The Incoherence of Liberal Morality

I recently saw a video circulating on X of a white French man walking through a town in Algeria. The camera followed him along backstreets as several women passed by wearing robes that covered them head to toe with a single hole for one eye to peer through. It was ’tradition’, he was told by a smiling (male) local. But the video seemed not to generate outraged threads or articles. No public figures commented on it, nobody satirised it, or critiqued it. No editorials were written in response. It passed cleanly through digital space with a collective shrug.

Ordinarily, Western progressive media will be quick to comment on obvious oppression of women, particularly when offered up publicly on video. A school dress code enforced disproportionately or a Mid-West Christian pastor making a comment about marriage roles or a microaggression captured in a Zoom meeting all promptly spark cycles of outrage. This clip did not.

The Architecture of Selective Outrage

There is a contradiction at the heart of contemporary liberal moral analysis. The progressive left has constructed an elaborate and highly sensitive apparatus for detecting and condemning oppression, but this analysis operates with blind spots, reliably detecting some kinds of oppression while ignoring others that are just as real and immediate.

The liberal framework for understanding oppression flows from a specific historical analysis: power moves outward from the devastating flaws of the West —imperial, colonial, white, capitalist, patriarchal. These are the primary sources or the problems, and from these flow all meaningful constraints on human freedom. This analysis has proven effective at illuminating certain forms of domination. It can dissect the subtle mechanisms by which corporate culture enforces conformity, how algorithmic bias perpetuates racial inequality, or how seemingly neutral policies disproportionately burden women and minorities. But when confronted with oppression that emerges from different genealogies—from local tradition, communal consensus, or religious authority—the perspective falters, the outrage engine sputters and stalls,a nd the framework that can generate thousands of words about a corporate dress code falls silent before women denied the most basic access to the world around them.

This is not an oversight. It represents a systematic blindness built into the structure of contemporary progressive thought. The liberal left has become fluent in the language of resistance to familiar forms of power while growing mute in the face of others. It has developed sophisticated critiques of oppression by the recognisable while losing the capacity to name oppression by the traditional and the non-Western.

The asymmetry is stark and it is consistent. A Western school administrator who enforces gendered dress codes faces immediate scrutiny as an agent of patriarchal control. The same constraint, when imposed by inherited social norms or interpreted religious law, is granted immunity from criticism. A corporate policy that limits women’s career advancement sparks investigations and lawsuits. A cultural tradition that prevents women from leaving their homes unaccompanied is treated as beyond the scope of moral evaluation.

The Deference Trap

This selective blindness emerged from historically understandable sources. Liberal movements had inherited and partially internalised powerful critiques of colonialism, racism, and cultural chauvinism. They had learned to be suspicious of their own moral certainties, having seen how often “civilising missions” had served as covers for domination and exploitation. They had absorbed the insight that power frequently masquerades as principle, that claims to universal truth often conceal particular interests.

But this historical awareness, essential as it was, created its own trap. In seeking to avoid the arrogance of their predecessors, contemporary liberals began to defer indefinitely to any practice that could claim traditional or cultural authority. They developed what might be called “cultural immunity doctrine”—the notion that practices rooted in non-Western traditions were somehow protected from moral criticism by their very rootedness.

This deference took various forms. Sometimes it manifested as respectful silence—a reluctance to comment on practices outside one’s own cultural sphere. Sometimes it appeared as active defence—portraying criticism of traditional practices as inherently colonial or racist. Most often, it operated through deflection by acknowledging constraints on women in non-Western contexts only when they could be blamed on Western interference, war, or geopolitical manipulation.

The result was a moral framework that had become systematically incapable of fulfilling its own stated purposes. If liberalism’s core commitment was to human freedom and dignity, then a liberalism that could only see constraints flowing from Western sources had abandoned half its territory. It had created a world where oppression was visible only when it wore familiar clothes.

MacIntyre’s Diagnostic

The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre had diagnosed this predicament with remarkable prescience decades before it fully manifested in contemporary political discourse. In After Virtue and subsequent works, MacIntyre offered a devastating critique of Enlightenment universalism while simultaneously pointing toward a resolution of the very dilemma that now paralyses liberal thought.

MacIntyre’s analysis began with a historical observation: the Enlightenment project had attempted to ground morality in universal reason while simultaneously rejecting the traditional frameworks that had previously given moral language its coherence and authority. The philosophers of the eighteenth century had sought to derive binding moral principles from reason alone, freed from the particularities of tradition, culture, and inherited practice.

This project, MacIntyre argued, was doomed from the start. Moral language, moral reasoning, and moral evaluation all require what he called “traditions of inquiry”—coherent frameworks of practice and understanding that develop over time within particular communities. Virtues are not abstract principles but excellences that emerge from and make sense within specific forms of life. Courage means something different for a warrior than for a scholar, justice takes different forms in different social arrangements, and wisdom is cultivated through practices that vary across cultures and historical periods.

The Enlightenment’s attempt to extract universal moral truths from this rich soil of tradition had produced instead empty formalism. Modern moral philosophy, MacIntyre suggested, in the memorable opening chapter of After Virtue, was like a natural science that had lost its key theoretical terms and was trying to continue with fragments of its former vocabulary. The result was interminable disagreement about moral questions, with each side appealing to principles that seemed self-evident to themselves but arbitrary to their opponents.

But MacIntyre’s critique went deeper than historical observation. He argued that the Enlightenment’s failure revealed something fundamental about the nature of moral reasoning itself. Moral evaluation requires ’thick’ concepts, concepts that combine descriptive and evaluative elements in ways that cannot be separated without losing their meaning. To call someone courageous is both to describe their behaviour and to commend it, but this commendation only makes sense within a tradition that recognises courage as a virtue and understands what kinds of actions exemplify it.

This insight cuts directly to the heart of the liberal dilemma. Contemporary progressive thought has inherited the Enlightenment’s aspiration to universal moral principles while simultaneously absorbing postcolonial critiques that reveal how often such universalism has served particular interests. The result is a framework that wants to make moral claims but lacks the conceptual resources to ground them.

Yet MacIntyre did not conclude that moral reasoning across traditions was impossible. He argued precisely the opposite. Traditions of moral inquiry could engage with one another rationally, could learn from each other, and could even reach conclusions about their relative adequacy in addressing fundamental human questions. But this required abandoning the Enlightenment’s dream of tradition-free universal principles in favour of what he called “tradition-constituted inquiry.”

This approach would begin by acknowledging that all moral reasoning occurs within particular traditions but would insist that traditions themselves could be evaluated rationally. Some traditions proved more successful than others at enabling human flourishing, at resolving internal contradictions, at adapting to new circumstances, or at incorporating insights from rival traditions. These were not merely matters of preference but questions that could be addressed through careful historical and philosophical analysis.

MacIntyre’s framework offered a path between empty universalism and relativistic paralysis. It suggested that we could make substantive moral claims about practices within other traditions without claiming to possess tradition-free universal truths. We could argue that certain forms of life were more conducive to human flourishing than others while acknowledging that our arguments emerged from our own tradition of moral inquiry.

Applied to contemporary liberal dilemmas, MacIntyre’s approach would suggest that the problem is not universalism per se but the particular form of universalism inherited from the Enlightenment. A tradition-based universalism would be more modest in its claims but more confident in its moral evaluations. It would acknowledge its own cultural specificity while insisting that this specificity did not disqualify it from making judgments about other cultural practices.

The Practical Consequences of Moral Incoherence

This theoretical confusion has profound practical consequences. When liberal discourse encounters oppression that doesn’t fit its familiar patterns, it responds with predictable moves that ultimately serve to obscure rather than illuminate the moral stakes involved.

First, there is the geopolitical deflection. Constraints on women in non-Western societies are discussed primarily as symptoms of larger geopolitical conflicts rather than as moral problems in their own right. The Taliban’s treatment of women becomes significant mainly as evidence of Afghanistan’s failed state rather than as a direct assault on human dignity. Saudi Arabia’s guardianship system is criticised primarily in the context of oil politics and regional power struggles rather than as a systematic denial of women’s agency.

Second, there is the cultural relativist retreat. When pressed to take a position on practices like forced marriage, female genital cutting, or severe restrictions on women’s movement, liberal discourse often falls back on formulations like “it’s not our place to judge” or “we must respect cultural differences.” These responses sound appropriately humble but function to place entire categories of human suffering beyond the reach of moral evaluation.

Third, there is the reverse colonialism accusation. Critics who attempt to apply consistent moral standards across cultural boundaries are dismissed as crypto-colonialists, their concerns reframed as barely disguised attempts to impose Western values on non-Western peoples. This move is particularly effective because it exploits liberals’ legitimate concerns about cultural arrogance while shutting down moral reasoning altogether.

The cumulative effect of these strategies is to create a discourse that can generate elaborate critiques of microaggressions in Western contexts while remaining silent about macroaggressions in non-Western ones. This represents moral collapse — the abandonment of coherent ethical principles in favour of political positioning.

Women living under conditions of severe patriarchal control outside the West become victims of this incoherence. Their experiences are either ignored entirely, discussed only as symbols in geopolitical narratives, or defended as expressions of cultural authenticity. In each case, their actual lives and choices—or lack of them—disappear from view.

Toward a Coherent Universalism

A serious ethics capable of addressing these challenges would need to rebuild universalism on different foundations. Drawing on MacIntyre’s insights, such an approach would begin by acknowledging its own particular starting point while insisting on its capacity to make meaningful moral claims about other traditions and practices.

This reconstructed universalism would proceed through several steps. First, it would articulate clearly the vision of human flourishing that grounds its moral evaluations. Rather than appealing to abstract rights or empty procedural principles, it would offer a substantive account of what kinds of lives are worth living and what conditions enable or inhibit such lives.

Second, it would engage seriously with other traditions on their own terms, seeking to understand how they conceptualise human flourishing and what practices they believe serve this end. This would require genuine intellectual humility and careful historical and anthropological work.

Third, it would pursue rational dialogue between traditions, looking for points of convergence and divergence, identifying areas where different traditions might learn from each other, and developing criteria for evaluating the relative success of different approaches to fundamental human questions.

Fourth, it would maintain its capacity for moral judgment while acknowledging the fallibility and revisability of its conclusions. It would insist that some practices are genuinely harmful to human flourishing while remaining open to criticism and correction of its own moral evaluations.

This approach would transform the liberal response to practices like the one captured in that Algerian street. Instead of silence born of confusion, there would be thoughtful engagement. Instead of defensive deflection, there would be principled criticism. Instead of cultural immunity doctrine, there would be moral reasoning that could cross cultural boundaries without claiming to transcend cultural particularity altogether.

Such an approach would recognise that a woman forced to view the world through a single hole in shapeless clothing is constrained in her capacity for human flourishing regardless of whether this constraint emerges from Western or non-Western sources. It would acknowledge that traditions can embody wisdom while also perpetuating harm. It would insist that moral criticism can be both culturally rooted and genuinely universal in its implications.

The Unfinished Task

Contemporary liberal thought finds itself caught between moral insights it cannot abandon and intellectual frameworks that prevent it from applying those insights consistently. It has learned to speak eloquently about oppression by the familiar while growing mute before oppression by the traditional. It has developed sophisticated critiques of power while exempting certain forms of power from criticism altogether.

This paralysis is not merely academic. It has real consequences for real people, particularly women living under conditions that liberal discourse claims to oppose but refuses to criticise when they occur outside familiar contexts. The silence that greets videos of extreme constraint is not evidence of appropriate cultural humility but of moral abdication.

The task of rebuilding a coherent universalism remains largely unfinished. It requires both philosophical sophistication and moral courage—the sophistication to navigate between empty universalism and paralysing relativism, and the courage to make substantive moral claims across cultural boundaries while acknowledging one’s own fallibility and cultural specificity.

This is demanding work, but it is not optional. If moral criticism cannot cross cultural boundaries, then it cannot function as genuine moral criticism. If the only systems we dare to evaluate are those that resemble our own, then we have confused parochial self-scrutiny with universal ethics. A liberalism that can only see oppression when it wears Western clothes has ceased to be a serious moral position and has become merely another form of cultural narcissism.

The video from Algeria continues to circulate, met with the same silence that originally greeted it. That silence speaks volumes about the current state of liberal moral discourse. It reveals a framework that has lost the capacity to fulfil its own fundamental commitments—a framework that claims to champion human freedom while systematically failing to recognise unfreedom when it appears in unfamiliar forms.

Breaking this silence requires more than good intentions. It requires the intellectual courage to rebuild moral reasoning on foundations solid enough to support genuine universalism without collapsing into cultural imperialism. This is perhaps the defining challenge for contemporary liberal thought—whether it can recover the capacity to make moral judgments worthy of the name or whether it will continue to retreat into the comfortable parochialism of selective outrage.