On the Concept of Conservatism Rod Preece from MODERN AGE: A Quarterly Review, Vol. 26, Num. 2, Spring 1982 (Been meaning to pull this off the shelf for, well, decades. Abridged.) Contradictory uses of the term conservative are employed fairly frequently these days, by both those who consider themselves conservative and those who do not. When it is used with some accuracy it most often finds its origins in the ideas of Edmund Burke. Because words have specific meanings to which other words, primarily nouns, correspond, an examination of the terms historical context may prove useful. In the Index to Koppel S. Pinsons Modern Germany: Its History and Civilization, Hegelian rationalism appears under the heading, Conservatism. So does romantic restorationism, political Catholicism, feudalism of the Kruzzeitung, nationalism, and revolutionary corporatism. Oddly, the German Free Conservative Party, Bismarcks conservative underwriter, is not included, although it is mentioned elsewhere in the book. Although some of these movements share several characteristics, some were, in fact, mortal enemies. So one question being posed is this: in what way do these several disparate topics attain to the quality of conservatism? John Weiss, in his Conservatism in Europe: 1770-1945 refers to the oldest and most enduring of conservative ideas: the state must not be allowed to expand its powers at the expense of local groups or corporate interests. Weiss proffers as prime representatives of European conservatism: Napoleon III, Bismarck, and Hitler. It is, of course, not at all unusual to treat Napoleon III, Bismarck, or Hitler as in some manner, conservative. Indeed, Mark Hulliung in his Montesquieu and the Old Regime assumes that a denunciation of political absolutism, divine right and Machiavellism is the equivalent to a denunciation of conservatism. Conservatives like Halifax, Bolingbroke and Burke spent their lives fighting one or another of those same three phenomena. Interesting in light of religions pivotal role in modern American politics, Bolingbroke characterized the divine right of kings as blasphemy. Over several centuries strong religious attachment can be seen to belong to those who claim the moniker conservative for themselves. That the concept of conservatism is commonly a confused one seems scarcely necessary of further demonstration. Since the liberal intelligentsia dominate academe, it is their usage of the term which is put into common currency. Moreover, they do not share the conservative affinity for either religiosity or conservatisms latent links to despots. One result is that what can be called the nature of conservatism is misunderstood because academics hold sway in defining conservatives as the antithesis of everything the liberal holds dear. Conservatism comes to be delineated by exclusion from values which, in reality, both liberals and conservatives happen to share. Thus, if the liberal claims to revere individual liberty, by contrast the conservative must, in fact, be a despot; if the liberal lauds the dignity of the individual, the conservative is to be seen as an oppressor. Modern conservatism amounts to a caricature: the conservative as a dull, boorish, bigoted, and avaricious being, the enemy of imagination and youth, powerful through his unjust tenure of property, but otherwise a craven and contemptible creature doomed to extinction,— that according to the eloquent Russell Kirk. My own view is that the conservative frequently loses the debate because he fights at the foot of a slippery slope designated by his liberal nemeses. And yet, the tendency to conservatism does attach to certain human traits or dispositions. For example, the conservative disposition can and does attach to the majority of members of most creeds—that is to say, fundamentally religious men and women. Looking back through the lens of history at the anglophone conservative philosophy out of which Americas modern version grows, we find a nascent conservative disposition expressed in favor of the new liberal and commercial order which had deposed feudalism. The United States should be, in practice, the preservation and elaboration of its English philosophical forebears. Burke was right to call the American revolution a revolution, not made, but prevented. The historical view is that on the continent of Europe, conservatism amounted to the preservation of aristocratic privilege within the context of a feudal order. Burke had been appalled that the King and Queen of France met their demise at the blade of common rabble. Nothing better than a painted and gilded tyranny, quoth Burke of Louis XIVs reign. He welcomed commerce and lauded free enterprise, and he ventured that Englands future greatness would depend on trade, even as he looked with favor upon the preservation of monarchical power and bureaucratic rationalism, the latter being the subject of John Ralston Sauls Voltaires Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West. This bureaucratic rationalism, according to Saul, amounts to the bane of modernity and continues unabated as the very hub of the Harvard Business School model. Burkes lengthy conflict with George III was a spirited defense of liberty as against arbitrary power. Bolingbroke praised limited monarchy. Halifax proclaimed a passion for liberty, and denounced absolute monarchy. None of the British conservatives condoned absolutism. Alternatively, Romantic conservatives such as Coleridge and Southey rejected the voracious industrialism of the early nineteenth century. And yet, almost all European conservatives (e.g. Bossuet in conservation of Bourbon absolutism, Metternich in preservation of the established European order, Donoso Cortés in justification of Spanish dictatorship, and von der Marwitz in defense of the Prussian aristocracy) share with Halifax, Bolingbroke and Burke a common disposition. Each of them preferred, according to Michael Oakeshott, the familiar to the unknown, the tried to the untried, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. One might say each of them was attracted to the particular over the universal, to family, friends, and community over an abstract notion of mankind in general—antithesis of the communist who loves humanity, but cant stand people. The conservative disposition is, says Oakeshott, a disposition appropriate to a man who is acutely aware of having something to lose and, it might be added, a man who favors unquestioning loyalty over inquisitive judgement. The conservative disposition further recognizes that the society in which conservatives achieve their identity also has itself much to lose—through reckless innovation and rationalist experiment, for example. All conservatives share a collectivist orientation toward family, friends, community and, usually, the nation. Each has a greater sense of discipline, order and duty than is found among liberals. All assert mans imperfectability and have reservations about the likelihood of societal progress; at best human nature is ambivalent, possessing the potential for great evil as well as considerable good. And each prefers established authority to mass rule. When continental champions of aristocratic liberty—men such as Montesquieu, Tocqueville and, to a lesser degree, Chateaubriand—came to experience the anglophone context, they came also to possess great admiration for it. Not so the absolutists and advocates of despotism. Contrast Burkes assertion that all natural rights must be the rights of individuals, as by nature there is no such thing as politic or corporate personality; all these are mere fictions of law, institutions voluntarily agreed to, art and convention with individual lives to be served as their ultimate end. The good of the whole, for Burke, cannot be understood without reference to the individual goods which comprise it—the cultural, social, economic and political contexts--all important to a proper understanding of conservatism. The context of anglophone conservatism is a liberal constitutionalism and a non-egoist form of individualism. My argument is that the conservative disposition must have a context—a tradition—which provides the content of the philosophy espoused; and that the conservatism of the anglophone nations has been significantly different from the conservatism which arose in defense of earlier social and economic orders. So, why should we then regard Burke as the most representative thinker of that tradition? Philosophy is, in part, the raising to consciousness that which we already know or possess. We come to understand ourselves better as we allow reason to lift the veil of more primal forces from our souls. We are unfolded to ourselves through the study of like-minded but superior thinkers: philosophers. Conservatives have come to view Burke as the source of conservatism, as well as their inspiration to a better self-understanding. Burke can best explain them to themselves, best elaborate their intuitions about themselves and their society, best make them able to understand what they only felt instinctively before. Burke explicates the tradition which they conserve. Edmund Burke is recognized as the philosopher who most ably expresses the conservative character in a classical liberal context. England was already a classical liberal culture by the turn of the eighteenth century. Burke must be deemed to correspond most closely to what Kant would call the noumenon, what Plato would call the universal, and what I have chosen to call anglophone conservatism. And while Burke remains the exemplar to be emulated, and while too, a certain authoritarianism resides at the center of the conservative disposition, this is not to say saying that we must accept unquestioned all argument from authority. Note that the libertarian is not a conservative. He lacks the conservatives sense of order, duty, discipline and community. Or, if he does possess those characteristics, he only deludes himself that he is a libertarian. What libertarianism conserves is an exaggerated, dogmatic and a priori version of anglophone conservative economics and conservative ideas of individual liberty. It is only on the question of economics and individual liberty that the conservatives and the libertarians even begin to approach one another. On all other matters libertarians and conservatives stand at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. The anglophone conservative truth lies between the libertarian and feudalist extremes. Libertarians espouse an exaggerated (and ahistorical) version of the classical liberal context of anglophone conservatism. Feudalists and absolutists lack appropriate notions of liberty and limited government which are the hallmarks of the anglophone classical liberal concept. Anglophone conservatism requires orderly, disciplined and manly elements of an established past. Its goal is ordered liberty, to assist the nation to rise above the standard, even of its former self.
Posted on: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 11:12:26 +0000
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