Kevin Vallier on Liberalism, Integralism, and AI

In this episode I talk with the political philosopher Kevin Vallier about a variety of intellectual projects that have come out of his journey as an Orthodox Christian defender of public reason liberalism.

We first talk a bit about Vallier’s intellectual background with Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism and his conversion to the public reason liberalism of his dissertation advisor, the late Jerry Gaus of the University of Arizona. We then talked about two of Vallier’s most recent books, All the Kingdoms of the World, a historically-informed philosophical critique of Catholic integralism and other illiberal projects in political theology, and Trust in a Polarized Age, an empirical test of claims about the social consequences of a liberal order. We close by talking about Vallier’s most recent work on modeling the politics of AIs.

This discussion was recorded in late 2025, so much of it is already out of date. Interested listeners should follow Kevin on Twitter/X for more up to date information on his work!