There is a widespread sense that something is missing from liberal societies (Milbank [1991] 2013; Habermas 2015; Stacey 2017a). For far longer than opportunistic politicians have been stirring up anti-liberal sentiment, public intellectuals have been musing that liberalism is lacking some of that je ne sais quoi that we seek in a lover – that flare, mystery, depth and beauty. To many, liberalism can seem like the Dobbin character in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair: true, fair, stable, a perfect match on paper, and yet somehow lacking in romantic appeal. To others, liberalism is downright tyrannical. It is the heartless husband from the Moroccan folktale, who locks his wife away so that she will not be enchanted by the mysteries of the world.

Whatever metaphor we use, there is a perceived chasm between liberal political ambitions and lived political experience. This gap at least partly explains why today populists across the globe are rejecting liberal ideals in favour of traditional understandings of religion, nation, community, family and place (Eatwell and Goodwin 2018; Pappas 2019). If social justice is to advance, it is crucial that this gap is addressed.

This chapter summarizes four broad strands of critique with corresponding solutions, before proffering the beginnings of my own approach, to be developed in the course of the book. Each strand includes theorists, scientists, politicians and policymakers. I do not claim that any strand has been consciously constructed, but rather that multiple thinkers and actors can be clustered around a shared theme with common advantages and shortcomings.

The first response heralds the failure of liberalism and takes the populist hunkering down in nation, religion and race as evidence that these must be revalorized to the centre of political life lest people and nations alike lose any sense of identity. The second response protests liberalism’s lack of resonance in postcolonial settings as well as among postcolonial migrants to the West. The third seeks to diagnose and ‘cure’ the nostalgia for traditional values and institutions – the fault is not in liberalism but in its recipients. The fourth and final response is found in the liberal ‘civil religion’ tradition (Nussbaum 2015).