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NATURAL LAW CONSERVATISM
INTRODUCTION
This section is designed to provide a discussion of the main features of philosophical conservatism, plus links and references to writers, commentators and books.
There are a number of strands of philosophical conservatism and they have many features in common. Natural law conservatism, which has its origins in Edmund Burke's vigorous response to the theorists of the French Revolution, distinguishes itself by its metaphysical and epistemological foundations: Classical Realism. It is this strand, the major school of conservatism since the French Revolution, that is the framework of this website.
Immediately below are two selections that provide a brief introduction to the historical background of conservatism and some of its major ideas. For more information and detailed discussion of conservative thought the reader is invited to go to the contents page.
Note: this is a great more to add to these pages when I have the time.
Edmund Burke
CONSERVATISM,
Noel O’Sullivan
J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd
(Opening paragraphs chapter 1)
1. Conservative Ideology: a Philosophy of Imperfection
Conservatism, as the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines the term, is a word used to describe the attitude of one ‘disposed to maintain existing institutions’. Unfortunately, such a definition could be applied just as well to the caveman who clung to stone-age practices, or to the rustic who instinctively and unthinkingly follows traditional usages, as it would be to a highly articulate thinker like Edmund Burke. The everyday meaning of the word consequently gives no indication about where a study of conservatism should begin, or about who should be included in it, or excluded from it.
This initial difficulty, however, disappears once it is recalled that it is with conservatism as an ideology, and not as a subjective attitude (like that of the caveman or the follower of tradition, for example), that we have to deal. An ideology, unlike an attitude, requires a self-conscious attempt to provide an explicit and coherent theory of man, society and the world. Now in this form – that is, as an ideology – conservatism is a phenomenon which appeared only at a relatively recent point in modern history. It was defined (as it has continued to be defined) in opposition to a very novel and quite specific idea. The point at which it emerged was the French Revolution, and the idea to which it was opposed was the one embodied in the theory and practice of the French revolutionaries. This was the idea that man’s reason and will were powerful enough to regenerate human nature by creating a completely new social order, constructed in accordance with the requirements of liberty, equality and fraternity. Conservatism as an ideology, then, is characterized, in the first instance, by opposition to the idea of total or radical change, and not by the absurd idea of opposition to change as such, or by any commitment to preserving all existing institutions… read more
CONSERVATISM
Kenneth Minogue, emeritus professor of philosophy at the London School
of Economics
The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
(Selected passages)
Conservatism refers both to men’s attachment to the customs and institutions which have long surrounded them and to the doctrines by which such an attachment is explained and defended….
…Conservatism is therefore the preference for what has grown up over a long period of time in contrast to what has been made by deliberate contrivance…
….Conservative attitudes which steadily developed in reaction to the rationalist notion that man could scientifically control all human life, finally crystallized when rationalist optimism turned into the revolutionary ideology of the French Revolution. It is the convention to date conservative philosophy from the publication of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France in 1790…
…Conservatism became philosophically self-conscious in response to the comprehensive challenge to existing institutions associated with the French Revolution. It did not, of course, lack deep philosophical roots, and it could provide itself with an extensive intellectual genealogy in which such writers as Lord Bolingbroke, Hume, Swift, Richard Hooker, and Aquinas, as well as Plato and Aristotle, deserve mention. Inevitably, conservatism deployed the arsenal of arguments provided by the work of these writers according to the political situation of the moment…
…Conservatism most precisely denotes a hostility to radical social change, particularly social change that is instituted by the force of the state and justified by an appeal to abstract rights or to some utopian aim. Conservatives believe that governments are limited by the nature of their instruments to maintaining peace and order: any attempt to go beyond these functions is likely to create a disproportionate amount of misery and disruption…
Recommended features:
Read the first paragraphs of Michael Oakeshott's Rationalism in Politics
Read selections from chapter 1 of Conservatism by Noel O'Sullivan
This Natural Law Conservatism section of the website is still being developed. Please check occasionally for further additions.
Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.co