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PDF FormatIn its respect for the past, the central role it accords the family, and its emphasis on accepted customs, traditions and manners, Confucianism expresses the very common sense that Vico considers the backbone of any proper society. “Common sense” is appreciated in many cultures, but undoubtedly its most influential version, especially in the political and social context, is found in English-speaking countries, where it refers to conduct grounded in sound judgment based on circumstances, free of emotion and intellectual sophistry.41 The salutary effects of a strong conservative spirit helped make “common sense” basic to social and political life in the Anglo-Saxon world. One outstanding product of this was the common law—the unwritten, customary norms that evolved over the course of centuries, when a uniform system of law was lacking. Distinct from parliamentary laws, religious laws, tort laws and so forth, common law is based on tradition and practice. It expresses widely accepted rules of justice which are perceived as fixed—as a matter of common sense.42 A further expression of this principle is the practice of trial by jury: The belief that twelve ordinary members of the community, without legal training, are capable of judging the case before them in a more considered, correct and reasonable fashion than a professional judge.43
This attachment to common sense generally enhances the ability of English-speaking nations to withstand revolutionary trends, certainly in comparison with many other cultures. In Great Britain or the United States, a politician or policy viewed by the public as lacking common sense will be rejected unequivocally; ideas and ideals, however lofty, are tested against the common-sense standard much more often than happens elsewhere. Because common sense grows out of practical experience, it excites the ire of revolutionaries and the esteem of conservatives. It is not surprising that Edmund Burke regarded common sense as a magnificent bulwark against the dangerous revolutionary atmosphere emanating from France. In describing the qualities needed to assess the affairs and values of society, Burke settled upon those of “a man of common judgment,”44 that is, not a philosopher or scholar or abstract idea of man, but rather one capable of judging in accordance with traditional British values.45 Conservatives believe that in some way even the most eminent of thinkers derive their greatness from their underlying common sense. On the subject of how great men acquire wisdom, the Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote in “The Seven Sages”:
They walked the roadsMimicking what they heard, as children mimic;They understood that wisdom comes of beggary.46
Accordingly, the conservative outlook maintains that society has an intrinsic need for common sense. As Burke wrote: “this stock [of reason] in each man is small,” thus it is fitting to draw from “the general bank and capital [of experience] of nations and of ages.”47 A conservative culture is careful to preserve traditional values for future generations, whose need for them will equal if not exceed that of the current generation. The commitment to leave the next generation a state of affairs no worse than what came into one’s own keeping, and the expectation that one’s descendants will be grateful for such a legacy, are pillars of the conservative consciousness.48 If a society’s traditional cultural continuum is interrupted, it will pay dearly, risking a breakdown in moral restraint and direction with terrible consequences, as happened following the revolutions in France and Russia. Both of these new polities did exactly what Burke warned against: They replaced education based in historical and religious tradition with “civil education,” a dangerous and ultimately untenable tack that presents man as merely a collection of rational and physical needs, and, in place of morals, forwards the obscure, abstract idea of an enlightened general interest.49
Common sense is a useful tool for preserving and advancing the moral values society is founded upon, but to serve its purpose it must be anchored in those values. As Friedrich Hayek put it, “mere common sense proves a treacherous guide in the field.”50 If common sense becomes a goal in its own right, a sanctification of tradition without reference to morality, the result is a kind of empty moral relativism—a philosophy diametrically opposed to the conservative belief in a universal morality. In the conservative view, society’s virtues can best be preserved by maintaining religious traditions and absolute moral values as an integral part of its heritage. The political thought of George Washington and the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville—to choose only two of many examples—emphasize how vital religion is for a proper society, especially a proper democracy.51 Burke’s thought goes further: To him, religious institutions established and supported by the state are an essential counterweight to the shortcomings of unchecked democracy. An obvious danger of a democratic political system is that citizens may come to believe that freedom of choice means absolute freedom of action, that anything sanctioned by democracy is by this fact to be considered moral. In this context, religion is a necessary restraint, providing a fixed moral beacon in a sea of change.52 It is this understanding, Burke continues, that has buttressed the English toleration of all manner of problematic manifestations in religion, which they prefer to the dangers posed by government’s total rejection of religion.53
Just as Burke devotes special attention to the role of religion in the British form of government, his Savoyard counterpart Joseph de Maistre, probably the most important conservative thinker of the French-speaking world, argues that the best legislators in every age understood that reason is not omniscient, and that institutions based on reason alone will be short-lived. A proper society, then, must build rational political structures upon a bedrock of absolute morality, which only its religious tradition can provide. This, for de Maistre, is why legislators of note invariably base their political constructs upon a traditional morality deriving from religion, “in order that human weakness be strengthened by supernatural support.”54
De Maistre, a fervent Catholic, finds the best proof of his theory in the history of the Jewish nation which, by faithfully maintaining its historical and religious identity, survived centuries of hardships and existential threats. This people’s continued existence was made possible by an unflinching Israelite conservatism: “That nation of five or six millions perched on the bare rocks of Judea, the proudest of cities in proud Asia, resists all shocks which would have pulverized a nation ten times more numerous, braves the torrent of centuries, the sword of conquerors and the hatred of peoples, astonishes by its resistance to the masters of the world, survives finally all the conquering nations and shows still after forty centuries its deplorable remnants to the eyes of the surprised observer.”55
Not surprisingly, the principles and tools of the Israelite conservative tradition resemble those of its Western and Confucian counterparts. They include an understanding of human nature as tending toward evil, an emphasis on custom and accepted rules in maintaining appropriate interpersonal relations, fidelity to religious heritage and national history and, most of all, the axis of tradition with the family as the center of communal life.56 Besides these shared conservative elements, however, the Israelite tradition also possesses unique qualities which set it apart from the others. First, as de Maistre noted, if conservatism supports longevity in traditions, institutions and ideas, the very fact of the Jewish nation’s continuity for millennia signifies the superior strength and quality of its conservative tradition. Furthermore, the Israelite tradition has played a decisive role in fashioning the ideas and values of what today is the most influential conservative tradition in the world—Western conservatism.57 The exceptional breadth and depth of the Jewish nation’s experience, together with its uniquely rich fabric, give it a principal role in world conservatism. It follows that, to understand conservatism, one must first attempt to understand the essence of its Israelite roots.58
IV. Paradise Lost
The foundation of Israelite thought is the biblical idea that from the time of man’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden and entry into the world, the very basis of the human condition is man’s ability to “know good and evil.”59 In the Israelite tradition, everything concerning man’s nature, behavior and choices is based on this concept. This notion accepts as axiomatic the existence of fundamental moral distinctions in the world, definitive realms of “good” and “evil” that every human being has the ability to discern and choose between. Only the ability to know good and evil imparts significance to man’s moral decisions.
Yet this tradition also holds that man’s ability to distinguish good from evil does not mean that all or even most people naturally choose good over evil. On the contrary, the biblical stories teach that righteous characters are exceptional in a world generally dominated by bloodshed, licentiousness and other evils. Moreover, as the Bible also teaches, choosing good over evil is actually far more difficult than simply loosing the bonds of morality and descending into bestiality. This is because man’s natural inclination tends toward evil. The story of the Flood in Genesis provides perhaps the most poignant expression of this: Man’s incorrigible evil precipitates God’s decision to obliterate his own creative work (“The Lord saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth, and how every plan devised by his mind was nothing but evil all the time”); yet the story ends with God recognizing that the Flood has not changed human nature—“since the devisings of man’s mind are evil from his youth.”60
