Conservatism. Edmund Neill

Conservatism - Edmund Neill


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to take the opportunity here to thank three particularly influential teachers, who in their different ways I have found genuinely inspirational: Professor Janet Coleman, Professor Jose Harris and Professor Michael Freeden. All three of them possess minds that are not merely immensely learned, but genuinely intellectually original. Apart from them, I would like to thank the following for their advice, friendship, and intellectual acuity: Michael Bacon, Callum Barrell, Dean Blackburn, Chris Brooke, Sarah Churchwell, John Davis, Hannah Dawson, Blake Ewing, Stephen Farrall, Dev Gangjee, John Gibbins, Lawrence Goldman, Naomi Goulder, Stuart Jones, Paul Lewis, Suzannah Lipscomb, Catherine Marshall, David Mitchell, Terry Nardin, Kieron O’Hara, Noel O’Sullivan, David Owen, Estelle Paranque, Joanne Paul, Mike Peacey, Jaya Savige, Christoph Schuringa, Nikita Sud, Tim Waters, Kevin Williams and Brian Young.

      Particular thanks too must go to Iain Hampsher-Monk and Nicholas Cole who provided generous advice and guidance on the eighteenth century, though it must be stressed that any errors remaining are my responsibility alone.

      This book seeks to define the concept of conservatism and to explore its nature in the context of Western Europe and America, primarily looking at Britain, France and the United States. At first sight, this might appear to be a relatively simple task. For unlike some of the vaguer, more contested concepts in political theory, such as nationalism, populism or fascism, conservatism appears to have a relatively fixed and stable meaning. In particular, theorists investigating conservatism have often argued that conservatives advocate four key political commitments. First, they have argued that conservatives favour the importance of ‘natural’ forms of authority, such as the monarchy, the church, the nation and the family to guarantee social stability – as opposed to artificially designed ‘rationalist’ ones, particularly those provided by government. Second, relatedly, they have maintained that conservatives advocate ‘evolution’ over ‘revolution’, preferring incremental change over producing solutions from scratch, even if existing institutions are far from ideal. Third, such theorists have claimed that conservatives often consider human nature to be imperfect and fallible, with the result that they hold human inequality to be beneficial, or at the very least inevitable. Finally, within these limits, they have argued that conservatives often stress the importance of private property and capitalism in promoting individual freedom.1

      Finally, although conservatives have often been supportive of both private property and modern capitalism as guarantees of freedom, there have also been important exceptions and qualifications. Edmund Burke, arguably one of the earliest British conservatives, thought that the success of the free market relied on existing social norms, rather than the other way round, and this suspicion of the market persisted amongst certain kinds of British conservatives well into the twentieth century – the renowned poet and conservative cultural critic T. S. Eliot being one such example. Furthermore, some conservatives – like Scruton, for example – have stressed that private property rights should not be immune from all interference by the state if the general material welfare of the population at large is endangered (Burke 1968: 140, 146; Eliot 1939; Scruton 2001: 97–9).


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