Patrick Deneen

American political theorist at Notre Dame — author of Why Liberalism Failed (2018), one of the most significant post-liberal critiques of the liberal tradition from a Catholic natural law perspective.

Liberalism's self-defeat: Deneen's argument in Why Liberalism Failed: liberalism is not failing because it was implemented poorly but because it succeeded in its own terms. Liberalism's goal — the liberation of individuals from unchosen communities, traditions, and obligations — has produced the atomization, loneliness, and cultural dissolution that characterize the contemporary West. Both left and right liberalisms participate in this project (left liberalism liberates from traditional constraints; right liberalism liberates from economic constraints). His post-liberal alternative, developed in Regime Change (2023), draws on Catholic social teaching and civic republicanism to argue for rebuilding common goods through community institutions.