That hint of Taoism would come from Vervaeke then, since I believe he combines Taoism with Neoplatonism and cognitive science.

I'm a little perplexed, though, about how the Roman Empire and neoliberalism are supposed to be "centrist" in the same sense, or indeed in any sense. What exactly do you mean by "centrist" here? I think the Empire was political and thus pragmatic in keeping the peace, as opposed to being dogmatic about farfetched ideologies. Neoliberalism seems to me just advertising for a late-modern form of plutocracy. Consumerism isn't centrist or moderate. It's a way of sticking our heads in the sand.

Sure, virtue theory is centrist in holding out moderation as wise or as instrumentally rational. The safest, most ethical course is to avoid extremes of character. But that moderation was relative to a patriarchal, slave-holding model which was taken for granted. Centrist moderation, then, should presuppose a standard to judge what's extreme. As I've argued elsewhere, some entire societies seem extreme and one-sided, given a relatively objective view of our existential condition.

It's an interesting question, the extent to which Christianity has had a hand in modern secular progress. I think Jesus's countercultural would have been humiliated by that progress. So maybe an esoteric point of Christianity is that Jesus's outsider perspective died with him on the cross, so that all that's left is the need for political, "centrist" compromises, the latter being Roman but also Jewish (as opposed to Islamic). That's roughly the Grand Inquisitor's point.