Conservatism. Edmund Neill
view of human nature (Green 2002: 171–4; Jennings 2011: 456). At best, therefore, such an ‘exclusionary’ approach can be useful if we are seeking to produce normative arguments in favour of a certain type of conservatism. But as a more analytic, descriptive approach, which aims to delineate the richness and complexity of the tradition of conservative thought, it leaves much to be desired.
Defining Conservatism: Historical Approaches
Samuel Huntington: ‘dispositional’ conservatism
What, in particular, these definitional failures reveal is that we need a method of understanding conservatism that is more sensitive to the way in which it has changed and developed, that pays attention to the fact that conservatism is a dynamic, historically variable phenomenon, rather than a static one that can be defined purely abstractly. One way of trying to do this is simply to identify conservatism with the impulse to uphold the status quo – in other words, with the desire to resist any attempt at (significant) change at all costs. So, rather than attempting to define conservatism by referring to a fixed list of objectives, this method instead identifies conservatism as a mode of thought simply with being reactive. This approach was famously advocated by Samuel Huntington in his article ‘Conservatism as an Ideology’, where he defined conservatism as ‘that system of ideas employed to justify any established social order, no matter where or when it exists, against any fundamental challenge to its nature or being, no matter from what quarter’ (Huntington 1957: 455). As such, Huntington argued, conservatism is not a doctrine that has essential attributes which are transmitted through time, and hence also does not have set of classic studies associated with it, which are then constantly subject to reinterpretation and reassessment (but also retention). The advantage of such a definition is that it avoids trying to identify conservatism with a fixed, unchanging set of attributes, hence going some way to respecting its mutable nature. But it also has two significant problems. In the first place, it seems deeply counterintuitive to label monolithic totalitarian states such as Soviet Russia as ‘conservative’, purely on the basis that their institutions failed to adapt and alter. Secondly, such a definition makes no allowance for those cases where thinkers and politicians that most scholars and contemporaries would label ‘conservative’ – such as those associated with the Thatcherite revival of conservatism in the 1980s – undertake fairly radical innovations (even if they do do it in pursuit of a past set of norms).2 Despite its formal admission of the historically variable nature of conservatism, therefore, such a definition ultimately remains too formal to do justice to the way in which conservatism substantively develops, historically speaking.
In view of the difficulties involved with Huntington’s definition of conservatism, other scholars – both from within the conservative tradition and from outside it – have sought to analyse conservatism in a more genuinely historical fashion, giving it a more substantive definition. Broadly speaking, there have been three ways of attempting this. First, some scholars have tried to define conservatism as being a nostalgic, backward-looking movement that seeks to uphold the institutions and practices of the pre-Enlightenment era. Conservatism then consists of trying to retain at least some of the pre-Enlightenment norms of religious belief, of monarchy and of hierarchy in society in general, against the corrosive modernizing forces associated with the Enlightenment in theory, and with the French and industrial revolutions in practice. On such a definition, a particular concern for conservatives is the attempt to uphold pre-modern forms of authority that were in danger of being undermined by Enlightenment rationalism – by its scepticism about religious belief, demands for equal representation, and rejection of aristocratic hierarchy, all of which had come to fruition during the French Revolution. Such pressures on traditional forms of authority, it is also maintained, have been heightened by some of the effects of modern capitalism, with its corrosive effect on traditional social and political hierarchies, so that a key concern of conservatism is to uphold the importance of a respected and beneficent aristocracy in order to maintain both order and social harmony (Kirk 2008; Vincent 2010: 57).
This definition of conservatism, however, has some significant weaknesses. It is useful in identifying certain tendencies within conservatism, particularly in the nineteenth century (as we shall see in Chapter 2), when a host of writers from Edmund Burke to Joseph de Maistre lamented the passing of the ancien régime and of pre-industrial social arrangements, at least to some extent. And its focus on the conservative criticism of Enlightenment rationalism highlights a tendency that remains important even in modern conservative thinkers who are less obviously nostalgic, notably John Gray.3 But the trouble with the definition is that it significantly underplays conservatism’s capacity for innovation. Even in the nineteenth century, some conservatives increasingly subscribed to certain ‘Enlightenment’ norms by embracing capitalism and representative government. And in a contemporary context, whatever reservations thinkers such as Gray have had about the philosophical justifications for modernity provided by the Enlightenment, they have nevertheless accepted most of its political programme, including the equal right to political representation, the stress on private property, and the fundamental importance of the concept of the ‘rule of law’. Such a definition, then, clearly fails to capture the full meaning of conservatism.
Michael Oakeshott and Ian Gilmour: ‘traditionalist’ approaches to defining conservatism
Rather than trying to define conservatism as being largely backward-looking, therefore, other theorists, particularly within the conservative tradition itself, have sought to conceptualize conservatism as being an attempt to manage change cautiously. Such theorists include the British Conservative cabinet minister from the 1980s Ian Gilmour, and the influential mid-twentieth-century political philosopher Michael Oakeshott. Key to their analysis of conservatism is their claim that it does not simply consist of trying to uphold the status quo or of returning to a previous ‘golden age’. Rather, they argue that conservatism is to be identified by its commitment to careful, organic, evolutionary change, contrasting this with more radical or progressive approaches, which are characterized as ‘ideological’ in the sense of being more self-conscious, more perfectionist, more radical and less respectful of tradition. Thus, Oakeshott famously suggested that a conservative’s attitude to change is to be ‘warm and positive in respect of enjoyment, and correspondingly cool and critical in respect of change and innovation’, while Gilmour compared a conservative approach to change with that of an architectural conservationist who may regret the destruction of historic buildings, but nevertheless admits that a certain amount of updating and alteration is necessary (Oakeshott 1991: 412; Gilmour 1977: 122). To be a conservative, on such a definition, is to ‘pursue the intimations’ of the Western tradition, in Oakeshott’s phrase, rather than trying to impose a new artificial pattern on it. This meant that conservatives could indeed extract from their political tradition certain kinds of ends that they ought to be pursuing – as opposed to lurching off in uncharted new directions like the rationalists, or trying to recreate some real or imagined past like more nostalgic conservatives. But at the core of this definition of conservatism was a particular conception of evolutionary change, with a bias towards preferring ‘present laughter to utopian bliss’, in Oakeshott’s resonant phrase (Oakeshott 1991: 408).
To some extent, such an approach helps to reveal the nature of conservatism. It is certainly true that conservatives often tend to favour cautious, evolutionary change over radical innovation, seeking to uphold the worth of established institutions rather than setting up institutions from scratch. (For precisely this reason, Oakeshott himself was highly suspicious of the process of the establishing of the American constitution, despite its having some definite conservative aspects.4) Furthermore, perhaps more interestingly, how Gilmour and Oakeshott themselves sought to define the nature of tradition proves to be unconsciously revealing of how conservatives very commonly seek to conceptualize its nature. For by seeking to establish a sharp divide between a ‘legitimate’ approach to tradition, which respects its continuity and subtleties, and an ‘illegitimate’ one, which does violence to it by abruptly forcing it in a new direction, conservatives often set up a pronounced dichotomy between a ‘natural’ (or quasi-natural) approach to traditional norms on the one