## 1. The Nature of Conservatism


### 1.1 Broad versus narrow sense conservatism



Conservatism in a broad sense, as a social attitude, has always
existed. It expresses the instinctive human fear of sudden change, and
tendency to habitual action. Cecil, for instance, contrasts
"modern Conservatism" with the "natural
conservatism" from which it arises and depends on, found
"in almost every human mind" (Cecil, 1912: 8). The
arch-royalist and anti-populist Earl of Clarendon, writing the history
of the 17th century English Civil War soon after it
happened, was instinctively conservative in this broader,
un-self-conscious sense. Thus Beiser contrasts the "conservatism
[that] had always existed in Germany as a social attitude", with
a self-conscious conservatism that developed as a social force in the
1790s, opposed to the *Aufklarung* or Enlightenment, and
in reaction to the French Revolution (Beiser 1992: 281).
"Self-conscious" here means not merely implicit in
behaviour, but consciously avowed, and ascribed to others. The most
distinctive and historically important version of this narrower,
self-conscious conservatism rests on scepticism concerning reason in
politics.



Various precursors of this self-conscious conservatism have been
claimed. Aristotle is often cited, for holding that morality and
politics--unlike natural science--lack special experts, and
that in these areas, human experience over generations is the main
source of knowledge. Confucius is another possible precursor. His
concern with the breakdown of contemporary political institutions led
to a cautious, conservative political outlook; his stress on authority
and hierarchy prefigures central conservative themes. From a later but
still pre-Enlightenment era, the English common law notion of
precedent, developed by such as Edward Coke (1552-1634), is a
clear influence on self-conscious conservatism (Pocock 1989). For
Hoppit,



> 
> 
> Tory, or what would now be called 'conservative',
> political thought remained alive and well [in England] in the 1690s
> and 1700s....Thomas Sherlock [wrote] in 1704, 'To maintain
> the Establish'd Form of Government, is the First and Highest
> Duty of Men Acting in Society'. (Hoppit 2000: 196)
> 
> 
> 



David Hume (1711-1776) is sometimes regarded as a conservative.
He was a sceptic about reasoning concerning ends as opposed to means,
but did not live to see the French Revolution and the arguments
underlying it; Dr. Johnson, a true Tory, remarked that he was "a
Tory by chance" (reported by Boswell, in Fieser ed. 2005:
290).



The preceding thinkers are proto-conservatives; it is commonly
accepted that as a self-conscious standpoint, conservatism came into
existence with or after Burke's critique of the French
Revolution (Kirk 1954: 5; Honderich 2005: 6; Nisbet 1986; Claeys 2007:
11-34). The 18th century European Enlightenment aimed
to improve the human condition through reform of political
institutions. Its thinkers aimed to establish ethical and political
principles that appealed to reason rather than established authority
or tradition, a "universal ethics independent of historically
contingent tradition" (Beveridge and Turnbull 1997: 124). The
French Revolution gave powerful expression to this belief, rapidly
reinforced by the Industrial Revolution and growth of capitalism. The
development of capitalism, followed and revolutionised by
industrialisation, led to a process of cultural globalisation (see
Bayly 2004: Part I). Everyday experience, conditioned by the diffusion
of commodities and ideas, reflected an increasing global
standardisation of cultural expression. In the 19th century, the
development of communications by the invention of the telegraph, and
the growth of news media, popular culture and international travel,
led to increasing cultural homogeneity and the appearance of more
cosmopolitan ethical outlooks.



As far as the evolution of conservatism is concerned, the French
Revolution was key. For many contemporary writers, that Revolution was
a liberation of the human spirit, an assertion of reason against
irrational feudal authority. The Revolution reflected an Enlightenment
attitude towards history, which it regarded not as the inevitable
realisation of a divine plan, but as open to direction by enlightened
reason, expressed in social and educational reform. Although
conservative thinkers opposed the French Revolution, their attitude
towards the Enlightenment is debated. Burke, as we will see the
leading conservative thinker, is often associated with what Isaiah
Berlin called the "Counter-Enlightenment", but he has also
been seen as "an Enlightened figure, who saw himself defending
Enlightened Europe against the *gens de lettres* and their
revolutionary successors"--it was "one Enlightenment
in conflict with another" (Pocock 1999: 7); "Burke was a
lifelong student of the Enlightenment who saw in the French Revolution
the ultimate threat to...modern, rational, libertarian,
enlightened Whig values" (Clark 2001: 108). Bourke comments that
historians have



> 
> 
> mistaken Burke's enlightened opposition to doctrinaire attacks
> on organised religion for a...counter-enlightenment
> crusade... encouraged by a secular teleology [that reduces]
> enlightenment to the criticism of religion...Burke's
> espousal of sceptical Whiggism and Protestant toleration is curiously
> reinterpreted as hostile to the very principles of enlightenment he
> was in fact defending. (Bourke 2014: 28) 
> 
> 
> 



Thus the common assumption that conservatism rejects modernity is
questioned by Scruton, for whom it "is itself a
modernism... [that desires] to live fully in the present, to
understand it in all its imperfections" (2007: 194). John Gray
comments that Oakeshott's conservative thought is paradoxical in
that he "is in no sense an anti-modernist: If anything, he is an
uncompromising modernist, perhaps even a postmodernist" (Gray
2007, Other Internet Resources).



It is important to recognise that the precise appearance of
conservatism after 1789 is disputed. For some writers argue, the
ideology of conservatism was not articulated until the 1880s and 90s;
only then was Burke established as conservatism's 'master
intellectual' (Jones 2017). Jones cites MacCunn's *The
Political Philosophy of Burke* (1913), which converted the Whig
statesman into the originator of a political philosophy of
conservatism. Cecil's *Conservatism* (1912) firmly established
the connection, devoting a chapter to Burke as the founder of
conservatism. In contrast, Clark places the appropriation earlier,
arguing that "That new creation of the 1830s,
'conservatism', adopted Burke as its patron
saint...If it was difficult after 1832 to build any systematic
political theory around the historical Burke's principles, the social
and political order having changed out of recognition, a Burkean style
nevertheless passed into English discourse" (Clark, 2001:
109-10).


### 1.2 Narrow sense or Burkean conservatism as scepticism about reason



In its narrow, self-conscious sense, conservatism can be characterised
as an



> 
> 
> approach to human affairs which mistrusts both *a priori*
> reasoning and revolution, preferring to put its trust in experience
> and in the gradual improvement of tried and tested arrangements.
> (O'Hear 1998)
> 
> 
> 



Kekes argues similarly that conservatism, with its defining scepticism
and opposition to "rationalism" in politics, contrasts
with liberalism and socialism in rejecting *a priori*
value-commitments (Kekes 1997: 368). This position was enunciated most
trenchantly by Burke, conservatism's "master
intellectual", acknowledged by almost all subsequent
conservatives. He rejected *a priori* reasoning in politics,
notably claims to abstract natural rights, manifested most
dramatically in the French Jacobin dream of destroying and rebuilding
society. Burke holds that there is a practical wisdom in institutions
that is mostly not articulable theoretically, certainly not in
advance, but is passed down in culture and tradition. 



Revolutionary Jacobinism is conservatism's polar opposite and
historic contender. The name comes from the Jacobin Club whose central
figure, Robespierre, launched the French Revolutionary Terror. (On
revolution and Jacobinism, see Graham 1986: 178-81.)
Conservatives such as Burke contrast the French Revolution with
England's more peaceful Glorious Revolution of 1688, which for
them was a revolution in the original sense--a return to an
alleged *status quo* prior to monarchical absolutism, as
opposed to an overturning of traditional institutions in accord with a
rational plan. Conservatism and revolutionary Jacobinism are
inter-dependent concepts that arose together, in conjunction with
liberalism and socialism. One could argue that there is a conceptual
holism between them, in that they cannot be understood independently
of each other, and must be inter-defined (Hamilton 2013 ch 1.2). In
its modern concept, political revolution is a rejection of the past;
before the 18th century, according to most historians,
"revolution" had only its literal sense of "return
to an original state". (Cressy (2006) suggests that in the
English Civil War of the 1640s, a metaphorical use emerged, meaning
sudden, dramatic change in politics or religion.) With the
Enlightenment, the natural order or social hierarchy, previously
largely accepted, was questioned. (The earliest stirrings of this
questioning were found in the English Civil War and even the
Peasant's Revolt.) Implicit in Jacobinism is what may be termed
revolutionary utopianism, which allows the sacrifice of present
generations for alleged future benefit. A classic statement of
revolutionary utopianism is found in these frank remarks by
Trotsky:



> 
> 
> the White Terror...is the weapon of classes which consider
> themselves "Christian", patronize idealist philosophy, and
> are firmly convinced that the individuality (their own) is an
> end-in-itself. As for us, we were never concerned with the
> Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the
> "sacredness of human life". We were revolutionaries in
> opposition, and have remained revolutionaries in power. To make the
> individual sacred we must destroy the social order which crucifies
> him. And this problem can only be solved by blood and iron. (Trotsky
> 1920, ch. 4)
> 
> 
> 



According to critics of utopianism such as Schiller, indeed, one
should not even sacrifice oneself for a utopian vision, as do members
of revolutionary organisations, such as Nelson Mandela and Joe Slovo
of the ANC. Schiller, and Goethe, also provided conservative critiques
of French Revolutionary ideals and practices.



Conservatives reject revolutionary Jacobinism's espousal of
political rationalism, which attempts to reconstruct society from
abstract principles or general blueprint, without reference to
tradition. Conservatives view society not as a machine but as a highly
complex organism, and hold therefore that "without the aid of
experience, reason cannot prescribe political ideals that can be
realised in practice" (Beiser 1992: 283). Present generations
possess duties and responsibilities whose original reasons, if they
were ever apparent, are now lost. Tradition represents for
conservatives a continuum enmeshing the individual and social, and is
immune to reasoned critique; the radical intellectual is therefore
arrogant and dangerous (Kekes 1997: 365). For liberals and socialists,
in contrast, tradition has value only insofar as it survives rational
criticism.



Conservatism therefore rests on what may be termed particularist
scepticism concerning abstract rational principles. Conservatives
regard the radical's rationalism as "metaphysical"
in ignoring particular social, economic and historical conditions:



> 
> 
> I cannot [praise or blame] human actions...on a simple view of
> the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the
> nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction; (Burke, WS III:
> 58)
> 
> 
> 
> circumstances give every political principle its colour. (Cobban 1960:
> 75)
> 
> 
> 



For conservatives, abstract propositions cannot simply be applied to
specific circumstances. Unlike liberals and socialists, therefore,
conservatives are particularist in rejecting universal prescriptions
and panaceas; they reject the Enlightenment-modernist requirement that
practical rationality is liberated from all particularism (Beveridge
and Turnbull 1997). This is not "particularism" in its
dictionary definition of "exclusive adherence to one's own
group, party, sect, or nation"; rather, it is a philosophical
sense that has an affinity with moral particularism as advocated by
Dancy (2004). The parallel is incomplete, however; political
conservatives do not deny that there are general principles, as Dancy
does, they just deny that one should apply them. Their position is an
essentially epistemic one--that one cannot know the general
principles whose implementation would benefit the operation of
society. According to Gray, conservatism's fundamental insight
is that



> 
> 
> persons' identities cannot be matters of choice, but are
> conferred on them by their unchosen histories, so that what is most
> essential about them is...what is most accidental. The
> conservative vision is that people will come to value the privileges
> of choice...when they see how much in their lives must always
> remain unchosen. (2010: 159)
> 
> 
> 



Conservative scepticism is quite distinct from Cartesian or external
world scepticism, therefore, since the latter scepticism is based on
reason; rather, it is sceptical about the claims of theoretical
reason, in politics and ethics. Nor does its scepticism constitute a
critique of society in the Marxist sense. For conservatives, society
rests on prejudice, not reason; prejudice is not irrational, but
simply unreasoning. Burke advocated educated prejudice as an antidote
to its bigoted forms--arguably, not a rejection of reason, but a
scepticism about its inordinate pretensions. Philosophers might
speculate about why we have the duties that we do, but prejudice makes
us act, without having to calculate all the consequences--or
indeed to reason about ends. This is not the irrationalism of
Nietzsche or Freud, for whom much of human behaviour is irrationally
driven, but rather, a non-rationalist standpoint. It is sceptical
about proposals of reform based on *a priori* commitment to a
value such as freedom or equality. (See
 2.3 on Burke
 below) In elucidating conservatism, one should distinguish between
the metaethical claim that abstract values do not exist or are not
worth pursuing, and the epistemic challenge "how are these
values be accessed in practice?" Conservatism is primarily an
epistemic standpoint. Conservatives believe that values of justice,
freedom, and truth are important and should be pursued by the state,
but they interpret those values in a concrete fashion.


### 1.3 Tradition and gradual reform: conservatism vs. reaction



As we have seen, it is generally recognised that conservatism is not
dogmatic reaction. It advocates piecemeal, moderate reform, which
follows from its scepticism concerning reason, and its valuing of
experience concerning human affairs. Burke argued that "a state
without the means of some change is without the means of its
conservation". But change must be cautious, because knowledge is
imperfect and consequences can be unintended. According to
conservatives, institutions and morals evolve, their weaknesses become
apparent and obvious political abuses are corrected; but ancient
institutions embody a tacit wisdom that deserves respect.
Conservatives are sceptical of large-scale constitutional, economic or
cultural planning, because behaviour and institutions have evolved
through the wisdom of generations, which cannot easily be
articulated.



Central to conservatism is the notion of tradition, whose
self-conscious, contrastive use arises only in modernity. In the later
18th century, the mobilisation of "the past" as
an explicit political resource became especially important, and a
contrast between "traditional" and
"modern"--as opposed to "ancient" and
"modern"--was stressed. Burke's political
philosophy was an early instance of this process. This mobilisation
has been associated with "the invention of tradition"
(Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983), in which mass-produced
"traditional" artefacts established a fictional organic
relation between past and present, as in Sir Walter Scott's
re-invention of the kilt and other "traditional" artefacts
for King George IV's visit to Edinburgh in 1822.



For conservatives, vital political relations are organic. Unlike
reactionary thinkers, they regard traditions not as static, but as in
a gentle and gradual flux, encouraged by the astute reformer. For
Burke, the English revolutionaries of 1688 achieved restoration as
opposed to "innovation". Reform corrects the inadequacies
of ancient institutions in light of contemporary
needs--conservatives such as Disraeli might want to create a
broader suffrage, for instance--but one must disdain "the
blind and furious spirit of innovation". Reform must be
practically and not theoretically-based:



> 
> 
> I must see with my own eyes...touch with my own hands not only
> the fixed but the momentary circumstances, before I could venture to
> suggest any political project whatsoever...I must see the means
> of correcting the plan...I must see the things; I must see the
> men. (Burke, WS III: 326)
> 
> 
> 



For Kekes, conservatism adopts a stance of scepticism between extremes
of rationalism and fideism (belief based on faith), and steers a
middle course of pessimism between claims of perfectibility and
corruptibility (1998: 54, 89, 60). Conservatives aim to



> 
> 
> conserve the political arrangements that have historically shown
> themselves to be conducive to good lives thus understood (1998:
> 27);
> 
> 
> 



they regard



> 
> 
> history [as] the best guide to understanding the present and planning
> for the future. (Kekes 1997: 352)
> 
> 
> 



Conservatism's "organic" social vision is inherently
sceptical of the state, and puts faith instead in the family, private
property and religion; it does not involve the rich organicism of the
British Idealists Bradley and Bosanquet, that yields "a mystical
union with the superior unity of the state"--a German
philosophical rather than British conservative conception (Sweet
1999). As Cobban writes, Locke's influence ensured that the
"historic idea in Burke's mind [did not] pass into the
full organic theory of society" (Cobban 1960: 89). It is
reaction and not conservatism that is inherently authoritarian. For
conservatives, individuals and local communities are better assessors
of their own needs and problems than distant bureaucrats. Free from
utopian planning, conservatives hold, society finds its own, largely
beneficial, shape.



Conservatism proceeds via the tried and tested, relying not on pure
reason, but on what Burke called the "latent wisdom" of
prejudice, instinct and custom, which accumulates across generations.
For Kirk, "prejudice is not bigotry or superstition",
though it may degenerate into these; it is



> 
> 
> pre-judgment, the answer...which intuition and ancestral
> consensus of opinion supply...when [one] lacks either time or
> knowledge to arrive at a decision predicated upon pure reason. (1954:
> 34)
> 
> 
> 



For conservatives, custom is immemorial but not thereby static; it is
"constantly being subjected to the test of experience"
(Pocock 1989: 213). But to change the state in response to
"floating fancies or fashions" is to break the
"whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth" (Burke,
WS III: 145). 


### 1.4 Formal procedural vs. substantive senses of "conservatism"; contrast with neo-conservatism and libertarianism



Conservatism has been equated with pragmatism or political realism;
Gamble (2012) argues that conservative political "thought"
is all practice--self-interested practice. But conservatism is
generally regarded as a philosophy, if not a systematic one. Two
contrasting interpretations of conservatism distinguish it from mere
pragmatism. Both reject *a priori* reasoning, revolution and
social experiments; both trust experience, look for gradual
improvement of tried and tested arrangements, and sympathise with the
pragmatist's motto "if it ain't broke, don't
fix it"; both are sceptical of reason, and are
particularist:



(1) relativistic conservatism suggests that if socialism, feudalism or
fascism works well in some country, one should try to make it run
better through minor improvements based on experience and accumulated
wisdom. The judgement of whether something is broken or runs
reasonably well appeals to values accepted in the relevant society.
Thus conservatives in reasonably functioning socialist, feudal and
fascist countries advocate different modes of social organisation and
gradual improvement, according to prevailing values. On this view,
conservative particularism is relativistic.



(2) non-relativistic conservatism rejects views such as socialism,
libertarianism and fascism that aim to structure society around a
single rationally-articulated organising principle. On this
interpretation of conservatism, particularism does not imply
relativism. Revolutionary systems, and autocratic systems with no
possibility of incremental change--societies that do not exhibit
living traditions--are not amenable to a conservative outlook. On
this view, conservatism is situational, but some situations do not
permit conservative responses.



The sarcastic dismissal of Burke by a liberal defender of the
Revolution, J.S. Mill's father James, is effective only against
position (1), relativistic conservatism:



> 
> 
> In the case of public institutions, Mr. Burke had...worked
> himself into an artificial admiration of the bare fact of existence;
> especially ancient existence. Everything was to be protected, not
> because it was good, but, because it existed. Evil, to render itself
> an object of reverence in his eye, required only to be realised.
> (James Mill 1858: Vol. V, 200-1)
> 
> 
> 



Yet only position (2), non-relativistic conservatism, can express the
conservative criterion of a well-functioning society, in terms of
organic tradition; there is no such thing, in these terms, as a
"reasonably functioning totalitarian society". This
non-relativist position is minimally rational and universal, while
remaining particularist. (This terminology is elucidated further at
 2.3).
 (Lock (2006) regards (1) and (2) as an unBurkean choice between
constructed opposites, arguing that Burke is not strongly relativist,
but recognises temporal and geographical differences that amount to a
kind of relativism.)



Conservatives seek to "preserve the political
arrangements...shown to be conducive to good lives", writes
Kekes (1997: 351-2). Perhaps he overlooks the contestability of
conceptions of the good life, and of arrangements that preserve it;
liberals, for instance, stress the value of individual freedom,
independent of what they may see as burdensome constraints of
tradition. According to (2), there is a conservative conception of the
good life, and of the arrangements that preserve it--one that
rejects the over-valuation of Enlightenment rationalism and
revolution. But as we will see, conservatives must steer a course
between an unconservative pragmatism, and an unconservative
substantive policy. (The issue recurs throughout this entry,
especially in sections
 2.3
 and
 3.1.)



For Graham, conservative scepticism is



> 
> 
> not so much a scepticism about the moral perfection of mankind, as a
> scepticism about the knowledge necessary in politics. (1986: 176)
> 
> 
> 



But these are hard to separate. Liberals and socialists stress the
malleability of human nature under the influence of changeable
historical conditions. The anti-conservative Rousseau had an
optimistic conception of human nature, blaming government and society
for failings that--according to conservatives--belong to
individuals. Conservatives, in contrast, regard human nature as weak
and fallible, unalterably selfish rather than altruistic (Kekes 1997:
368). Scruton is typically conservative in regarding human beings as
frail creatures of limited sympathy, which they do not easily extend
to those remote in space or time (Scruton 2012). (Rawls's
"limited altruism" in the "circumstances of
justice" seems derived from Hume, and so might be characterised
as a conservative feature of Rawls' thought.) Conservatism is
imperfectionist, anti-utopian and pragmatic, "unable to appeal
to any future that is not already present and past" (Scruton
1980: 27). 



Conservatism is popularly conflated with neo-conservatism and with
libertarianism. But right libertarians and neo-conservatives, unlike
Burkean conservatives, reject state planning for doctrinaire reasons.
Making anti-planning into a principle, or economic liberalism into an
ideology, offends the conservative's pragmatic, sceptical
temper, which could admit a role for state planning and economic
intervention were such things shown to be effective. Conservatives
reject ideologies, of which neo-liberalism is one. As Oakeshott
argues



> 
> 
> A plan to resist all planning may be better than its opposite, but it
> belongs to the same style of politics. And only in a society already
> deeply infected with Rationalism will the conversion of the
> traditional resources of resistance to the tyranny of Rationalism into
> a self-conscious ideology be considered a strengthening of those
> resources. It seems that now, in order to participate in politics [one
> must have] a doctrine.... (Oakeshott 1991 [1962]: 212)
> 
> 
> 



The conservative's rejection of rationalism therefore cuts two
ways; it undermines both socialism, and the doctrinaire, free-market
rejection of socialism. Conservatives oppose rational planning, but do
not dogmatically oppose planning that works. Scruton, for instance,
believes that a market economy is most conducive to prosperity, but
like Adam Smith, insists that markets should work within, and not
erode, customs and moral and legal traditions. Burke's and
Scruton's conservatism is not an economic view, but one that
regards society as formed over a long period in relation with place
and land; it treats rights and duties on the model of the common law,
depending on tradition and practice, rather than on abstract notions
of human rights (see entry on
 rights).



Conservatism differs from neo-conservatism and libertarianism in
motivation or formal features, therefore. In both the modern U.S.
Republican Party (GOP) and British Conservative Party, Burkean
conservatism has been submerged. The GOP's anti-governmentalism
is closer to libertarian traditions; its patriotic and deeply
religious standpoints--and what critics regard as its militarism
and opposition to immigration--coincide only partially with
Burkean conservatism. (It has been argued (Harvey 2005; Ha Joon Chang
2003) that neo-conservatives do not reduce state intervention, but
simply shift its priorities, while maintaining its massive scale.)



Despite some claims to the contrary, therefore, Nozick's
*Anarchy State and Utopia* is not a conservative rival to
Rawls' liberal theory (Nozick 1977). Nozick and conservatism
seem to share a commitment to the invisible hand of the free market,
and rejection of an extensive state. But Nozick is more plausibly
regarded as a right libertarian, an extreme classical or neo-liberal.
It is wrong to say that he is "rare among conservatives"
in presenting it with a "general principle or rationale",
viz. "from each as they choose, to each as they are
chosen", in contrast to the socialist or communist "from
each according to his ability, to each according to their need"
(Honderich 2005: 60; see Nozick 1977: 160). Conservatives avoid such
principles. Rejecting Nozick as a model, Scruton stresses that
"political understanding, as a form of practical judgement, does
not readily translate itself into universal principles" (Scruton
1980: 36).



Libertarianism influences neo-conservatism, but--as an extreme
form of liberalism--is at best neutral towards
conservatism's emphasis on tradition. Perhaps neo-liberalism is
libertarianism plus related economic doctrines, while neo-conservatism
is libertarianism plus elements of traditional conservatism.
Neo-liberals like Milton Friedman question drug-prohibition and
conscription, which conservatives and neo-conservatives would not.



Conservatism's popular association with *laissez-faire*
capitalism is also debatable, since it has been associated with feudal
romanticism. Feudalism is a (contested) label for the economic system
prevalent in Europe from after the decline of the Roman Empire until
the 16th century, and which rested on the holding of land
in return for labour; in France, it persisted as the *ancien
regime* up till the French Revolution. A sympathiser with the
*ancien regime* such as Burke could therefore be regarded as a
feudal romantic. (On feudalism, see Dyer 2002, and Pocock 1987.) Like
socialists such as William Morris and Ruskin, many 19th
century conservatives reacted against industrialism and
*laissez-faire* capitalism with a feudal nostalgia. Marx
contrasted the warmth and security of feudalism with the inhumanity of
capitalism, but rejected "feudal idyllics", dismissing
Disraeli and "feudal socialists" for failing to comprehend
"the march of modern history" (Duncan 1973:
19-22).



Conservatism may seem to share the *laissez-faire* doctrine,
imputed to Adam Smith, of the invisible hand--according to which,
in a free market, unintended consequences of actions tend to promote
the general good. The capitalist free market is held to be
self-regulating; producers and consumers, acting selfishly, benefit
each other, and rational economic planning disrupts the innate, benign
"intelligence" of markets. The evolutionary nature and
anti-statism of *laissez-faire* theory appeal to conservatives,
but to reiterate, they would not offer doctrinaire reasons for
rejecting planning. In fact, the "invisible hand" was
unimportant and indeed alien to Smith (Rothschild 2001: 116-56).
The allegedly neo-conservative Hayek, with his esteem for "the
unconscious, the blind, the untheoretical, the imperfectly
understood", is more Burkean here (Rothschild 2001: 149; see
also Scruton 2007); according to Gray, he synthesises "the
deepest insights of conservatism with the best elements of classical
liberalism" (2010: 124). Hayek valued local, transient,
untheoretical knowledge, and advocated unfettered markets on the
conservative sceptical grounds that they best realise organic social
institutions. 



Substantive definitions of conservatism such as Aughey's should
be questioned, therefore. For him it is



> 
> 
> the intellectual justification of inequality and privilege, and the
> political justification of the authoritative relationships such
> inequalities and privileges demand. (Aughey 1992: 23; also Honderich
> 2005: 45)
> 
> 
> 



It is true that no revolution has proclaimed inequality, while for
Burke, the social order is rooted in it; and conservatives may defend
an established ruling class, regarding ruling as a skill likely to be
most highly developed there. But in Quinton's influential
account, conservatism is more neutral:



> 
> 
> political wisdom...is not to be found in the theoretical
> speculations of isolated thinkers but in the historically accumulated
> social experience of the [whole] community...[in] traditional
> customs and institutions [and people with] extensive practical
> experience of politics. (1978: 16-17)
> 
> 
> 



To reiterate, conservatism is not essentially associated with
aristocracy and hereditary forms of government, or opposed to
democracy. For conservatives, as for Millian liberals, the viability
of democracy depends on the period and conditions. For Burke, writing
much earlier than Mill, a majority should be drawn only from a body
qualified by tradition, station, education, property and moral nature;
he questioned the "principle that a majority of men told
[*i.e., counted*] by the head are to be considered as the
people, and that as such their will is to be a law" (Burke 1791,
'Thoughts on French Affairs' [1991]: 344).



While conservatism should not be assimilated with neo-conservatism or
neo-liberalism, many conservatives have converted to the latter:



> 
> 
> A political outlook that in Burke, Disraeli and Salisbury was
> sceptical of the project of the Enlightenment and suspicious of the
> promise of progress has mortgaged its future on a wager on indefinite
> economic growth and unfettered market forces. [This] scarcely exhibits
> the political prudence...once revered as a conservative virtue.
> (Gray 1997: 88)
> 
> 
> 



Scruton also laments this development, while John Harris comments on
the enduring tensions that Margaret Thatcher exposed in
Conservatism:



> 
> 
> If you profess to believe in both the unrestrained market and such old
> Tory touchstones as family, nation and community, you
> will...discover that the former eats away at the foundations of
> the latter (Harris, 2013; Harvey (2005) offers a trenchant critique of
> neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism.) 
> 
> 
> 


### 1.5 Conservatism and liberalism: the standpoint of freedom vs. standpoint of paternalism



Conservatism can be further elucidated by contrasting it with
liberalism. Both liberalism and socialism are more theoretically
complex than conservatism, for two reasons: conservatism
self-consciously rejects philosophical theorising; and, since
academics tend towards the left, conservatism as a political
philosophy continues to be neglected. (For instance, Scruton describes
his book *The Meaning of Conservatism* (1980) as
"dogmatics" rather than philosophy.) There could be no
conservative theory of distributive justice to rival Rawls',
since, for conservatives, the problems that Rawls addresses do not
exist. For them, politics does not concern the theoretically complex
justification of ends, but rather facilitates the enjoyment of
"non-political" ends such as "country",
"family" and "religion" (Ashford 1990:
40-1).



It is often argued that modern political philosophy is animated by the
idea of freedom, while ancient political philosophy rests on a natural
order discernible by reason to which humans must conform (Franco 1999:
2). But conservatism is a modern standpoint whose commitment to
freedom is contested; it can be argued that the liberal standpoint of
freedom is opposed by the conservative standpoint of paternalism or
authority. The dividing line between ancient and modern may be
Rousseau, for whom the purpose of the state is not merely security of
life and property, as Hobbes, Locke and conservatives maintain;
rather, it is freedom itself (Franco 1999: 9). Rousseau's works
were held to influence the French revolutionaries, and late 18th and
early 19th century thinkers were convinced that the Revolution was
caused by philosophers' ideas of equality, democracy, freedom
(Israel, 2002). (In fact, Rousseau regarded the revolutionary cure as
worse than the disease, and was pessimistic about political progress.)
In expressing the standpoint of freedom, philosophical liberalism
embraces ethical individualism--that all value and right reduces
to value of or for individuals, and the rights of
individuals--respect for persons, and freedom of thought and
discussion, based on individual autonomy (Skorupski 2015). For
classical liberals, liberty thrives only when traditional sources of
authority--monarchical, aristocratic, religious--are
rejected. 



It is often said that liberals prioritise rights over duties, while
conservatives prioritise duties over rights. Conservative thinking
expresses the standpoint of paternalism:



> 
> 
> ...the value of individual liberty is not absolute, but stands
> subject to...the authority of established government...the
> conservative will seek to uphold all those practices and institutions
> through which habits of allegiance are acquired. (Scruton 1980: 19,
> 30)
> 
> 
> 



Obedience, for Scruton, is the principal virtue of political subjects,
without which societies atomise and crumble; real freedom is not in
conflict with obedience, but is its other side (Scruton, 1980). For
Oakeshott, there is no freedom without authority. For Beiser,
paternalism holds that



> 
> 
> the purpose of the state is to promote the welfare, religion and
> morality of its subjects, and not only to protect their rights.
> (Beiser 1992: 282)
> 
> 
> 



Burke was "less concerned with protecting the individual from
the potential tyranny of the State, and more to protect the property
of the few from the folly and rapacity of the many" (Lock 2006:
321-2). 



The contrast with liberalism and its standpoint of freedom should be
qualified, however - the contrast is not an absolute one, but a
matter of balance and tone. For instance, the visceral opposition of
Western conservatives to the Soviet Union was motivated by a
commitment to freedom. Burke himself wanted to enhance freedom, but
held that it is realised imperfectly in our institutions; pursuit of
an abstract ideal may lose us what freedom we have. Both conservatives
and classical liberals advocate limited government; it is
particularist scepticism and an associated pessimism that define
conservatism. Liberals concurred with Burke's limits on
government, concern for private property, and judicious reform (Kirk
1954: 162). However, although Burke agreed that government originates
from the need to protect property, he disavowed many of Locke's
principles (Kirk 1954: 14). 



Conservatives reject the liberal's concept of abstract,
ahistorical and universal rights, derived from the nature of human
agency and autonomy, and possessed even when unrecognised, for
instance by slaves in Ancient Greece (on abstract rights, see for
instance Gewirth 1983). For conservatives, *a priori* claims
such as L.T. Hobhouse's "The proper end of government is
the uncovering of civil liberties", are doubly mistaken
(Hobhouse 1964 [1911]: 19); government does not have such ends, and
"uncovering civil liberties" is particularly disruptive.
However, while Hobhouse, Rawls and Dworkin defend abstract and
universal rights, liberals such as Mill are more
historically-sensitive--through the influence of Coleridge, he
drew on aspects of conservative thought. Mill's abstract utility
principle becomes conservative in operation, through his emphasis on
the malleability and educability of character; our preferences,
desires, and tastes arise from existing institutions, and so any
abstract institutional blueprint fails to maximise utility. For Mill,
a nation's history and society decide the best apparatus of
government, and he locates Coleridgean "Ideas" in
"organic" historical institutions--their original
purpose and meaning. However, Mill's perfectionism contrasts
with conservative pessimism about human nature, and he rejected what
he called "intuitionism", which fosters conservatism by
assuring people that anything they believe deeply enough must be true;
rather, he holds that inveterate beliefs must be justified by reason
(Mill, *Autobiography*, CW, I: 233; Skorupski 2010: 24). Despite
the influence of Coleridge, therefore, Mill remained a liberal and not
a conservative, who valued reason above Burkean prejudice.



Conservatives are not legal positivists, and allow some idealisation
of rights; indeed, even legal positivists Bentham, Austen and Hart, in
conceding that there are moral constraints, allow that there are bad
laws. Burke held that the Stuart monarchs abrogated the rights of
free-born Englishmen; under the Stuarts, therefore, the latter had
rights that were not simply those that prevailed. Indeed, Burke does
not entirely reject the concept of natural rights. Though sceptical of
appealing to rights that are beyond positive law, in his writings on
India, he acknowledged that when deprived of positive legal resources,
one can appeal to natural law though not natural right (Bourke 2014;
though see Stanlis 1953, and Canavan 1960). 



This section has focused mainly on Burkean conservatism, treated as
scepticism about the role of reason in politics. The next section
analyses the historical development of Burkean conservatism,
contrasting it with more rationalist traditions of conservatism, and
also looking at North American traditions, and modern conservatism.



## 2. The Development of Conservative Thought


### 2.1 Use of the term "conservative"



Burke's French disciples first coined the word
"conservative" (French, "conservateur"); Burke
himself used "conserve". To reiterate
 1.2
 above, conservatism and revolutionary Jacobinism are inter-dependent
concepts that arose together; the concept predates its label. The
English Revolution of the 17th century adumbrates the polarity, in the
conflict between Cavaliers and Roundheads. The Cavaliers were,
crudely, the precursors of the Tories who later became known as
Conservatives. The term "Tory" dates from the Exclusion
Crisis 1679-81, during the reign of Charles II. The parliamentary
faction that wanted to exclude Charles' Catholic brother James from
the succession were known as Whigs, and those who supported his right
to the throne were Tories. "Tory" is derived from the
Irish Gaelic word toraidhe, meaning a dispossessed Irish outlaw.
"Tory" was also used during the American War of
Independence, referring to colonists loyal to the British monarchy; in
Canada, the term is still use to describe centre-right
Conservatives.



In 1830 the *Quarterly Review* commented that "what is
called the Tory might with more propriety be called the Conservative
party", and Canning and Peel adopted the label. (The Oxford
English Dictionary entry suggests that "Conservative"
originally designated an opponent of reactionary "Tory"
views.) "Liberal" began to be used for the Whigs, and by
1840 Thomas Carlyle used "conservatism" to describe what
he regarded as opposition to progress. ("Tory" survives,
as a label for the British party; "Whig" does not.)
Mill's "Essay on Bentham" (1838) described Bentham
as a "Progressive", and Coleridge as a
"Conservative". Other European languages borrowed
"conservative" and "conservatism" from
English. Mostly it is the British, and their former Empire, that have
parties labelled Conservative; countries with a strong republican
tradition (France, U.S.A., Argentina) have never had mass-based,
self-styled "conservative" parties. European parties of
the right are Christian Democrat, and in the U.S.A., Republican. However,
one should not conclude that conservatism is essentially a British
view; all cultures have political sceptics who value experience. 


### 2.2 Precursors of Burkean conservatism



David Hume (1711-76) is sometimes regarded as a precursor of
Burke's conservatism. For Neiman,



> 
> 
> Burke used [Hume's] claims about the impotence of reason and the
> mind's subsequent dependence on custom and habit to argue
> against radical attempts to change the established order. (Neiman
> 2001: 294)
> 
> 
> 



Cobban contrasts Burke's residual contractualism with
Hume's



> 
> 
> theory of the origins of society and government which placed political
> conservatism on a much sounder and more realistic basis. (1960:
> 51)
> 
> 
> 



Others claim Hume as a proto-liberal. John Stewart rejects the picture
of Hume clinging to a raft of custom and artifice, because as a
sceptic, he has no alternative: "[He] was confident that by
experience and reflection philosophers can achieve true
principles", and did not deny that reason determines right and
wrong in morals and politics (Stewart 2014: 8).


### 2.3 Burkean conservatism



Liberalism was defined by J.S. Mill, who as Skorupski comments
"[drove] so many windows onto its innermost commitments",
interrogating its values and policies (Skorupski 1989: 338); socialism
was defined by Marx. For most conservatives, Burke largely defines
modern conservatism--even if his "windows", unlike
Mill's, seem more like panes of frosted glass. We now examine
his ideas and how they arose. 



In his *Reflections on the Revolution in France*, the Irish
Whig and parliamentarian Edmund Burke (1729-1797) warned against
revolutions and their utopian schemes for human perfectibility.
Writing in 1790, he predicted the French Revolutionary Terror of three
years later:



> 
> 
> In the groves of [the] academy [of this new conquering empire of light
> and reason], at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the
> gallows; (Burke, WS III: 128)
> 
> 
> 



he also foresaw Napoleon's coup. His prediction is based on his
view that when compliance no longer flows from customary allegiances,
the result is naked force (WS VIII: 128). As Steiner comments,



> 
> 
> When Burke reflected and published, the French Revolution was in its
> Arcadian phase [and] his bloodstained previsions seemed nearly
> hysterical...Retroactively... his sombre clairvoyance took
> on formidable weight. (Steiner 1988: 3; see Lock 2006: Vol. 2)
> 
> 
> 



He provided "the first serious argument that revolutions devour
their own children and turn into their own opposites" (Hitchens
2011: 161)--that the violent seizure of power invites its violent
counter-seizure. Its British friends compared the French Revolution
with the Glorious Revolution of 1688; for Burke, it reprised 1649,
when Parliament was purged and the king executed. The 1688 Revolution
did not affirm, like the French Revolution, that power can revert to
the people, who have a right to "erect a new form...as they
think good" (to quote Locke's Second Treatise) (Pocock
1989: 207).



Burke argued that revolutionaries impose theory on political practice,
when they should rather derive theory from it. In a speech of 1782, he
held it preposterous



> 
> 
> to take the theories which learned and speculative men have made from
> that government, and then, supposing it made on those theories which
> were made from it, to accuse that government as not corresponding with
> them. (1782 House of Commons motion, in SW IV: 148)
> 
> 
> 



He thus



> 
> 
> regarded as folly the Enlightenment programme of willed, abstractly
> underwritten social reform, which violated the organic mystery of
> historicism, the [Aristotelian]... unfolding
> of...institutional modes of social being. (Steiner 1988: 3)
> 
> 
> 



He opposed radical rationalist philosophes, Rousseau's Romantic
sentimentalism, and Bentham's utilitarianism, lamenting that
"the age of chivalry is gone. That of the sophists, economists
and calculators has succeeded" (Burke, WS III: 127). He held
against these calculators and rationalists that "no great human
institution results from deliberation", but rather, evolves in
ways not envisaged by its founders; "human works are fragile in
proportion to...the degree to which science and reasoning"
have helped construct them (Kirk 1954: 24; Burke, WS III: 128). As
Pocock writes,



> 
> 
> the reason of the living, though it might clearly enough discern the
> disadvantages, might not fully perceive the advantages of existing and
> ancient institutions; 
> 
> 
> 



there is always



> 
> 
> more in laws and institutions than [meets] the eye of critical reason.
> (Pocock 1989: 203)
> 
> 
> 



Burke required close and constant attention to circumstance, for
society is "a dense medium", never easy to penetrate.
(1987 [1790]: 54) 



Isaiah Berlin and Stuart Hampshire link Burke with reactionaries such
as de Maistre. But to reiterate, Burke advocated organic and
restorative reform, not reaction:



> 
> 
> a nation without the means of its own reform is without the means of
> its own preservation. (Burke, WS III: 327; Lock 2006: 305)
> 
> 
> 



The *Reflections* argue that the *ancien regime* could
have been restored to its pre-corrupt state; summoning the Estates
General for May 1789 was an opportunity for enlightened reform of the
monarchy, hijacked by enthusiastic atheists and deists (WS VIII:
175-6). Burke advocated "slow politics", an inching
forward on the secure foundation of inherited settlements and
loyalties (Mount 2014).



Burke had a Whig belief in limited government. He identified liberties
and rights with landed property, hence King George III's praise
of *Reflections* for supporting "the cause of the
Gentleman". Burke differs from liberal tradition not in
rejecting rights as such, but in his conception of them (Lock 2006:
313-26). He rejected a constitution or bill of rights that does
not simply express existing practice. For him, the only reliable
liberty comes through descent, justified



> 
> 
> ...not on abstract principles "as the rights of men",
> but as the rights of Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived from their
> forefathers... The idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle
> of conservation, and...of transmission; without at all excluding
> a principle of improvement. By a constitutional policy, working after
> the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government
> and our privileges, [just as] we enjoy and transmit our property and
> our lives. (Burke, WS III: 83) 
> 
> 
> 



Burke mistrusted appeals beyond positive law, but his writings on
India allow, in its absence, an appeal to natural law though not
natural right. The Hobbesian conception of *Reflections* treats
natural rights as pre-social, and incompatible with society. For
Burke, liberty is precarious; to say that it is assured by
providential order, and has an inevitable progress, is the kind of
metaphysical principle he abhorred (Himmelfarb 1987: 146-7).



Burke misrepresents the social contract of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau
as a rather temporary expedient,



> 
> 
> nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and
> coffee, calico, or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be
> taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the
> fancy of the parties. (Burke, WS III: 147)
> 
> 
> 



But his position is genuinely distinct from theirs in crossing the
generations:



> 
> 
> [The state] is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art;
> a partnership in every virtue...As [its] ends...cannot be
> obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership...between
> those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be
> born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the
> great primeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the
> higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world...
> (Burke, WS III: 147)
> 
> 
> 



This is a powerful statement, but hard to interpret. It is reflected
in Chesterton's remarks that



> 
> 
> Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our
> ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to
> submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen
> to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by
> the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified
> by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good
> man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to
> neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father (Chesterton
> 2012: 29; see also section 4 of this entry) 
> 
> 
> 



Hampsher-Monk comments that Burke



> 
> 
> sublimates the contract's ideological power whilst draining it
> of radical potential: a contract involving the dead and unborn could
> hardly be renegotiated. [This rhetorical figure] expresses his deepest
> beliefs about the status of political establishments. Our social
> institutions cannot (like ordinary contracts) be the product of any
> individual's calculation or insight (Hampsher-Monk 2012:
> 202-3)
> 
> 
> 



For Scruton (1980), liberals tend to make present members of society
dominant over those who went before, and those who come after; some
conservative commentators fear that the cross-generational contract is
now being broken by



> 
> 
> enormous inter-generational transfers [from future to present
> generations] implied by current fiscal policies. (Ferguson 2012)
> 
> 
> 



Burke was a Christian thinker whose conservatism has been traced to
his theological presuppositions (Harris 1993; Cobban 1960: 94); he saw
atheistic Jacobinism as a threat to Western cultural tradition. Many
conservative writers share his religious interpretation of the
contract across the generations; for Kirk (1954: 7), established
religion is among the traditions that conservatives value. But
religious belief is not essential to conservatism, and Oakeshott was a
secular conservative (Cowling, 2004: xv).



Burke's writings appealed to Continental as well as
Anglo-American audiences; both Tocqueville and Macaulay were
followers. But they caused a stormy reaction from radicals. Thomas
Paine, a friend with whom Burke quarrelled, defended a cosmopolitan
conception of rights; liberty is each person's natural right,
which only the living possess, and Burke's idea of descent was a
"usurpation" and diminution of it:



> 
> 
> [No] generation [has] a property in the generations which are to
> follow. The parliament or the people of 1688...had no more right
> to dispose of the people of the present day.... (Paine 1791:
> 92)
> 
> 
> 



Paine wanted the American Revolution to abolish slavery, and to
restrain the French Revolution from violent fanaticism; Burke,
sympathising with Marie Antoinette, "pities the plumage and
forgets the dying bird"--the people (Paine 1791: 102). Mary
Wollstonecraft, in her pamphlet *A Vindication of the Rights of
Men* (1790), said that



> 
> 
> had you been a Frenchman, you would have been, in spite of your
> respect for rank and antiquity, a violent revolutionist. Your
> imagination would have taken fire. (Wollstonecraft 1790: 44)
> 
> 
> 



In his later career, liberals believed, Burke showed himself a
prisoner of the feudal and landed conception of society.



Burke's apparent change of affiliation from Whig to Tory is
much-debated. For most of his career, he was regarded as a moderate
reforming Whig, campaigning against the corruption and brutality of
the East India Company. Only at the end did he become the Tory scourge
of Revolution. Indeed, *Reflections* is liberal compared to
*Letters on a Regicide Peace* five years later, which demanded
a war abroad and repression at home to extirpate revolutionary
infection. The 19th century regarded him as a liberal,
treating his later writings as an aberration--an interpretation
reversed in the 20th century. Marx scathingly dismissed
Burke as an opportunist:



> 
> 
> The sycophant--who in the pay of the English oligarchy played the
> romantic...against the French Revolution just as, in the pay of
> the North American colonies...he had played the liberal against
> the English oligarchy--was an out-and-out vulgar bourgeois.
> "The laws of commerce are the laws of Nature, and therefore the
> laws of God." (E. Burke, l.c.: 31, 32)...true to the laws
> of God and Nature, he always sold himself in the best market (*Das
> Kapital*, Vol. 1, Ch. 31)
> 
> 
> 



Coleridge, slightly more charitably, wrote:



> 
> 
> If his Opponents are Theorists, then every thing is to be founded on
> PRUDENCE, on mere calculation of EXPEDIENCY... Are his Opponents
> Calculators? Then...God has given us FEELINGS, and we are to obey
> them! (Coleridge CW, *The Friend*, II (first published 1809):
> 123-6)
> 
> 
> 



For Locke, Burke's statements are context-specific rhetorical
acts, never intended to form a consistent system; the traditional view
of Burke as a "liberal" who ended up as a
"conservative" is simplistic, though his views did develop
over time (see Lock 2006 Vol II: 306).



Others have variously attempted to reconcile the earlier and later
Burke. Churchill argued that



> 
> 
> the Burke of Liberty and the Burke of Authority [sought] the same
> ideals of society and Government...defining them from assaults,
> now from one extreme, now from the other. (Churchill 1932:
> 40--like Burke, he changed party and so may have identified with
> him)
> 
> 
> 



Macpherson argued that by Burke's time, the traditional order
was a capitalist one, and so his conservatism was consistent with
free-market liberalism; Burke advocated the Whig principles underlying
the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the American Revolution of 1776,
but not the French Revolution (Macpherson 1980; see Burke 1987 [1790]:
15, on how his opponents are "constantly confounding" the
revolution of 1688, and those of 1649 and 1789). In contrast,
O'Brien in *The Great Melody*--the title, a
quotation from W.B. Yeats, is Burke's consistent opposition to
abuse of power in Ireland, America, India and France--argues that
his understanding of the American Revolution was not a radical,
liberal one. He was always a Christian and monarchist, and his great
speech was entitled "On Conciliation with the Colonies";
until independence was inevitable, conciliation was his aim. Cobban,
seeing Burke as "the greatest of the followers of Locke",
denies that he changed his opinion fundamentally at the time of the
French Revolution; rather, "an inconsistency runs right through
his thought" (Cobban 1960: 40). (Pocock 1994 outlines
Burke's conflicting commitments to English Whiggery and Irish
Catholicism.)



A fundamental question is how far the "prejudice" that
Burke advocates is non-rational. Was he against reason, or just
against abstract reason? Did he supplant individual with collective
reason? For Cobban, Burke was "a philosopher of unreason in the
great age of Reason" (Cobban 1960: 75). A subtler view is that
for him, individual reason cannot discern fully how social and
political institutions work; it cannot see the entire process of
communal adaptation, or understand by itself the principles on which
it is based. As Hampsher-Monk puts it, institutions result from trial
and error, embodying accumulated historical experience in
institutional reason--like precedent within Common Law, which
Burke had studied. (Pocock 1989: 211ff. discusses Burke's debt
to this tradition; he rejected legalism, and especially--since he
was a kind of relativist--the idea of the Common Law as timeless
and immemorial.) Burke contrasted the wisdom of the law, with the
limited reflective reason of individuals--no one person can
reproduce in thought the complex train of experiences and decisions
that led the law to be what it is--and he relies on the tradition
of sceptical and conservative empiricism in English social thought,
including Coke's critique of the Stuart monarchs (Pocock 1989).
The British and American common law system is evolutionary, not
abstract like Roman and Napoleonic coded law. Judgment according to
precedent, unlike *a priori* codified law, is better able to
anticipate new circumstances.



> 
> 
> Burke [credited] educated prejudice as an antidote to its bigoted
> forms. This did not entail a renunciation of reason, but a suspicion
> of its inordinate pretensions. (Bourke, in Dwan and Insole 2012:
> 29)
> 
> 
> 



Scruton echoes Burke when he argues that beliefs that appear to be
examples of prejudice may be useful and important; the attempt to
justify them will merely lead to their loss. One might show prejudice
as irrational, but there will be a loss if it is discarded (Scruton
1980).



Burke is opposed not to reason, but to the arrogance of individual
reason, therefore:



> 
> 
> We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private
> stock of reason...the stock in each man is small,
> and...individuals would do better to avail themselves of the
> general bank and capital of nations and of ages.... Prejudice is
> of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind
> in a steady course of wisdom and virtue and does not leave the man
> hesitating in the moment of decision sceptical, puzzled, and
> unresolved. (Burke, WS III: 138)
> 
> 
> 



Rejecting the dominant individualist cognitive tradition in Western
epistemology, Burke regards political reason as historically
accumulated in developed social institutions--including an
unwritten constitution, practices of representation, and dispositions
notably of compromise. According to Himmelfarb, there is for Burke
good reason--reason itself--to praise prejudice, which
exists on a continuum with theoretical reason (Himmelfarb 2008b).
However, Hampsher-Monk argues that



> 
> 
> Burke's fear of the inadequacies of individual reason has only
> an obscure counterpart in his belief in collective wisdom. (1992: 304)
> 
> 
> 
> 



Does Burke follows Hume's notion of custom, which may be
regarded as irrationalist or even nihilist? For Burkean conservatives,
"reason" operates only relative to or within a prior
"non-rational stabilisation of belief" in habit or
prejudice--a stabilisation necessary to avoid scepticism in the
traditional philosophical sense. For Hume and Burke this is a
customary framework; for religious thinkers such as Cardinal Newman it
is fideistic, appealing to the extra-rational authority of religious
doctrine. Prejudice is normative; the inability to subsume particular
actions under a universal law does not imply radical relativism
(Vannatta 2014). For the classical liberal, in contrast, reason
precisely does not operate within customary frameworks.


### 2.4 "Rational" or Idealist conservatism



Burkean conservatism influenced Continental European traditions, but
these also had a separate development. Indeed, as Clark argues, his
continental admirers were normally ignorant of Burke's background as a
Whig constitutionalist, and saw him as merely the most eloquent critic
of Jacobinism: "In Germany, constitutionalism became a liberal
rather than a conservative ideology, standing for revolution rather
than for the anti-libertarian, holistic views of order and authority
with which German admirers wrongly associated Burke" (Clark,
2001: 106).



De Tocqueville (1805-59) was probably the most Burkean among
19th century Continental conservatives in his condemnation
of the French Revolution:



> 
> 
> Our revolutionaries had the same fondness for broad generalisations,
> cut-and-dried legislative systems, and a pedantic symmetry; the same
> contempt for hard facts; the same taste for reshaping institutions on
> novel, ingenious, original lines...[for reconstructing] the
> entire system instead of trying to rectify its faulty parts. (1955
> [1856]: 147)
> 
> 
> 



Tocqueville rejected Burke's view that the French monarchy was
reformable; for him, "monarchical absolutism had wiped clean the
slate of French society and thereby provided the basis for the new
absolutism of the Revolution" (Clark, 2001: 78). His
*L'Ancien Regime et al Revolution* was partly written to
refute Burke.



In Germany, Burke's *Reflections* were translated three
times before 1793, implying an influence on such conservatives as
Gentz, Rehberg and Brandes. (Though Beiser (1992) argues that they
arrived at their position independently.) August Wilhelm Rehberg
(1757-1836) was a founder of German reformist conservatism,
whose penetrating critique of the French Revolution bears striking
similarities to Burke's (see the entry on
 August Rehberg,
 sections 3 and 4). The historians von Savigny (1779-1861) and
von Ranke (1795-1886) assumed a Burkean organic development of
societies. German conservatives adopted positions from reformism to
reaction, aiming to contain democratic forces--though not all of
them were opposed to the *Aufklarung* or Enlightenment. To
reiterate, reaction is not Burkean conservatism, however. De Maistre
(1753-1821) was a reactionary critic of reason, intellectuals
and universal rights. Burke attacked the revolutionaries of 1789
"for the sake of traditional liberties, [Maistre] for the sake
of traditional authority" (Viereck 2009: 191). De Maistre
praised Russian political culture as a spontaneous growth; in
contrast, that of Western Europe had been "scribbled over"
by Enlightenment philosophers (see Gray 1998: 122).



In an alternative tradition to Burkean conservatism, Continental
conservatives have subscribed to Thomist or Hegelian traditions,
producing a rational or systematic conservatism--which might
include reactionary forms. Commentators differ on the extent to which
"rational conservatism" challenges the centrality of
Burkean conservatism to conservative tradition. John Gray argues
that



> 
> 
> Conservatives have sometimes disdained theoretical reflection on
> political life, implying that political knowledge is...best left
> inarticulate, uncorrupted by rationalist systematising. The
> [19th and 20th] centuries are nevertheless
> replete with conservative thought...as systematic and reflective
> as any found in the liberal tradition. (Gray 1995: 78-9) 
> 
> 
> 



As well as Burke, Gray cites Hegel, de Maistre, Savigny, Santayana and
Oakeshott, conservatives in that they share a "spirit of
reaction against the excesses of liberal rationalism" (Gray
1995: Ch. 10). Skorupski (2015) contrasts anti-universalist pragmatic
conservatism with universalist rational conservatism; "rational
conservatism" does not exhibit particularist scepticism.
Rational conservatives maintain that a community with a hierarchy of
authority is most conducive to human well-being--though they also
regard agent-relative virtues such as loyalty and patriotism as
fundamental, holding that it is universally true that patriotism is a
virtue. This is clearly the standpoint of authority rather than the
standpoint of freedom
 (see 1.5).



Hegel (1770-1831) is a key figure in the understanding of
rational conservatism. Surprisingly for a standpoint that stresses the
value of experience, conservatism--Hume excepted--has been
associated more with Idealism than with empiricism; philosophical
empiricists have commonly been radicals. Hegel has been claimed by
conservatives, but his political affiliation has been disputed since
his earliest disciples. For Left Hegelians including Marx,
Hegel's concept of free thought was a defence of Enlightenment
rationality, and a critique of traditional political authority. For
them, Geist did not invoke a transcendent power, as some Right
Hegelians maintained, but was an anthropological and historical
process of emancipation, propelled by contradiction and struggle. In
the 20th century, Hegel was regarded alternatively as a
proto-totalitarian reactionary, a conservative, or a liberal. But the
"old orthodoxy" that he is a conservative or
reactionary--in Anglophone philosophy largely derived from
Popper--has disappeared, and he is often seen as synthesising
conservatism and liberalism (Fine 2001: 5). 



Hegel was ambivalent towards the French Revolution, the
world-historical event against which his generation thought out their
political philosophy and stance towards the Enlightenment (Taylor
1977: 403). *The German Constitution* was critical, lamenting
with Burke the "blind clamour for freedom" and radical
egalitarianism (Hegel PW: 93); the abstract, Rousseauean notion of
freedom, attempting to construct society on the basis of
"subjective reason", caused a "fury of
destruction". The "Preface" of *Elements of the
Philosophy of Right* (1821) is a Burkean attack on those who
suppose



> 
> 
> that no state or constitution had ever previously existed...that
> we had now...to start right from the beginning. (Hegel 1821: 12)
> 
> 
> 
> 



The Revolution



> 
> 
> ...afforded the tremendous spectacle, for the first time we know
> of in human history, of the overthrow of all
> existing...conditions within an actual major state and the
> revision of its constitution from first principles...[on] what
> was supposed to be a purely rational basis...the most terrible
> and drastic event (Hegel 1821: SS258R)
> 
> 
> 



According to Hegel, Rousseau's contractual account destroys the
"divine" element of the state (ibid.).



However, Hegel also has a Rousseauean side, that is clear in the
*Philosophy of History*, where the Revolution signals the dawn
of freedom:



> 
> 
> A constitution...was established in harmony with the thought of
> right...Never since the sun had stood in the firmament and the
> planets revolved around it had it been perceived that man's
> existence centres in his head, i.e., in thought, inspired by which he
> builds up the world of reality. (Hegel 1822-1830: 447)
> 
> 
> 



Rousseau



> 
> 
> put forward the will as the principle of the state, a principle which
> has thought not only as its form [but also] its content, and which is
> in fact thinking itself. (Hegel 1821, SS258R)
> 
> 
> 



Some writers thus claim Hegel for liberalism rather than conservatism,
regarding his philosophy as



> 
> 
> the most profound and compelling application of the [positive] idea of
> freedom as...autonomy to the realm of politics. (Franco 1999: 3)
> 
> 
> 
> 



The contemporary consensus sees Hegel as attempting to synthesise
liberalism and conservatism. For Cristi, his rapprochement is not an
eclectic blend of liberal and conservative strands of thought, but a
systematic synthesis:



> 
> 
> The dialectical method brings about [their] reconciliation...by
> allowing an institutional embodiment for Hegel's commitment to
> free subjectivity. (Cristi 1989: 719-20, 725)
> 
> 
> 



While Hegel does not appeal to non-human natural law or providential
order, he attempts to reconcile human reason with historical laws and
institutions:



> 
> 
> For Hegel, unlike Burke, the political order must ultimately be
> justified to human reason, although not in the individualistic manner
> that typifies Enlightenment rationalism. (Franco 1999: 127)
> 
> 
> 



(Though to reiterate, Burke's position here is contested.) The
Idea of the state unites its divine character with the Rousseauean
view that it is the product of human will and rationality (Franco
1999: 288). 



Hegel thus synthesises the universal and the particular:



> 
> 
> The essence of the modern state is that the universal should be linked
> with the complete freedom of particularity and the well-being of
> individuals...the personal knowledge and volition of the
> particular individuals who must retain their rights...Only when
> both moments are present in full measure can the state be regarded
> as...truly organised. (Hegel 1821: SS260)
> 
> 
> 



Hegel (1821) argues that in morality and politics, we judge for
ourselves, but not by ourselves. We come to recognise rational norms
historically, as actualised; we always reason in terms of the norms of
our society, which we must nonetheless endorse only reflectively.



Contemporary Left Hegelians treat Hegel's doctrine that reason
is active in history as the claim that free thought, through the
thinking of individuals, is history's internal cause.
Conservatives, in contrast, attacked Hegel's conception of
evolving reason, for undermining the political order (Moggach 2013).
But for Skorupski, Hegel holds that free thought or natural reason
must be mediated by entrenched institutions of intellectual and
spiritual authority: for Aquinas, the Church, for Hegel, a tradition
of communal ethical life. Hegel affirms that "the right of the
subjective will", the freedom of the moral subject, is inherent
in modern ethical life, thus grounding reason in free thought, but
only in the context of a conservative holism (Skorupski 2015). The key
concept here is *Sittlichkeit* ("the ethical" or
"ethical life"). 



*Sittlichkeit* is the third element in Hegel's philosophy
of right, after abstract right and morality, and mediates its liberal
and conservative polarities:



> 
> 
> The right and the moral must have the ethical as their support and
> foundation, for the right lacks...subjectivity, while morality in
> turn possesses this [alone]. (PR SS141A)
> 
> 
> 



While "morality" is subjective self-determination,
*Sittlichkeit* or "ethical life" is both an
attitude of individuals and a collective way of life, a set of values
and practices or institutions. Its content is not derivable from a
higher principle; it is externally a culture's values and
institutions, and internally an aspect of one's identity. Hegel
accepts that an ethical life is historically contingent, even
arbitrary, in content, yet insists on its essential role in every
society, and its need to develop organically. For him, some kinds of
*Sittlichkeit* are more advanced than others; at any one time,
a more advanced society drives world history forward by realising it
in its institutions, customs, culture new ideas. This position goes
beyond the minimal rationality and universality of conservatism, which
makes no reference to historical advance.



Samuel Taylor Coleridge is the thinker chiefly responsible for
introducing German Idealism to English-speaking readers, though in the
person of Kant rather than Hegel. As Townshend comments, "it is
quite normal [to] write the history of English
conservatism...without reference to Coleridge" (1993: 32),
perhaps because the conservative appeal to experience is wrongly taken
to be empiricist. Coleridge was an ardent enthusiast for the French
Revolution who, disillusioned with its excesses, came to share
Burke's "conservative constitutionalism". He
declared that



> 
> 
> the consequences of the *heroic* medicines recommended by the
> Revolutionists [are] far more dreadful than the disease. (Coleridge
> 1812: 154)
> 
> 
> 



However, revolutionary ideals often appeal to "noble and
imaginative spirits"; one must offer superior ideals, and
substantial reforms. Coleridge criticised Burke's "absurd
opposition of Theory to Practice", since "the meanest of
men has his Theory: and to think at all is to theorise".
Coleridge warned against unchecked industrialisation, and criticised
the unfettered free-market, influencing Disraeli's
social-welfare conservatism.



Coleridge argued for a national Church exercising spiritual, moral and
cultural leadership, maintaining schools in conjunction with the
state. In a Burkean image, he writes that a "clerisy" of
instructors--a disinterested class restraining against the
self-interest of the others--would



> 
> 
> guard the treasures, of past civilisation, and...bind the present
> with the past; to...add to the same, and thus to connect the
> present with the future. (CW [1809]: 189)
> 
> 
> 



*On the Constitution of the Church and State* (1830) traced the
underlying idea of the English state back to King Alfred. Coleridge
asked whether institutions were "founded either in the nature of
things or in the necessities of our nature"; ideals "can
be profitably studied only as they are reflected in the particular
institutions of a living political organism" (Coleridge 1829:
276). J.S. Mill ranked Coleridge's influence on political
thought as equal to Bentham's, calling them "the two great
seminal minds of England in their age". Bentham wished to reform
or replace venerable institutions which lacked utility, while
Coleridge's work was a necessary counterweight to Benthamite
utilitarian liberalism, as



> 
> 
> a Tory philosopher [rescues] truths which Tories have forgotten, and
> which the prevailing schools of Liberalism never knew. (Mill, CW X:
> 163, "Coleridge"--note the early use of
> "Liberalism" (1840))
> 
> 
> 



To reiterate, it was to Burke, with his scepticism about reason, that
constructors of an ideology of English conservatism appealed in the
late nineteenth century; Coleridge's philosophical prestige was
waning, and his radical associations did not appeal to conservatives.
Tories did not appreciate the larger role for progression in
Coleridge's thought, which is more rationalist than sceptically
pragmatic; his affinities with German Idealism, whose incursions into
English-speaking philosophy have been intermittent, were too
strong.



The work of major Victorian thinker and writer Thomas Carlyle
(1795-1881) bears a complex relationship with conservatism; in
his later career he was a reactionary. Carlyle was a prophet of his
time who rejected industrialisation, and questioned progress; in these
respects he was a precursor of the equally influential Victorian
thinker, John Ruskin. But Carlyle was an authoritarian radical, closer
to Nietzsche's aristocratic radicalism or elitism; his position was
therefore removed both from Burkean conservatism, and rationalist
conservatism. He insisted on the importance of leadership, and is
perhaps best known for his "great man" theory of history.
He supported the South in the American Civil War, and objected to
economics as "the dismal science" because of its failure
to justify slavery.



Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81), founder of the essentially Burkean
"One Nation" conservatism, was a politician first, writer
and thinker second. Disraeli never actually used the phrase "One
Nation", but it was implied. The term comes from his 1845
novel *Sybil; or the two nations*, where Walter Gerard, a
working-class radical, describes "Two nations; between whom
there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each
other's habits, thoughts and feelings, as if they were dwellers in
different zones, or inhabitants of different planets...The RICH
and the POOR". His aim was to unite these two nations through
the benevolent leadership of the Conservative Party; he thus offered a
milder version of Bismarckian conservatism. As Chancellor of the
Exchequer and conservative leader in the House of Commons, he guided
the 1867 Reform Act, and as Prime Minister (1874-80), enacted social
reform, passing laws on public health, factory acts, and laws on trade
union recognition. In these respects, he helped establish "One
Nation" conservatism.



James Fitzjames Stephen (1829-94) author of *Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity* (1873), is best-known as Mill's most
scathing critic. Despite Carlyle's influence on him, he was not a
radical, but rather a classical liberal; Julia Stapleton describes his
ideas as having an affinity with Burke's, in their defence of
traditional institutions against Radical attack (Stapleton, 1998).
However, his *Liberty, Equality, Fraternity* (1873) is
indebted to Hobbes' *Leviathan*, whose authoritarianism
has little true conservative content (Townshend 1993). He had more
veneration for established institutions than did Mill and his
followers, and regarded moral life as relatively static. His
objections to Mill were paternalist, and like conservatives, he was a
pessimist concerning human nature.


### 2.5 North American traditions



Conservatism does not rest on a defence of a landed nobility, monarchy
and established church, so even though the United States lacks these,
an American conservatism is possible. However, it is argued that owing
to its foundation as a constitutional republic, its essentially
liberal political culture has determined American conservatism's
core commitments (Hartz 1955). Thus Gray argues that right-wing
thought in the U.S.A. is almost exclusively neo-conservative and
libertarian, with a



> 
> 
> virtual absence...of anything comparable to European
> conservatism...United States conservative thought is merely an
> indigenous variation on classical liberal themes of limited
> government, individualism and economic progress [reflecting the]
> near-ubiquity in American intellectual culture of individualist,
> universalist and Enlightenment themes. (Gray 2010: 166)
> 
> 
> 



James Madison, one of the authors of *The Federalist* papers
(1788), is claimed as an early American conservative; others are
Alexander Hamilton, John Adams and John Calhoun. But it is probably
true that Burkean conservatism has not produced thinkers in North
America of the depth of its leading British representatives, Burke
himself, Coleridge and Oakeshott. The original thinkers have instead
been those of the maverick or "heroic" right--a
tradition including Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss and Hayek, whose patron
is Nietzsche--or those who belong to the libertarian right, such
as Nozick. These thinkers are not sceptical conservatives in the
Burkean tradition (Skorupski 2015; on Burke's influence in North
America, see Deane 2012). Vannatta describes as "pragmatic
conservatives" Holmes and Dewey, whose political starting-point
is present experience, customs and tradition (Vannatta 2014).


### 2.6 Modern conservatism: Sidgwick, Oakeshott, Scruton



Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) arguably belongs in the ranks of
modern conservatives. He rejected his utilitarian precursors'
reforming radicalism:



> 
> 
> When all relevant facts are taken into consideration [he holds] it
> will scarcely ever be right on Utilitarian grounds for a Utilitarian
> openly to break or to recommend others to break the rules of morality
> commonly accepted in his society. (Broad 1930: 157; see also Collini
> 1992)
> 
> 
> 



Sidgwick's position has been described as a utilitarianism
"grown sleek and tame", as it uses Bentham's
principles to justify those of Burke (Boucher and Vincent 2012: 30).
Sidgwick's *The Elements of Politics* (1891) exhibits an
intellectual and political conservatism, notably its rejection of
then-popular social evolutionary approaches; as Collini argues, though
sympathetic to socialism, he was drawn to an idiosyncratic variety of
conservatism--somewhat perhaps as Ruskin and William Morris were
(Collini 1992; see also Kloppenberg 1992). F.H. Hayward notes, with
exasperation, that rather than insisting



> 
> 
> that Sidgwick should be classified as this or that...it is
> extremely difficult to classify him at all. (Hayward in Schultz ed.
> 1992: 5)
> 
> 
> 



An important issue that connects the conservatism of Hume, Burke,
Sidgwick is what people have reason to expect over time. Suppose one
holds that justice requires *X*, but that people have long been
doing *Y*, which is incompatible with *X*, and have entered
into life-plans that assume that *Y* is how things are. If one
tries to make society more just by preventing people doing *Y*,
that in itself is an unjust action. Hence what Feinberg called
Sidgwick's paradox of conservative justice (Sidgwick 2011:
III.5). As Feinberg writes, insofar as our institutions depart from
Rawls's basic principles of justice, we have a duty, he says, to
work toward their reform. But in our actual imperfect world



> 
> 
> Every reform of an imperfect practice or institution is likely to be
> unfair to someone ...To change the rules in the middle of the
> game, even when those rules were not altogether fair, will disappoint
> the honest expectations of those whose prior commitments and life
> plans were made in genuine reliance on the...old rules. The
> propriety of changing the rules in a given case depends upon
> (*inter alia*) the degree of unfairness of the old rules and
> the extent and degree of the reliance placed upon them...we must
> weigh quite legitimate incompatible claims against each other in
> circumstances such that whichever judgment is reached it will be
> unfair to someone or other (Feinberg 1973: 268). 
> 
> 
> 



Rawls admits that intuitive balancing is unavoidable in dealing with
problems of non-ideal theory, but Feinberg finds in his work little
acknowledgment of the implications of Sidgwick's paradox.



Michael Oakeshott (1901-90) was the last major exponent of the
Idealist tradition, which enjoyed a period of eminence in Anglophone
philosophy in the later 19th and early 20th
century. He has been regarded as a liberal (Franco 2004), while others
claim him for the afore-mentioned maverick right (Anderson 1992: 7).
But Oakeshott is generally regarded as the most important modern
conservative. His principal target is what he calls
"Rationalism", a position shared by liberals and
socialists, which aims to achieve ends laid down by blueprint:



> 
> 
> the conservative will have nothing to do with innovations designed to
> meet merely hypothetical situations; he will...delay a
> modification of the rules until it is clear that the change of
> circumstances it is designed to reflect has come to stay...he
> will be suspicious of...rulers who demand extra-ordinary powers
> in order to make great changes and whose utterances are tied to
> generalities like "the public good" or "social
> justice". (Oakeshott 1991: 127)
> 
> 
> 



In opposing rationalist planning, Oakeshott argues that the
conservative disposition is not "connected with any particular
beliefs...about the world in general or about the human
condition", nor "with moral right and wrong, it is not
designed to make men good or even better..." (Ashford 1990:
43). He follows the logic of conservative pessimism, preferring
"familiarity over perfection, the tried over the untried, and
the actual over the possible"; "stability is more
profitable than improvement...agreed error is superior to
controversial truth" (Oakeshott 1991: 169-170). He
contrasted a state that has an economy, with a state effectively
reduced to an economy, and bemoaned the domination of politics by the
pursuit of economic growth as opposed to the good life.



These are very Burkean themes. As Gray puts it,



> 
> 
> For Oakeshott, human knowledge is not the mother of practice, but only
> its stepchild...an exfoliation from [practices] that we have
> inherited...When we theorise our practices, we are discerning
> coherences within them, not imposing from without any set of abstract
> principles. (Gray 2007, Other Internet Resources)
> 
> 
> 



In his book of essays *Rationalism in Politics* (1991),
Oakeshott is concerned with how the rationalist conception of
knowledge has operated to the detriment of practice. This conception
of knowledge holds that all genuine knowledge can be expressed
entirely in propositional terms, in a theoretical system, or a set of
rules or maxims. Oakeshott holds that in the modern world, the
resulting instrumental rationality has penetrated inappropriate areas
such as law, education and the arts--his thought thus
interestingly parallels that of Critical Theorists such as Adorno, and
also Heidegger. Means-end thinking concerning the state is
particularly inappropriate, as we have no choice but to belong to it,
Oakeshott maintains. In an important statement, Oakeshott regards
politics as an "art" not a "science":



> 
> 
> Politics is not the science of setting up a permanently impregnable
> society, it is the art of knowing where to go next in the exploration
> of an already existing traditional kind of society. ("The
> Political Economy of Freedom", in Oakeshott 1991: 406)
> 
> 
> 



"Idealism" and "rationalism" tend to be
"utopian", and thus require uniformity and conformity, and
deny individuality and originality, he believes; they do not recognise
that members of society desire different ends. Oakeshott attacks
"the ideological style of politics", which pursues an
"abstract idea" blind to the society's actual
arrangements and their moral and emotional
"intimations"--"men in a hurry" who wish
to plan and mobilise. Ideologists make everything political, but
politics is only a part of human life, he holds.



For Oakeshott, civil associations are fundamental to modern, free
democracies, and opposed to the modern interventionist state.
Enterprise associations, in contrast, are defined by a common purpose;
society is not one of them. This distinction reflects another between
"intellectual"--expressing "rationalism"
in politics--and "practical". Politics, for
Oakeshott, belongs to the mode of practice, along with religion and
morality; the two other modes are science and history. As well as
attacking "rationalists", who have a rational plan and
believe in abstract rights, Oakeshott also criticised
"empiricists", who claim to be pragmatic, rejecting
tradition in favour of mere reaction to events. We again see that
conservatism, although a practical standpoint that appeals to
experience, does not rest on philosophical empiricism.



Oakeshott is a Burkean particularist sceptic, for whom politics
concerns people developing ways of living together in light of their
history and traditions, not driven by universal extrinsic goals such
as equality or elimination of poverty:



> 
> 
> In political activity...men sail a boundless and bottomless sea:
> there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither
> starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep
> afloat on an even keel... (1991: 127)
> 
> 
> 



The nautical image had been popularised by Neurath, but is found in
conservative thought at least as early as Schiller, whose *Letters
on Aesthetic Education Of Man* (1990 [1794]) referred to the
"clock" of society that cannot be stopped for repairs:



> 
> 
> When the mechanic has to mend a watch, he lets the wheels run out, but
> the living watchworks of the state have to be repaired while they act,
> and a wheel has to be exchanged for another during its revolutions.
> (*Aesthetic Education*, Letter 3)
> 
> 
> 



Conservatives do not believe any general purpose for government can be
given, beyond "keeping the enterprise afloat". This is not
the substantive purpose of an enterprise association; rather,
"keeping afloat" is the thin commonality of purpose that
characterises a civil association. As Graham writes, "the only
purpose [conservatives] are prepared to accept is too vague to
determine any actual activity" (1986: 185); historical context
determines the criteria of successful government.



Oakeshott argues that "conservatism is not a creed or a
doctrine, but a disposition" to enjoy the present ("On
Being a Conservative")--part of human nature, not an
abstract political idea or ideal, let alone an ideology. Though he was
a philosopher not a political theorist, Oakeshott denies that he is a
"conservative philosopher"; philosophy is theoretical, a
"theory of theories", while conservatism is practical
(Minogue 2009). However, Gamble adds, that disposition gains substance
from its connection with national ways of life and traditions:



> 
> 
> For Oakeshott, the past conceived in this way is intensely liberating
> because it is a repository of a wealth of practical knowledge, which
> is needed to live the good life. (Gamble 2012: 163)
> 
> 
> 



But Oakeshott stresses that one must, through education in its
history, be "released" from slavish commitment to
one's tradition, and then return to it newly enriched and
informed. For him, conversation is the model of education.



It has been argued that in his later work, Oakeshott's
justifications for the conservative disposition developed in a liberal
direction (Franco 2004). While the scepticism of *Rationalism in
Politics* aims to protect tradition, "On Being
Conservative" cites the human disposition to individuality. In a
position reminiscent of J.S. Mill, Oakeshott argued empirically that
people want to pursue their own life plans, and it is for this reason
that governing ought to provide "general rules of conduct"
and not "plans for imposing substantive activity" (1991:
424). Unlike many (non-Millian) liberals, however, Oakeshott does not
base his requirement of limited government in an abstract theory of
human nature, and abstract rights.



Other notable 20th century conservative thinkers include
historian Maurice Cowling and philosopher Anthony Quinton. Probably
the leading living conservative thinker is Roger Scruton, who bases
conservatism on three concepts: authority, allegiance and tradition
(Scruton 1980: 27). He rejects post-Hobbesian contractualism, which
presupposes



> 
> 
> shared institutions and a conception of human freedom which could not
> have their origin in a social contract which they serve to make
> possible. (1980: 30)
> 
> 
> 



Scruton compares the bond of society to



> 
> 
> the behaviour of children towards their parents...a bond that is
> 'transcendent' [and] outside the sphere of individual
> choice. (1980: 32)
> 
> 
> 



Hence conservatism's structuring concept of tradition, and its
deference to historical, non-state institutions, Burke's
"little platoons" in civil society, including family,
community and church. Scruton called his *The Meaning of
Conservatism* "a somewhat Hegelian defence of Tory values in
the face of their betrayal by the free marketeers". It is only
somewhat Hegelian, because for Burkean conservatives, history lacks
the moral or spiritual direction that Hegel discerned; there is no
moral or spiritual progress, and people think collectively toward a
common goal only during a crisis such as war.


## 3. Critiques of conservatism


### 3.1 What tradition? Communitarian critique



As we saw, conservatives have conflicting responses towards
established power that arises from revolution. Non-relativistic
conservatives
 (1.4 above)
 always rejected the Soviet system, no matter how long it endured, and
continue to reject Chinese communism. They do not regard these as
"traditions" in the manner of long-standing,
organically-evolving institutions such as English Common Law.
Relativistic conservatives, in contrast, might accept these systems,
if they endure for long enough. Thus Oakeshott in *Rationalism in
Politics* refers to the Russian tradition of autocracy,
perpetuated by the Bolshevik revolution; it is not "good"
or "bad" tradition, but the only one that Russia knows. On
his view, it seems, tradition is inescapable, and societies rather
rigid. 



Gordon Graham argues that conservatives cannot consistently
"reject" revolutionary regimes. Their ideology
"[cannot] avoid connivance with evil", and is recommended
"only when conditions are reasonably, and perhaps unusually,
good":



> 
> 
> True conservatism is a decidedly English doctrine with little
> appeal...in other countries [because] only English and hence
> British institutions have ever been decent enough to allow a decent
> [person] to be conservative. (Graham 1986: 188-9)
> 
> 
> 



Graham's conclusion, that the state is not an "instrument
of salvation", and we should have "no very high
expectations of politics", is--despite what he
suggests--itself a conservative view (1986: 189). However, a
conservative response to totalitarianism is quietist
pessimism--not "connivance with evil", but realism in
the face of it. As conservatives such as Burke supported the 1688
Revolution, so they should support the non-violent uprisings of
1989.



Modern communitarians such as MacIntyre and Sandel misinterpret
conservatives when they condemn liberal individualism for abandoning
the notion of tradition to the Burkeans, whose concept of it is
"static" when it should be



> 
> 
> living tradition [as] a historically extended, socially embodied
> argument...in part about the goods which constitute a tradition.
> (MacIntyre, 2007: 222)
> 
> 
> 



For MacIntyre, we find meaning for our lives through what he calls
traditional "narratives"; modes of thought that help us to
reason and make moral judgements, and so we are not as free to reason
or act as liberal cosmopolitans believe (2007: 205). Communitarians
such as MacIntyre criticise modern thinkers "except for Newman
in theology, and perhaps Coleridge who influenced him" for
failing to develop a theory of the rationality of traditions. (We saw
that Burke regarded tradition and individual reason as contradictory
principles, but may have endorsed a notion of collective reason
(Beveridge and Turnbull 1997).) 



To reiterate, this is a misinterpretation of conservatism.
Conservatives would respond that Burke's concept of tradition is not
static, and does stress the importance of incremental change; while
Oakeshott, like MacIntyre, has an interrogative attitude to tradition.
Moreover, the communitarian opposition to liberal values is limited,
and does not extend to advocacy of religious intolerance and
homogeneity or patriarchal authority (see Taylor 1977; Waldron
1992)--though neither does the anti-liberalism of Burkean
conservatives. It could be argued that since the conservative
tradition is older, and more substantial, than communitarianism, the
liberal-conservative debate is more fundamental than the
liberal-communitarian one; "communitarianism" is a mixture
of liberalism and conservatism. (But see Skorupski 2015, on
"liberal communitarianism"). (A further consideration is
that traditional methods may not always yield the most practical
responses (Scott 1998: 331).)


### 3.2 Liberal critique



While acknowledging his prescience about the Terror, liberals found
Burke's fears concerning the French Revolution excessive.They
took a different view when confronted with the Bolshevik Revolution of
October 1917, which Marxists regard as completing its
"bourgeois" predecessor. Thus conservative historian
Richard Pipes holds that the French Terror was a "brief...
countercurrent", while the Red Terror was an "essential
element of the regime" (Pipes 1990: 789; see Trotsky quotation
in discussion of revolutionary utopianism earlier in this entry).



Conservatives criticise "atomistic" liberalism for
treating society as a mere collection of self-regarding individuals,
held together by rational norms and abstract laws rather than gaining
their identity through an organic community; like communitarians,
conservatives object to the primacy of abstract rights. Liberals reply
that "atomism" refers simply to the conviction that
although people live in society, individuals are, as Rawls writes,
"self-authenticating sources of valid claims", claims that
do not require validation by larger social structures. (Millian
liberalism is less subject to the conservative charge of rationalism.)
As Gamble puts it,



> 
> 
> Oakeshott rejects the universal claims of liberalism, because he is
> interested only in claims grounded in English political
> experience.
> 
> 
> 



The great American charters of the late 18th century are,
for him,



> 
> 
> abridgements of British political experience, solidified into an
> eternal document. (Gamble 2012: 161)
> 
> 
> 



Bentham and--on some views--Burke seem to conceive only of
legal rights; but if one can make sense of moral obligation, one can
make sense of abstract rights.


### 3.3 Left critiques



For many left critics, conservatism is "organised
selfishness" (Honderich 2005: 302). When Minogue argues that



> 
> 
> the conservative enjoys the resources of his culture and is not
> forever fidgeting about big changes promising a better life
> (2009);
> 
> 
> 



socialist critics respond that those in poverty cannot be said to
"enjoy" many resources at all, and so any aspiration they
have for big changes cannot be "fidgeting". The socialist
critic points out that when Oakeshott describes conservatism as a
"disposition" to enjoy the present, Manchester factory
workers of the 1840s, or slum dwellers in contemporary Mumbai or
Mexico City, would find little to enjoy. As O'Hear (1998)
comments, those who see society riddled with defects are impatient
with conservative resistance to change; for them, the conservative
emphasis on human ignorance and traditional wisdom is an evasion at
best.



Socialists point out that the status quo is itself a construction.
This indeed is Kant's view, when he writes that 



> 
> 
> One must take people as they are, our politicians tell us, and not as
> the world's uninformed pedants or good-natured dreamers fancy
> that they ought to be. But as they are ought to read as we have made
> them by unjust coercion, by treacherous designs which the government
> is in a good position to carry out. (Kant 1792)
> 
> 
> 



For Neiman,



> 
> 
> much of our experience is...often deliberately
> constructed... in order to perpetuate a social system that
> benefits the very people who say it's inevitable. (Neiman 2011:
> 148-9)
> 
> 
> 

 Neiman also comments that, "the rights of man have
come to guide us far more than [Burke] could ever have imagined"
(Neiman 2011:148).


Marxists reject Burke's inference that since all social
processes and institutions are interconnected, change must be
cautious; they conclude instead that to change anything, one must
change everything. For Marx in *The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte*, tradition is a dead weight:



> 
> 
> Men make their own history, but [not] under circumstances chosen by
> themselves...The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a
> nightmare on the brains of the living. (Marx 1852: 15)
> 
> 
> 



But writers on the left have found value in some conservative ideas.
Raymond Williams' *Culture and Society* (1971) begins by
showing the lessons that Burke offers. And while rejecting its
conclusion that change can only be piecemeal, many on the left share
conservatism's distrust of rational planning. While Lenin aimed
to impose a socialist blueprint through a vanguard party of
specialists, his Marxist critics Luxemburg and Kollontai held that
revolutionary tasks are unknowable in advance:



> 
> 
> Given the uncertainty of the endeavour, a plurality of experiments and
> initiatives will best reveal which lines of attack are
> fruitful...[and produce] a creative, conscious...and
> empowered working class. (Scott 1998: 187-9)
> 
> 
> 



On this view, radical change need not involve a fixed blueprint. (G.A.
Cohen is another Marxist writer who finds value in conservative ideas,
as we see in section 4. below.)


### 3.4 The coherence of particularist scepticism



Lord Hugh Cecil postulates within modern conservatism what he calls
innate conservatism: a psychological characteristic found in all
people to some degree (Cecil 1912). For C.D Broad, it has two
sides:



> 
> 
> The more worthy side [rational scepticism] [says] that social problems
> are so very complex that there is always a strong probability that
> some factor has been overlooked in any scheme of change...The
> less respectable side [mental inertia] is the dislike of novelty as
> such.
> 
> 
> 



He continues:



> 
> 
> Rational scepticism, as a motive for rejecting a scheme that offers to
> remove admitted evils, involves two applications of probability. The
> first is...that social affairs are so complex that it is very
> improbable that all the effects of a given social change have been
> foreseen. But...we must have some ground for judging further that
> the unforeseen effects are more likely to be bad than good...this
> judgment cannot rest on the known nature of the effects of this
> particular measure [but only] on some general proposition, such as: It
> is more probable that the unforeseen effects of any social change will
> be bad than that they will be good. [There is] no reason to think
> [this]. (Broad 1913: 397)
> 
> 
> 



Broad is alluding to the fact that every philosophical standpoint must
confront the problem of how to treat its own defining claims, by its
own lights. Examples would include whether Marxism is itself
historicaly conditioned, and whether logical positivism's verification
principle is itself verifiable. Conservatives declare that there are
no general prescriptions, but must address the status of its own
general prescription, "There are no general prescriptions"




Conservatism seems unduly pessimistic about the possibility of
individual, explicit knowledge of society, therefore. There are some
things about society that we can come to know--and government
economic policy, for instance, seems justifiably dedicated to finding
them out. Conservatives must concede that radical change is sometimes
acceptable; some major changes, for instance votes for women, are
good. These must be prepared for--as they were in Britain in
1918, compared with, say, 1832--and preparing for change makes it
less radical. What conservatives will insist is that revolutionary
change is unacceptable.


## 4. Cultural conservatism and conservation



Especially since the advent of green politics, there have been
conservatives who have advocated ecological conservation. Scruton
argues that "conservatism and conservation" are two
aspects of a single policy of husbanding resources, including social
capital embodied in laws, customs, and institutions, and material
capital of the environment (Scruton 2007). A less noticed parallel is
that between two oppositions: cultural conservation v. modernism, and
conservatism v. revolutionary Jacobinism (Cohen 2007, Other Internet
Resources). In Britain after World War II, for instance, restorable
bomb-damaged buildings were demolished to make way for modernist
schemes later revealed as shoddy and cheap. Analogously, in
Continental Europe, classical composers treated 1945 as "year
zero", rejecting all tradition. Conservatives would criticise
both developments.



Leading modernist poet T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) was also an
important conservative thinker, and so occupies an ambivalent
position. His essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
(1919) argued that true originality is possible only within a
tradition, which is a living presence in the modern world, not a
museum relic (Eliot 1919; see Hamilton 2009). Eliot's notion of
an artistic tradition, and the related notion of a living classic,
helps to elucidate the conservative notion of a living
tradition--a classic is something that has stood the test of
time, and is the subject of continuing reference and allusion. There
are "dead classics" or "dead
traditions"--performing arts with rigid repertoires such as
that of Gregorian chant, which became closed by the time of the
Renaissance. In contrast, the classical repertoire of Western art
music, as it had evolved from the 18th century to the present, is open
and flexible. It operates--when circumstances are
propitious--as a living presence in contemporary culture. On a
less exalted aesthetic level, in the same sense the tuxedo is a living
sartorial classic.



These cultural issues are central to G.A. Cohen's work on
conservatism in political and cultural spheres. Cohen argues for a
truth in Burkean conservatism that is compatible with liberalism and
socialism, viz. that we should accept some things as given:



> 
> 
> [the rationalist claim that] everything can, or should, be shaped to
> our aims and requirements...violates intrinsic value and
> contradicts our own spiritual requirements. (2007: 9)
> 
> 
> 



In this sense, everyone is conservative to some degree--for
instance, if they prefer to have cash in their pocket rather than
converting to cashless payment. Thus a William Morris-based socialism
is conservative in rejecting what planners and developers do to the
environment that one loves; Robert Conquest allegedly commented that
"everyone is conservative about what they know best"
(quoted in Kates 2014). Conservation originated in the Victorian era.
The Camden Society, in early Victorian Cambridge, was concerned with
the "proper" and edifying construction and restoration of
Gothic churches and other public buildings. Later in the
19th century, William Morris's
"anti-scrape" campaign introduced the idea that good
buildings of different periods complement each other and should be
cherished. Morris argued that we should take delight in the history of
old public buildings, and not seek to restore them to some pristine
state of perfection. 



Morris's position is conservative in Cohen's sense. For Cohen,
conservatives aim to conserve particular valuable things, rather than
maximising value. This is "conservation of value", but not
on the model of "conservation of energy":



> 
> 
> value itself is conserved, when you destroy something valuable and
> replace it by a thing of the same value. The conservative policy is
> not to keep the value rating high but to keep the things that now
> contribute to that rating. (2007: 10, Other Internet Resources)
> 
> 
> 



Conservatism in this sense rules out utility-maximising
consequentialism:



> 
> 
> Unlike the conservative, the utilitarian is indifferent between adding
> to what we've now got, at no cost, something that has five units
> of value, and adding something worth ten units of value at the expense
> of destroying something worth five. (Cohen 2007: 15, Other Internet
> Resources)
> 
> 
> 



Conservatism in this sense might be regarded as a relatively expensive
taste, because it sacrifices value, in order not to sacrifice things
that have value.



It does not follow that conservatives welcome good new things any less
than non-conservatives do, Cohen argues. One can admire Byzantine
icons partly because of their antiquity, and admire Frank
Gehry's architecture partly because of its newness. However,
Cohen continues, conservatives can regard modernisation as beneficial
overall, while lamenting what has been lost--admiring a splendid
new building, yet grieving over what it replaced. Both the economic
market, and state planning, are inimical to "sentimental"
or personal value, Cohen argues. 



Some planners might accept that a building's existing is a
reason to keep it, Cohen allows, but usually they require a more
general consideration--something that it does well, or a
majority's desire that it remain. This is not the
majority's reason for keeping it, however:



> 
> 
> Market and planning logics tend against the truth that people want
> particular valuable things, not just satisfaction of general
> desiderata...market mania is deeply anti-conservative...If
> you want everything to be optimal, nothing will be good. Some things
> have to just be...there, if anything is to be good. (2012:
> 27)
> 
> 
> 



Cohen echoes Burke in his explanation of our desire to conserve
particular things:



> 
> 
> We are attached to particular things because we need to belong to
> something... We do not keep the cathedrals just because
> they're beautiful, but also because they are part of our
> past...[We] value our particular past in the respectful way that
> we value any past culture, but [also] in a more personal way. We want
> to be part of [Burke's] "partnership...between those
> who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be
> born". (Cohen 2007: 28, Other Internet Resources)
> 
> 
> 



Cohen here assumes that all parties agree on how "value"
is to be measured and what therefore contributes to the value rating.
But although relativistic conservatives accept socially prevalent
valuations, revising them piecemeal on the basis of internal
inconsistency or impracticality, non-relativistic conservatives might
deny that value can be quantified at all.



Cohen's conservative model would look favorably on the organic
development exhibited by medieval English towns and
buildings--perhaps especially by churches--and which
parallels the organic model of political development. This model
rejects the concept of a blueprint involving an individual creator.
Rather, the town or building evolves--apparently without a plan,
over generations--, and often without stylistic consistency. The
church as a building--or on the conservative model, a
society--are like organisms, seemingly not the product of
individual intentional action, but evolving naturally. Most English
parish churches of medieval foundation were not built according to a
single design, but developed by addition and subtraction; in the
Middle Ages there was no profession of architect. Plans were produced
by the master builder but it is contested how much there was an
intentional, uniform schema generated prior to construction:



> 
> 
> A church building is inherently conservative, and except for the
> extraordinary intervention, changed very slowly. A large proportion of
> churches had been founded by at least the late 12th
> century, many appearing in the Doomsday census of 1089. Elements from
> these early buildings often survive in the doorways or the base of
> towers, showing typical rounded arches and massive walls of the Norman
> style. Additions over time could include a reconstructed window, a new
> baptismal font, a tomb sculpture, or a series of carved wooden choir
> stalls for the clergy, attesting to differing eras of piety and style.
> (Stanbury and Raguin 2009, Other Internet Resources)
> 
> 
> 



The parallel with conservative political thought is suggested by
Scruton in his discussion of public space (Scruton 1994).



Scruton advocates architecture as a vernacular, public art form on an
urban scale, in the manner of treatises on urban decorum from the
Renaissance onwards, which subordinate the style of the individual
building to the whole. Unlike models that achieve this subordination
by conscious planning, Scruton envisages a process akin to the
self-ordering of an ideal competitive market. He applies Adam
Smith's metaphor of the invisible hand to the emergence of urban
order, rejecting the utopian, social revolutionary visions of Gropius,
Le Corbusier and other modernists. These writers sharply separate
architecture and "mere" building in a way opposed to
Scruton's vernacularism. A district of London such
as North Kensington, where planning was at best rudimentary, and which
has few "public spaces" in the planner's sense, is
"eminently public", Scruton argues (1994).



The debate in architecture and aesthetics parallels that in the
political sphere. Does cultural or artistic conservatism in
Cohen's sense conserve everything in the past, or only what is
good? For the non-relativistic conservative, which I have argued is
the profounder form of conservatism, there has to be some criterion of
value in past things, involving in part their participation in a
living tradition. To develop and defend such a criterion is one of the
major challenges facing conservative thinkers, in both political and
cultural spheres.