21.1 Introduction
Conservatism — as a philosophy dedicated to the defence of an established order, a strategy to maintain the status quo, or a “right-wrong ideology” — is an important intellectual force today. Clinton Rossiter summarises the principles on which conservatism bases itself:
- Existence of a universal moral order sanctioned by organised religion.
- The obstinately imperfect nature of men — unreason and sinfulness always lurk behind civilised behaviour.
- The natural inequality of men in most qualities of mind, body, and character.
- The necessity of social classes and orders, and the folly of attempts at levelling by force of law.
- The primary role of private property in the pursuit of personal liberty and the defence of social order.
- The uncertainty of progress; prescription is the chief method of such progress as a society may achieve.
- The need for a ruling and serving aristocracy.
- The limited reach of human reason — hence the importance of traditions, institutions, symbols, rituals, and even prejudices.
- The fallibility and potential tyranny of majority rule — hence the desirability of diffusing, limiting, and balancing political power.
As a mood, conservatism prefers: liberty over equality; tradition over change; history over politics; past over present or future; the prudent over the inquisitive man; and ordered society over society demanding change.
21.2 Meaning of Conservatism
The term “conservative” has a variety of meanings — it may refer to cautious behaviour, a conventional lifestyle, or a fear of change. Conservatism is an ideology which opposes more than it favours. Andrew Heywood (Political Ideologies): “Conservatives have a clearer understanding of what they oppose than what they favour.” To that extent, conservatism is a negative philosophy which preaches resistance to, or at least wary suspicion of, change — a defence of the status quo.
However, conservatism is more than an attitude of mind (as Hugh Cecil said, “a natural disposition of the human mind”). It is based upon a particular set of political beliefs about human beings, the societies they live in, and the importance of a distinctive set of political values — and as such, “like liberalism and socialism, it can rightfully be described as an ideology” (Heywood).
Russell Kirk (The Conservative Mind): “The essence of conservatism is the preservation of the ancient moral traditions of humanity and… custom, convention, constitution, and prescription are the roots of a tolerable civil order.”
Kirk’s six canons of conservative thought:
- A belief in a body of natural law which rules society and conscience.
- A love of variety and the mystery of human existence, as opposed to narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarianism.
- A conviction that civilised society requires orders and classes — “equality of condition means equality in servitude and boredom.”
- Freedom and prosperity are inseparable, or else government becomes the master of all.
- A faith in prescription — customs, conventions, and old prescriptions are checks upon anarchy and man’s lust for power.
- Change may not be good reform; a statesman’s chief virtue is prudence.
Conservatism is the philosophy of individualism — of an autonomous individual with inalienable rights, rooted in strong moral values and nurtured in traditions.
21.3 Numerous Uses of the Term ‘Conservatism’
Rossiter: “Conservatism is a word whose usefulness is matched only by its capacity to confuse, distort and irritate.” The term has historically meant: outright opposition to all change; an attempt to reconstruct an earlier form of society; or primarily a political reaction and secondarily a body of ideas.
21.3.1 Temperamental Conservatism
Denotes a natural and culture-determined disposition to resist dislocating changes in customary patterns of living and working. Rossiter identifies key elements of the conservative temperament: (a) habit — the enormous fly-wheel of society; (b) inertia — as powerful in the social world as in the physical; (c) fear — especially of the unexpected, irregular, and uncomfortable; (d) emulation — a product of fear of alienation from the group and craving for its approval. One may speak of the conservatism of the poor, the aged, and the ignorant. Rossiter assigns a high value to the conservative temperament in the pattern of social survival and even social progress.
21.3.2 Situational Conservatism
An attitude of opposition to disruptive changes in the social, economic, legal, religious, political, or cultural order. Rossiter: it describes “a pattern of social behaviour, a cluster of principles and prejudices that are on daily display by many men in all developed societies.” Its distinguishing feature is the fear of change, which in the political arena becomes “the fear of radicalism.” Situational conservatism is not confined to the well-to-do but extends to all levels of people who lament change in the status quo.
Caution: both temperamental and situational conservatism tend to be incorrectly equated to authoritarianism, obscurantism, racism, and fascism — proper studies are needed before such elements are linked to conservatism.
21.3.3 Political Conservatism
Conservatism in the political sense refers to the aspirations and activities — mostly defensive rather than creative — of parties and movements that celebrate inherited patterns of morality and tested institutions, and oppose the reforming plans of the moderate left and the schemes of the extreme left. It is essentially the defence of a going society.
Key distinction: Conservatism vs. Reaction:
- The conservative is essentially at rest — well-adjusted to “a world he never made.”
- The reactionary is always in motion — refuses to acknowledge that what has been settled must henceforth be considered good and seeks to roll back the social process to an earlier time.
Rossiter: “The conservative as reformer, the right-wrong politician who tries to outpromise liberals in the area of welfare legislation, is an uncomfortable man. The conservative as revolutionary, the traditionalist who acts ‘radically’ to preserve the crumbling values and institutions of his community, is no conservative at all.”
21.4 Conservatism: Its Characteristic Features
Burke’s phrase — “the desire to conserve” — is the underlying theme of conservative ideology. Conservative forms include:
- Authoritarian conservatism: often reactionary — refuses to yield to change or turns the clock back.
- Revolutionary conservatism (“radical conservatism”): attempts to regain or reestablish a conservative fabric by radical means.
21.4.1 History and Tradition
History, reduced to its essentials, is nothing but experience. Legitimacy is the work of history. Mannheim: “To see things authentically as a conservative is to experience events in the past. True history is expressed not in linear and chronological fashion, but in the persistence of structures, communities, habits and prejudices generation after generation.” Historical approach as the basis for understanding social reality is upheld by Burke, Burke (sp), Oakeshott, and Voegelin.
Tradition constitutes an important component of history — tradition reflects the accumulated wisdom of the past. Burke conceived of society as a partnership between “those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born.” Chesterton: “Tradition is a democracy of the dead.” Institutions and practices of the past have been tested by time and should be preserved for the living and for generations to come.
21.4.2 Human Imperfection, Prejudice and Reason
Conservatism is a philosophy of human imperfection. Unlike liberals — who see human beings as moral, rational, and social — conservatives regard men as both imperfect and unperfectable. Human beings are dependent creatures, always fearing isolation and instability, seeking safety, security, and the familiar, ready to sacrifice liberty for social order.
Conservatives are suspicious of abstract ideas and prefer to ground ideas in experience and reality — they operate from a prejudice-made framework evolved from the past. Nisbet: “Prejudice has its own intrinsic wisdom, one that is anterior to intellect. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue.”
Learnt knowledge vs. imparted knowledge: Conservatives believe that imparted knowledge leads to abstractions too complicated for human beings to fully grasp. Learnt knowledge is rooted in experience — it is the knowledge of doing, of committing mistakes, not of rules and generalisations. “Such a knowledge is not the knowledge of rules and generalisations, but is one that comes from one man’s experience and goes down in the blood of the other.”
21.4.3 Organic Society, Liberty and Equality
The conservative view of society is organic: individuals cannot exist outside society but are “rooted” in it and “belong” to it; they are parts of social groups which provide their lives with security and meaning. Heywood: “If society is organic, its structure and institutions have been shaped by natural forces and its fabric should therefore be preserved and respected by the individuals who live within it.”
Conservative liberty is not “leaving the individual alone” but the willing acceptance of social obligations and ties — “doing one’s duty.” Parental advice to children does not constrain liberty but provides its basis. Liberty is the enjoyment of rights together with the performance of duties.
The organic society is always in a hierarchical form — it is a unity composed of diversities where alone liberty works effectively and with meaning. In such a socially differentiated society, equality has no place. Nisbet: “Most forms of equality seem to the conservative to threaten the liberties of both individual and group — liberties inseparable from built-in differentiation, variety, and variable opportunity.” Burke: “Those who attempt to level, never equalise.”
21.4.4 Authority and Power
Authority and power have much in common for a conservative. Power is used by one who is authorised to exercise it — it is the legitimate act to get what one wills. In an organic society, order must be maintained — hence power is essential. In a hierarchical system, authority is necessary.
These are not obstacles to conservative liberty. Burke: “The only liberty I mean is a liberty connected with order; that exists not only along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them.” Authority and power develop naturally from the nature of society and all social institutions — the teacher in school, the employer in the workplace, the government in society.
Heywood: “Within conservatism there is a strong paternalistic tradition which portrays government as a father-figure within society.” All conservatives emphasise leadership and discipline. “Leadership is a vital ingredient in any society because it has the capacity to give direction and provide inspiration for others. Discipline is a willing and healthy respect for authority.”
Conservatives do not believe in social equality — talents and skills are distributed unequally; unequals should not be treated equally. Genuine social equality is, for the conservative, a myth.
21.4.5 Property and Life
Property possesses deep and mystical significance for conservatives. It provides security, gives people confidence, and promotes social values. Property owners have a stake in society and an interest in maintaining law and order. Property ownership promotes respect for law, authority, and social order. Heywood: property “can be thought of as almost an extension of an individual’s personality — people ‘realise’ themselves, even see themselves, in what they own.”
Burke: “It is the contempt for property… that has led to all the other evils which have received France and brought all Europe into the most imminent danger.”
Russell Kirk: “Persuasion that property and freedom are inseparably connected and that economic levelling is not economic progress. Separate property from private possession and liberty is erased.”
Irving Babbitt: “Every form of social justice tends toward confiscation, and confiscation, when practised on a large scale, undermines moral standards and substitutes for real justice the law of cunning and the law of force.”
21.4.6 Religion and Morality
Conservatism is unique among major ideologies in its emphasis on religion and morality. All conservatives — including Hegel, Haller, and Coleridge — made religion and therefore morality a keynote of state and society.
The conservative support for religion rests on the belief that human beings, once adrift from major orthodoxy, suffer derangement and loss of equilibrium. Burke: “Religion is man’s fastness in an otherwise incomprehensible and thereby hostile world.”
Tocqueville (on death-bed): “When there is no longer any principle of authority in religion anymore than in politics, men are speedily frightened at the prospect of unbounded independence… if faith be wanting in him, he must be subject; and if he be free, he must believe.”
Religion is a spiritual phenomenon but also an essential social cement — it provides society with a moral fabric. For conservatives, there is a close relationship between religion and conservatism.
21.5 Some Representative Conservatives
(i) Edmund Burke
Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France has been taken as definitive and formative of modern conservatism — with its opposition to radical reform based on abstract principles and its plea for the virtues of established and evolved institutions.
Burke’s conservative elements: faith in the past, admiration of the present, opposition to innovations, small view of human nature, belief in the traditional outlook of society, and sympathy with men of property.
Cobban on Burke: “A believer in antiquity in an age when the modern had definitely conquered, an adherent of the past in an age that was beginning to look to the future, he was also a philosopher of unreason in the great age of Reason.”
Burke’s conservatism passes through three varieties:
- Status Quo conservatism: keeping things as they are — those who have nothing to lose in the status quo.
- Organisational conservatism: those with status quo interests find ways to protect and promote them; what is organisational is conservative in nature. “Yesterday’s idea becomes today’s movement and today’s movement becomes tomorrow’s organisation.”
- Philosophical conservatism: once there is an interest in the status quo and an organisation to protect it, an ideology and a philosophy are built around it.
Burke demonstrated reformism within the framework of conservatism. Until Burke’s arrival, the Whig party was on the offensive. With Burke, there developed the beginning of a shift which carried the prevailing social philosophy from attack to defence.
(ii) Michael Oakeshott
Oakeshott’s plea for traditionalism proceeds logically from his critique of rationalism. He argued that the ideological (rationalist) style of politics is a confused style — ideology in the rationalist scheme is merely an abridgement, an index. The only legitimate style is the traditional one. Political activity cannot spring but from existing traditions of behaviour, and the form it takes is the amendment of existing arrangements by exploring and pursuing what is implied in them.
Oakeshott’s key argument: political activity is the “pursuit of intimations” — a kind of via media between the extremes of logical implication and inexplicable accident. Political activity is what political activity actually is — not what it can or ought to be. It is what it succeeds in doing. Those who indulge in revolutionary or idealistic actions indulge only in self-deception.
His famous metaphor: “In political activity, then, 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; the sea is both friend and enemy: and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion.”
On being conservative (“Being Conservative”): “To be conservative is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, near to the distant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.” Stability is more profitable than improvement.
Oakeshott is suspicious of both change and innovation. If change is unavoidable, he favours only small and slow changes — only that reform should be accepted which remedies a defect or redresses a disequilibrium.
Like Burke, Oakeshott regards society as a conversation rather than an argument — the point of the conversation is not to elicit truth but simply that it has no single point: “Its significance lies neither in winning nor in losing, but in wagering.”
Tradition, for Oakeshott, is continuity — it is steady; though it moves, it is never wholly in motion; though it is never wholly at rest. Knowledge of tradition is unavoidably knowledge of its detail.
21.6 Summary (Key Takeaways)
- Conservatism is an ideology of conservation — developed essentially as a reaction against the growing pace of political and economic changes in the West.
- As a philosophy, it defends the values of hierarchy, tradition, and order against pressures generated by industrialisation and represented by liberalism and socialism.
- Basic distinction: leftists/socialists are the party of bureaucracy; libertarians, of markets; conservatives, of tradition.
- Characteristic features: tradition and history; human imperfection with love of prejudice over reason; organic society with liberty and inequality; admiration of authority and power; strong plea for property rights; belief in religious and moral values.
- Three uses of conservatism: temperamental (disposition to resist change), situational (opposition to disruptive changes in the social order), and political (defence of inherited institutions and morality against the left).
- Burke: definitively shaped modern conservatism through his opposition to radical reform based on abstract principles and his plea for evolved institutions.
- Oakeshott: politics is the pursuit of intimations from within existing traditions; stability is more profitable than improvement; only small and slow changes are acceptable.
- Future limitations: conservatism’s opposition to equality and defence of inequality make it unpopular in strongly democratic societies; it has not developed into a worldwide ideology of importance.
