Waleed Aly
speaker
156 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 9 Aug
Waleed Aly’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 2.
Appearances
I'm talking about the political philosophy that actually defines the whole shebang, the whole settlement, like institutional ideas, separation of powers, independence, judiciary.
the sovereignty of the people, equality of citizens before the law, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion and conscience, but also a focus on individual rights and individual autonomy.
And also then it starts to be a philosophy really of perpetual improvement.
We will always get freer.
We will always get wealthier.
we will always have more control over our lives that's the whole thing we it's a post-enlightenment idea really that we've given up on this idea that humans usually had throughout history that things just go in cycles there are ups and downs and life your children aren't necessarily going to be better off than you and that's that this is life you know that's what the stoics said that's what pretty much every religious tradition told us told a story of that you get to the enlightenment and suddenly we manage to convince ourselves as a species especially in europe
We can just, through application of reason and science, have perpetual improvement.
And maybe what's happening in the crisis of the current age is that people are beginning no longer to believe that.
Well, I think that depends on what you make of the point I was making earlier that this isn't a moment, that this is a culmination.
So if you think it's a culmination, and I do, then it can't simply be a momentary crisis that is solved in a moment, I think.
These are forms of politics that emerge from within liberal societies that are looking to dispense with liberalism to some significant degree.
In the United States, for example, alongside the Trump administration, you've got a whole series of philosophers, and by that I mean proper academic philosophers and scholars, who are avowedly committed
trying to put together a post-liberal philosophy, a program that would sound in politics that identifies the failures of liberalism and wants to come up with an alternative way of doing politics that is not about individual rights, but is about this idea of the common good.
The woke politics thing was all about that as well.
Not the common good, but their argument was liberalism just entrenches oppression, it entrenches hierarchies, it entrenches privileged groups and disempowered groups.
So things like freedom of speech are actually not a good thing because all they do is that they allow those with power to speak loudly and more dominantly, et cetera, et cetera.
You're familiar with the argument.
The point is these are post-liberal arguments.
These are arguments that are trying to attack the philosophical foundations of liberalism itself.
Now, they may fail.
Showing 41–60 of 156 · page 3 of 8
← Previous
Next →