In recent years, liberalism has increasingly been described as a political tradition in decline. The shocks of Brexit and Donald Trump’s election prompted a wave of diagnoses announcing liberalism’s exhaustion - and, for some, celebrating it. While many voices on the left and centre-right mourned this perceived crisis, a growing group of thinkers on the right embraced it as an opportunity to move beyond liberalism altogether, rallying under the banner of “post-liberalism.”
What, precisely, does it mean to be “post-liberal”? Drawing on joint work with João Pinheiro da Silva, Jacob Williams offers a genealogical account of post-liberalism that challenges its contemporary usage. By recovering the term’s earlier meanings, the talk shows how current post-liberal movements both diverge from and selectively appropriate older communitarian critiques of liberalism.
The seminar provides a historically informed perspective on a contested political label, clarifying what is at stake in current debates about liberalism’s limits, its critics, and the possibilities for political thought beyond it.
Guest speaker: Jacob Williams is a DPhil (PhD) candidate in political philosophy at the University of Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations, based at Green Templeton College, specializing in post-liberalism, conservatism, and the relations between Islam and the West.
Date: 9 April 2026, 5:30 pm
Venue: Budapest, 1113 Tas vezér utca 3-7., Kinizsi Pál Room
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MCC students can earn credit for actively participating in the event, provided they read the required chapters and paper(s) and prepare three questions for the Q&A session of the research seminar.
Questions related to the required reading must be submitted to Kálmán Pócza at pocza.kalman@mcc.hu by 11:00 PM on 7 April 2026
Required Reading: Please contact Kálmán Pócza to obtain the electronic version of the paper.
Submission Deadline: 7 April 2026, 11:00 PM
Previous Research Seminars:
- Martin Loughlin (London School of Economics): Against Constitutionalism
- Nigel Biggar (Univeristy of Oxford): What’s Wrong with Rights?
- Asanga Welikala (University of Edinburgh): The Common Good and Comparative Constitutional Laws
- John Wyatt (Faraday Institute Cambridge): Right To Die?
- John Larkin (former Attorney General for Northern Ireland): Judicial Power in the United Kingdom
- Michael Freeden (University of Oxford): Concealed Silences and Inaudible Voices in Political Thinking
- Lee J. Strang (Ohio State University): Originalism's Promise: A Natural Law Account of the American Constitution
- Gonzalo Candia (Catholic University of Chile): The Constitution-Making Process in Chile 2019-2024
- Sergio Verdugo (IE University of Madrid): Is it time to abandon the theory of constituent power?
- Aileen Kavanagh (Trinity College Dublin): The Collaborative Constitution
- Scott L. Cummings (University of California Los Angeles): Lawyers and Movements
- Stephen Tierney (University of Edinburgh): Constituent Power in Federal States
- Stefan Auer (University of Hong Kong): European Disunion: Democracy, Sovereignty and the Politics of Emergency
- Dieter Grimm (Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin): A View from the Bench: Personal Reflections on the Practice of Constitutional Adjudication
- Yuan Yi Zhu (University of Leiden): Revisiting the British Origins of the European Convention on Human Rights
- David Edmonds (University of Oxford): Effective Altruism: A Philosophical Reckoning
- Anna Lukina (London School of Economics and Political Science): The Society of Angels and the Coordinative Function of Law
2026. április 9. 17:30 - 19:00
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