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PDF FormatThis schism is also reflected in the words of two great American poets. The revolutionary view is epitomized in the poetry of Walt Whitman; his “Song of Myself” is a paean to the body, nature and unbridled urges. He declares his preference for dwelling among animals because, unlike humans, “They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins / They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God.”25 The contrary view is found in the work of Robert Frost. In his poem “Mending Wall,” Frost paints a considerably more complex, diverse portrait of nature, man and custom, writing of a force in nature that is inimical to the wall a neighbor has built, continually eroding it and threatening to destroy it. The stubborn neighbor, though, mends it time and again simply because, as he was taught by his father, “Good fences make good neighbors.”26
Eventually every serious thinker and artist discovers the need to choose between these two basic concepts of human nature. And so must every thinking individual, for this decision will determine one’s opinion on the entire political, social and cultural order. The revolutionary concept, in the final analysis, assumes that it is possible to effect a fundamental change in the human condition. Even the liberal revolutionary, who wishes to attain his goals gradually and moderately, ultimately seeks to create a new order, different from anything society has achieved before, that will no longer prevent man from giving full expression to his good nature. This is the import of the oft-quoted statement by Jean-Jacques Rousseau—the leading revolutionary of the modern era—that “Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.”27 The revolutionary’s goal is to realize, sooner or later, a society that will fulfill the vision of the “Internationale,” the most popular revolutionary song of the twentieth century: “The world shall rise on new foundations,”28 a world in which all the chains—history, tradition, family—are broken.
The conservative worldview maintains that the greatest danger threatening man is his liberation from those very “chains.” This is cogently formulated by Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke presents a comprehensive and profound challenge to revolutionary philosophy, arguing that the human freedom so desired by Rousseau is neither the primal (“natural”) state of man nor a consequence of human reason, but rather the product of “civil society,” the traditional framework that a free people establishes in a particular place and time—not in some abstract world—in order to overcome the dangers man’s nature poses. Civil society can be formed and maintained only by confronting significant obstacles, and it endures only thanks to the toil and experience of generations, including all their failings and mistakes. Still, its achievements are in constant danger of erosion and even collapse, unless the people are steadfast in their determination to prevent this.29 This collapse, warns Burke, is the danger revolutionaries present: “They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the rest, they have wrought underground a mine that will blow up at one grand explosion all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament.”30 These the revolutionaries seek to replace with abstract theories about “human rights.” Their efforts endanger everyone because, in Burke’s words, “This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man, that they have totally forgot his nature.”31
III. The Seven Sages
What, then, does conservatism propose? The answer lies in the solution to another problem: How does conservative thought resolve the apparent contradiction between its belief in a universal morality and its claim that only the particular conditions of society and man—the unique history and family traditions they preserve—are capable of defending and advancing that morality? The conservative proposition is that while human nature generates the same fundamental problems for all societies, each society addresses these problems through the prism of its own unique experience, and resolves them through the development of its own unique traditions. This approach is anti-relativistic: It views “good” and “evil” as terms with basic meanings that do not vary with time, place or circumstance. At the same time it insists that reason is limited in its ability to solve moral problems. This combination—belief in absolute moral values, alongside skepticism about the ability of human reason to identify and serve them—is responsible for the decisive role that conservatism assigns to tradition, in all its diverse expressions, in developing and maintaining a moral social order. All worldviews characterized by conservative underpinnings are based on this devotion to the importance of particularist tradition.
In the early eighteenth century, Giambattista Vico wrote The New Science, one of the most comprehensive examinations of the social and political order based on conservative principles. In chronicling the independent development of conservative traditions in different places of the world—what he calls “the natural law of the gentes”—Vico noted the elements inherent in the “common nature of the nations” upon which all proper societies are founded.32 To his mind, Western societies hold a special position in the annals of history, resulting from their biblical heritage. Nonetheless, Vico recognizes other “proper” societies that have come into being, independent of biblical influences, by virtue of their own insistence upon universal moral values. Any group of human beings that does not maintain these fundamental rules, he says, has lost the right to be called a “society,” and is little more than a bestial wilderness.33 Vico stresses that a society is a community, a gathering not merely of individuals and interests, but also of values and traditions. Indeed, only values and traditions can sustain a society: Anyone who fails to understand this, or who believes that rational interests and rules can take their place, simply does not understand the nature of society. In Vico’s opinion, for example, if Benedict Spinoza “speaks of the commonwealth as if it were a society of hucksters,”34 it is because he utterly fails to grasp what a society is.
Thus, “there must in the nature of human institutions be a mental language common to all nations.”35 Yet, as a conservative, Vico sees this common language as the product not of reason alone, but of reason together with the experience and traditions unique to each people’s true needs and concerns. “Human choice, by its nature most uncertain, is made certain and determined by the common sense of men with respect to human needs or utilities, which are the two sources of the natural law of the gentes.”36 What is this “common sense,” this mixture of reason and experience formulated independently by different peoples, and only over time recognized as common to all of humanity? Vico describes it as self-evident and accepted judgment, arrived at quickly and without reflection, as something common to an entire class, an entire people, or an entire nation. By its very nature this sort of conventional wisdom is found not necessarily among philosophers, but among the public at large.37
Among the major cultures of the world, the Confucian tradition in China is perhaps the most prominent example of a civilization that developed independently of Western traditions, yet came to many of the same conclusions as Western and Islamic forms of conservatism. Confucianism had its beginnings in the early fifth century B.C.E. when China was divided into a patchwork of kingdoms, constantly warring with one another, a time when the old certainties and social orders were being destroyed. Confucius sought to contend with this existential dilemma by creating a framework of appropriate human behaviors and attitudes, known as the “proper path” (ran). The goal of the proper path was to raise human beings to the level of having a “righteous heart” (jan), through their adherence to a set of traditional moral rules and manners. Recognizing the intrinsic connection between personal and social integrity, this philosophy’s most important moral precepts are personal trustworthiness, filial obedience, observance of ritual, the maintenance of justice, and mutual respect.
The nexus between the personal and social aspects of morality is the family. In Confucianism the family both supports and mirrors all social order—and not just the current family unit, but also past and future generations. The central rite of ancestor worship, for example, instills in the individual a sense of gratitude and honor toward the past and those who went before, and creates the connection between his sense of inner morality and his conduct towards others—which in turn makes him more morally righteous.38 (It is worth noting that Confucianism has faced a number of formidable revolutionary rivals, such as Legalism,39 which sought to refashion man’s conduct and nature to accord with imperial law; and, in modern times, Communism—both philosophies that, unlike Confucianism, seem to have failed the test of time. A more significant and persistent rival has been Taoism which, in contrast to the Confucian “proper path,” believes in the “way of nature” (tao). A typical revolutionary philosophy, Taoism rejects institutions, traditions and societal values as worthless, and possibly even harmful, products of culture—culture itself being a mistake, a deviation from the original path of nature. The most important Taoist work, attributed to Lao-Tzu, maintains that “without law or compulsion, men would dwell in harmony.”40)
