Now, this is a complex subject.

It's a matter of diagnosing our present situation,

discerning the causes of the disease,

and then the prognosis for the future and the prescription of a solution.

And there are many factors at play, both theoretical and existential.

As for theoretical questions, Deneen and others, like, for example, Michael

Hanby, pose a big one. Is the Enlightenment idea of liberty the core theoretical problem

for liberalism today? Yet, we might observe that surely contemporary secular liberalism is not simply the

straightforward intellectual offshoot of the Enlightenment. There are other theoretical problems

...