Post by Nicholas on Jan 6, 2019 21:50:56 GMT
Not sure if this is the correct place for this topic on history of conservative thinking. I have little formal education, so it is all books and a little thinking.
I am now wading through that masterpiece by the non-ideolog Russell Kirk which has the same title as this thread. But I would hope we would also consider non-Occidental conservative thinkers too.
So here are a couple of Kirk's six canons of conservative thought:
(1) Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience.
Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. A narrow rationality, what Coleridge
called the Understanding, cannot of itself satisfy human needs. "Every Tory is a realist,'' says Keith
Feiling: "he knows that there are great forces in heaven and earth that man's philosophy cannot plumb or
fathom. " True politics is the art of apprehending and applying the justice which ought to prevail in a
community of souls.
(2) Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the
narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems; conservatives resist
what Robert Graves calls "Logicalism" in society. This prejudice has been called "the conservatism of
enjoyment"- a sense that life is worth living, according to Walter Bagehot "the proper source of an
animated Conservatism."
I am now wading through that masterpiece by the non-ideolog Russell Kirk which has the same title as this thread. But I would hope we would also consider non-Occidental conservative thinkers too.
So here are a couple of Kirk's six canons of conservative thought:
(1) Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience.
Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. A narrow rationality, what Coleridge
called the Understanding, cannot of itself satisfy human needs. "Every Tory is a realist,'' says Keith
Feiling: "he knows that there are great forces in heaven and earth that man's philosophy cannot plumb or
fathom. " True politics is the art of apprehending and applying the justice which ought to prevail in a
community of souls.
(2) Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the
narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems; conservatives resist
what Robert Graves calls "Logicalism" in society. This prejudice has been called "the conservatism of
enjoyment"- a sense that life is worth living, according to Walter Bagehot "the proper source of an
animated Conservatism."
