Posted on 04/24/2003 7:15:23 AM PDT by KC Burke
Appendix A, Edmund Burke, A Genius Reconsidered
by Russell Kirk
Burke's Conservatism
Edmund Burke never employed the term "conservative", because in his time it was not a noun of politics. He is, nevertheless, the principle source of modern conservative belief. It is in France, after the defeat of Napoleon, that the words conservateur and conservatif were coined to describe a concept of politics founded on the ideas of Burke: by definition, then, conservatism means Burke's politics of prudence and prescription, guarding and preserving a country's institutions.These terms passed into English politics during the 1820s, and into American political discussion during the 1840s.
On the model of Burke, a conservative statesman is one who combines a disposition to preserve with an ability to reform. The key passage from Burke describing this concept is found in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, in connection with his denunciation of the National Assembly. It is included here to suggest the essence of Burke's conservative politics.
Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years. The errors and defects of old establishments are visible and palpable. It calls for little ability to point them out; and where absolute power is given, it requires but a word wholly to abolish the vice and the establishment together.The same lazy but restless disposition which loves sloth and hates quiet directs the politicians when they come to work for supplying the place of what they have destroyed. To make everything the reverse of what they have seen is quite as easy as to destroy. No difficulties occur in what has never been tried. Criticism is almost baffled in discovering the defects of what has not existed; and eager enthusiasm and cheating hope have all the wide field of imagination in which they may expatiate with little or no opposition.
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At once to preserve and to reform is quite another thing.
When the useful parts of an old establishment are kept, and what is superadded is to be fitted to what is retained, a vigorous mind, steady, persevering attention, various powers of comparison and combination, and the resources of an understanding fruitful in expedients are to be exercised; they are to be exercised in a continued conflict with the combined force of opposite vices, with the obstinacy that rejects all improvement and the levity that is fatigued and disgusted with everything of which it is in possession. But you may object- "A process of this kind is slow. It is not fit for an assembly which glories in performing in a few months the work of ages. Such a mode of reforming, possibly, might take up many years". Without question it might; and it ought. It is one of the excellences of a method in which time is amongst the assistants, that its operation is slow and in some cases almost imperceptible. If circumspection and caution are a part of wisdom when we work only upon inanimate matter, surely they become a part of duty, too, when the subject of our demolition and construction is not brick and timber but sentient beings, by the sudden alteration of whose state, condition, and habits multitudes may be rendered miserable.
But it seems as if it were the prevalent opinion in Paris that an unfeeling heart and an undoubting confidence are the sole qualifications for a perfect legislator.
Far different are my ideas of that high office. The true lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sensibility. He ought to love and respect his kind, and to fear himself. It may be allowed to his temperament to catch his ultimate object with an intuitive glance, but his movements toward it ought to be deliberate.
Political arrangement, as it is a work for social ends, is to be only wrought by social means. There mind must conspire with mind. Time is required to produce that union of minds which alone can produce all the good we aim at. Our patience will achieve more than our force.
If I might venture to appeal to what is so much out of fashion in Paris, I mean to experience, I should tell you that in my course I have known and, according to my measure, have co-operated with great men; and I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observation of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.
By a slow but well-sustained progress the effect of each step is watched; the good or ill success of the first gives light to us in the second; and so, from light to light, we are conducted with safety through the whole series. We see that the parts of the system do not clash. The evils latent in the most promising contrivances are provided for as they arise. One advantage is as little as possible sacrificed to another. We compensate, we reconcile, we balance. We are enabled to unite into a consistent whole the various anomalies and contending principles that are found in the minds and affairs of men. From hence arises, not an excellence in simplicity, but one far superior, an excellence in composition.
Where the great interests of mankind are concerned through a long succession of generations, that succession ought to be admitted into some share in the councils which are so deeply to affect them. If justice requires this, the work itself requires the aid of more minds than one age can furnish. It is from this view of things that the best legislators have been often satisfied with the establishment of some sure, solid, and ruling principle in government- a power like that which some of the philosophers have called a plastic nature; and having fixed the principle, they have left it afterwards to its own operation.
I don't define Machiavelli by pragmatism. I view pragmatism an equally absurd reply to idealism. Machiavelli was concerned with neither.
PsyOp ran a thread on Machiavelli, The Quotes Justify the Man
Politics and philosophy are not the same thing, strategy or not. While politics and philosophy are not the same thing, they must be understood in their respective relations. This counts for politics and theology as well.
the conservative is concerned with what works
I should hope so . . . and more. The ancient wisdom taught that just because you can doesn't mean you should.
The ancient wisdom taught that just because you can doesn't mean you should.That's backwards. While might does not necessarily make right, right does not necessarily make might. It has to work. Machiavelli -- and Burke -- were concerned with making right.
Machiavelli appears to have broken with all preceding political philosophers. There is weighty evidence in support of this view. Yet his largest political work ostesibly seeks to bring about the rebirth of the ancient Roman Republic; far from being a radical inovator, Machiavelli is a restorer of something old and forgotten.He continues when discussing the Discourses:
We understand now why the discovery of new modes and orders, is dangerous. That rediscovery which leads up to the demands that the virtue of the ancients be imitated by present-day men, runs counter to the present-day religion: it is that religion that teaches that the imitation of ancient virtue is impossible, that it is morally impossible, for the virtues of the pagans are only resplendent vices. What Machiavelli will have to achieve in the Discourses is not merely the presentation, but the re-habilitation, of ancient virtue against the Christian critque. This does not dispose of the difficulty that the discovery of new modes and orders is only the re-discovery of the ancient modes and orders.Strauss goes on to show how Machiavelli views "present-day", Christian, "religion" as corrupt and corrupting. In fact, the Discourses model on Livy and Livy ends his history of the Republic on the rise of Christianity.
Now, this is not the main point of Strauss's essay on this fellow in the History of Political Philosopy, but it is illustrative of the depth of issues covered in Machiavelli's political thought.
I got to go to "Piety Hill," Kirk's ancestral home in rural Michigan, a long time ago, for an exquisite weekend seminar. The man had penache!
My take has always been that European conservatism was primarily traditionalist, as are some strains of US conservatism, concerned as they are with the proper order of things. But the predominant strain of US conservatism is classic liberal. Most US conservatives are essentially Constitutionalists, and this is the quintessential "classic liberal" document. The doctrines that infused the founding of the republic were revolutionary, and continue to be revolutionary even in the modern context. And very much under fire, of course.
Both kinds of conservatives are concerned with virtue, of course, but the traditionalist see it as being embedded in the historical order, and the classic liberal perhaps sees it as being embedded in the natural order, perhaps, but something to be pursued in opposition to the historical order.
Conservatism isn't about holding on to the past, since history has shown that change happens.
You sound more like what I consider to be the "classic liberal" version of conservative, if my analysis is valid. Americans tend toward this simply because of their history, which was the rejection of the old order. The idea of a natural hierarchy among men has never had much attraction on this continent, although there are some who have been attracted to this proposition.
Those who deal in what should be, in the realm of utopianism and fancy, and who put a particular ideology on such a high pedestal that real life cannot touch it, are not conservatives, even if at times they may find themselves in alliance.
Someone else in this thread made the remark that the traditionalists, in harkening back to a past and an order that never was, are themselves utopians. And this is my take.
Of course, my caveats listed here don't really lay a glove on Burke, who was standing up against a collectivist anarchy on the continent. His reverence for the established British order only made sense; not because it was old, but because it was by comparison virtuous, and led the British people to the closest semblance of liberty.
Likewise the revolution on the continent was not evil because it was novel, it was evil because it was evil. The mass executions shocked Burke, and couldn't fail to shock any decent man (although is seems it failed to shock Jefferson, I think).
But that is the test. A reverence for an established order not because it is established, but to the degree that it embodies virtue. And a suspicion of novelty that requires mass executions for its success.
The distinction between the traditionalist and the classic liberal gets blurred in the US at least, though, simply because so many of us are not one or the other but include elements in our makeup of both.
You've said it best.
A courage in the service of virtue is more enduring than a life. A life works, but death alters its meaning. And while there will always be cynics and practiced satirists with their partial evidence succeeding left and right, the expedient remains historically contingent--this is no less true for the established procedure of a constitution. Unless it is grounded in the enduring truths beyond the law itself--which is what Strauss said--it will be the effectual whim of the moment that works.
A good trade paperback available a fairly reasonible cost is the History of Political Philosophy editied by Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey. It is a mammoth overview of just about every philospher that was of political importance.
There are two ways of viewing this. I would prefer to read the best of them in the same vein as you might reverence the past: If I value any traditional culture, it is only that tradition of noble struggle, which is a only a very definite subset of the larger culture.
In other words, their healthy emulation of a past is not for the larger culture as much as for its definite subset. We could also see--from another perspective--that even nostalgia is touched by a taste for noble struggle. (I admit a sometimes embarrassing taste for sentimental pop culture)
And so, even the best of them (there is no absolute release from historical dimension for humanity) will make the subset suspect.
I hadn't read your responses before, but I find them very insightful.
Actually to be more specific, he was trying to reconcile the traditionalist and libertarian strains in the conservative movement. I read Meyer's "In Defense of Freedom" last year, and I liked it a lot. It's the closest thing I've seen in print to my own political ideas. I also have a recent biography of Meyer that was printed by ISI Books. I admire Meyer. He was a great man.
And, nicollo, if your dad has been on a Peirce "kick", then, I think Short is the man for him.
Pyro7480,
It's too bad we didn't get a chance to meet!
I got quite a few books while at that reception.
How is your internship going?
CD
Burke was an apologist for the British Monarchy and Monarchy in general and nothing more.
Today we can look at the government of the United States, founded upon the ideals of Locke, and compare it with the government of the United Kingdom, adhering to the ideals of Burke, and easily state that the government of the United States is an explicitly superior form of government.
Bumping this thread.
Bump back to you.
Tell it to Connor Cruise O'Brien.
try this as well
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