1. the conservative tradition burke’s “reflections on the revolution in france” demaistre’s...

The Conservative Tradition

Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France”

DeMaistre’s “Study on Sovereignty”

Burke’s Reflections

Biographical/Historical Background Ethics of the Community Conservatism Natural Hierarchy

I. Biographical Background

Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

Born in Dublin, educated at Trinity College

Briefly attended law school, gave it up for literary career

Published his first book when he was 27


Gets involved in Whig party politics

Serves in British House of Commons from 1766 through 1780, then from 1780-1794

Supported American independence, easing laws against Catholics


1773 travels to France and is appalled by tide of “rationalism” sweeping the country

Opposes the French Revolution

Founder of modern conservatism

One of, if not the, chief opponents of the Enlightenment


Publication was widely anticipated and received huge reaction

King George loved it, as did most of the aristocracy

Why read it today?


2 main reasons: Relevance as a work of political science

“Science” not in the sense that it’s empirically driven -- although there is some of that -- but rather “science” in predictive sense

Founder of modern conservatism


Burke was remarkably prescient about the likely development of the French Revolution and remarkably accurate about most revolutions

To appreciate, here’s the French Revolution in a nutshell:

II. French Revolution

1788, King Louis XVI, facing financial crisis

Calls for the assembly of the Estates Generale (French parliament which hadn’t met since 1614!)

Estates Generale divided along class lines:

Aristocracy Clergy “Commoners”


Elections for the common people -- or Third Estate -- were held in 1788, the legislature then convenes in 1789

Voting was to be by class block (that is, one vote each class)

Third estate wants vote by individual representative -- it’s rejected


Third Estate pulls out of assembly, declares itself the true government -- a “National Assembly” and storms the Bastille Prison

1789 “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen” published


King retreats to Versaille

Palace is stormed by a group of “market women”

Royal family forced to return to quarters in Paris under the control of the National Assembly


Reflections on the Revolution in 1790

1792 King Louis XIV beheaded

1793 “Committee on Public Safety” formed under leadership of Maximilien Robespierre

Reign of Terror begins

1793 Queen (Marie Antoinette) beheaded


1794 - Robespierre executed

1795-1799 “Thermidor Reaction” to excesses of the Reign of Terror

1799 Napoleon seizes power


Burke’s Predictions: Reign of Terror:“On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be supported only by their own terrors and by the concern which each individual may find in them from his own private speculations or can spare to them from his own private interests...”

Why?


No good political situation can endure without the rule of law

By “law” here also include the habitual rules we have for social interaction

Note, the force of a law, compulsive power of law, only comes through habit


Force of Law: Habit Ultimately, the only way to change is

through force


“In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.”


Burke’s Predictions: Reign of Terror: “But when the leaders choose to make

themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators, the instruments, not the guides, of the people...


“Moderation will be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards, and compromise as the prudence of traitors, until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him to temper and moderate, on some occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become active in propagating doctrines and establishing powers that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed.”


“If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly limited and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors who will produce something more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause...


“It is, besides, to be considered whether an assembly like yours, even supposing that it was in possession of another sort of organ through which its orders were to pass, is fit for promoting the obedience and discipline of an army...


“It is known that armies have hitherto yielded a very precarious and uncertain obedience to any senate or popular authority; and they will least of all yield it to an assembly which is only to have a continuance of two years. ...


“In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things...


“But the moment in which that event shall happen, the person who really commands the army is your master — the master (that is little) of your king, the master of your Assembly, the master of your whole republic.”

Respect for the book soared after Napoleon came to power

II. Ethics of the Community

Recall Locke’s discussion on best way to evaluate society

How do we evaluate society?

II. Ethics of Community

For Burke and the conservative tradition, going back to first principles does not involve imagining a hypothetical pre-political situation

Instead we need to take account of the actual shared history of the culture in which we are a part:

“The government of a nation is no more its own creation than is its language.” -- Joseph de Maistre


“One of the great errors of our time is to believe that the political constitution of nations is a purely human creation -- that a constitution can be created much as a watchmaker manufactures a watch. Nothing could be more false, except perhaps the claim that a constitution can be created by an assembly of men.”

-- Joseph de Maistre “Study on Sovereignty”


The mechanics of governing are so complex, the fabric of society woven so tightly, that it is impossible for an assembly to come together and fashion a system of law that will work

Moreover, tinkering with that fabric is folly at best; suicide at worst.


“The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science; because the effects of moral causes are not always immediate; but that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation...


“and its excellence may arise even ... from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions.”


“In states, there are often some obscure and almost latent causes, things which appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity or adversity may most essentially depend.”


“[I]t is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up again, without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.” -- Burke, Reflections


Can’t create a community because we can’t create conventions. They are passed down from traditions of common life and shared history

Conventions, laws, and habit are what make a community

Moreover, it is precisely this community which is the prerequisite for a the good political life (in the Aristotleian sense)


Association vs. Community Association based on interests, voluntary,

impersonal Community based on relationships,

involuntary, personal


Association is based on respect for persons (rights) whereas community is based on love

When love is involved, you have feelings for the specific person, not the properties of that person

When respect is involved, you think about the actions taken, not the properties of the person taking the actions


Hobbes/Locke and the liberals err in seeing society as an association

But Burke and the conservative tradition see society as a community

When you are in a community, you bear special obligation/relation to other members of the community


Moral dilemmas emerge due to conflicts between personal choice and impersonal moral constraints e.g., dinner party, restaurant service

The move towards an association means you may get more justice, but you lose those intimate relations

“The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false.” [Burke, Reflections]


Liberals presuppose that the social relations of persons are utterly accidental occurrences that in no way constitute your “nature.”

That is, they assume you can join a society like you’d join a fraternity or a bowling league.

Burke and the conservatives argue that our attachments are much deeper though:


“Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure -- but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, callico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties...”

“It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”


So if society is a community, what would it look like?

Let’s look at feudal society Hierarchical structure

where position is based on personal relation (father)

Occupations are passed down through generations


The hierarchy itself had dignity since it was based on divine will.

Position is not based on own merit consolation for the poor check on the wealthy

No need for massive state structure because the order was governed by privilege (private law)

Each order had reciprocal obligations to those above and below it in hierarchy


But all that vanishes in liberalism: “The age of chivalry is gone. That of

sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom.” -- Burke, Reflections


“On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal, and an animal not of the highest order. All homage paid to the sex in general as such, and without distinct views, is to be regarded as romance and rolly. Regicide, and parricide, and sacrilege are but fictions of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence by destroying its simplicity...”


“The murder of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, or a father are only common homicide; and if the people are by any chance or in any way gainers by it, a sort of homicide much the most pardonable, and into which we ought not to make too severe a scrutiny” (Burke, Reflections)


The liberal demand for liberty inevitably leads to demands for equality

Demands for equality, though, are false, since they destroy the natural order and natural hierarchy

Now, we’re going to need a strong and powerful state to emerge to keep the peace

Despotism is inevitably because some group will always claim they have rights being violated and they will work to seize the state to secure these rights and slaughter those who disagree

III. Conservatism

Although Burke laments the loss of feudalism, he recognizes that society is developing towards democracy and the defeat of democacy is unlikely

He is, though, asking us to remember what the breakdown of feudal society involves

III. Conservatism

For Burke, power in feudal societies is hierarchical, but dispersed (there’s matching church and political systems for instance)

But in a democracy, where individuals are all that matters, each individual is threatened by the “tyranny of the mob.”

Moreover, in a class divided society, you’ll get centralized random terror as competing classes struggle for control of the power of the state

III. Conservatism

Democracy bludgeons individuality or liberty since individuals need to be mindful of what the majority wants and how their personal opinions/beliefs may differ from the majority

Individuals will conform to majority Democracy will end with mass of isolated

individuals unable to stand up to majority

Conservatism and theRule of Law

Most modern political thinkers believe that good political societies can be made through revolution

We take revolutionaries seriously as moral figures


But violence (and hence revolution) are apolitical acts since neither has anything to do with reason and speech.

Animals settle their differences by fighting

http://www.arkive.org/chimpanzee/pan-troglodytes/video-sc11b.html

Conservatism and the Rule of Law

Revolution is the point where we’ve given up on reason and speech, and…

It doesn’t usually work out for the best in the long run


Change is generally not for the better We shouldn’t undermine customs, mores,

and traditions of the nation for risky social experiments

Conservatism andRule of Law

No good political situation can endure without the rule of law

By “law” here also include the habitual rules we have for social interaction

Note, the force of a law, compulsive power of law, only comes through habit


For example, let’s examine the rules of etiquette


How do we judge the merit of different conventions? Can we do that? Can’t compare between the conventions, only

within them Better for those within the society governed by

the convention to abide the convention

“But the age of chivalry is gone.

That of sophisters, economists; and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.”

Conservatism andRule of Law

What do we lose by trashing (allegedly) arbitrary rules of etiquette? Etiquette is a form of communication Its rules create expectations which enrich life by

providing us with another avenue of communication besides language


Customs are a set of conventions which enable us to have a common life together

The idea that a culture can be “made” is self-defeating in that by taking away conventions we limit and erode the available avenues of communication

“But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the super-added ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns and the understanding ratifies as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.”


The Force of Law relies on Habit Can we new customs?

How to do it? Can’t speak or reason (for example, why not wear a

hat inside? Why say “bless you” at a sneeze?) Ultimately, the only way to change is through

force

“On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal, and an animal not of the highest order. All homage paid to the sex in general as such, and without distinct views, is to be regarded as romance and folly. Regicide, and parricide, and sacrilege are but fictions of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence by destroying its simplicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, or a father are only common homicide; and if the people are by any chance or in any way gainers by it, a sort of homicide much the most pardonable, and into which we ought not to make too severe a scrutiny.”

“On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be supported only by their own terrors and by the concern which each individual may find in them from his own private speculations or can spare to them from his own private interests. In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the commonwealth.”

“On the principles of this mechanic philosophy, our institutions can never be embodied, if I may use the expression, in persons, so as to create in us love, veneration, admiration, or attachment. But that sort of reason which banishes the affections is incapable of filling their place. These public affections, combined with manners, are required sometimes as supplements, sometimes as correctives, always as aids to law. The precept given by a wise man, as well as a great critic, for the construction of poems is equally true as to states: — Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto.* There ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a well-informed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.”

*“It is not enough that poems be beautiful; they must also be affecting” -- Horace


Can’t create a community because we can’t create conventions. They are passed down from traditions of common life and shared history

Conventions, laws, and habit are what make a community

Moreover, it is precisely this community which is the prerequisite for a the good political life

The Social Contract

For Burke, the true social contract is intergenerational

The political community is composed of more than its present members

We need to consider both what past generations have bestowed upon us and what we intend to give to future generations

“SOCIETY is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure — but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico, or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence, because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born...”

“Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles.

“It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule, because this necessity itself is a part, too, of that moral and physical disposition of things to which man must be obedient by consent or force; but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.”

Conservatism

If we can’t stop this change, the next best alternative is to move as slowly as possible

Keep as many of the old, time-tested traditions alive as possible

Remember, the contract is generational and we need to bequeath something to our heirs

Generational Debts

For the conservative tradition, liberals and radicals woefully misunderstand the risks involved in social experimentation

We are trustees of the past for future generations

Natural Inequality

For Burke and the conservative tradition, just as liberals misunderstand the social contract, so too do they misunderstand the nature of equality

It is correct to treat equals as equals, but unjust to treat unequals as equals

Liberals miss that distinction

Natural Inequality

“BELIEVE ME, SIR, those who attempt to level, never equalize. In all societies, consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost. The levelers, therefore, only change and pervert the natural order of things; they load the edifice of society by setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground. The association of tailors and carpenters, of which the republic (of Paris, for instance) is composed, cannot be equal to the situation into which by the worst of usurpations — an usurpation on the prerogatives of nature — you attempt to force them.”

Natural Inequality

“The Chancellor of France, at the opening of the states, said, in a tone of oratorical flourish, that all occupations were honorable. If he meant only that no honest employment was disgraceful, he would not have gone beyond the truth. But in asserting that anything is honorable, we imply some distinction in its favor. The occupation of a hairdresser or of a working tallow-chandler cannot be a matter of honor to any person — to say nothing of a number of other more servile employments. Such descriptions of men ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the state suffers oppression if such as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule. In this you think you are combating prejudice, but you are at war with nature.”

Natural Inequality

One of the political implications of this, of course, is that each of us is entitled to our “fair share” in the society

And that “fair share” is determined by the contributions and stake we have in the system.

“If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to do justice, as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in public function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents, to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring, to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights, but not to equal things...”

“He that has but five shillings in the partnership has as good a right to it as he that has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock; and as to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention.”

Natural Inequality

And just as this equal share principle applies to economic and social power, so too does it apply to political power

In other words, a just political system will not distribute political power equally across the board without distinction

Natural Inequality

“IT is said that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over two hundred thousand. True; if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic. This sort of discourse does well enough with the lamp-post for its second; to men who may reason calmly, it is ridiculous The will of the many and their interest must very often differ, and great will be the difference when they make an evil choice. A government of five hundred country attornies and obscure curates is not good for twenty-four millions of men, though it were chosen by eight and forty millions, nor is it the better for being guided by a dozen of persons of quality who have betrayed their trust in order to obtain that power. At present, you seem in everything to have strayed out of the high road of nature”

Individual and Community

Just as liberals misconstrue the true understanding of equality, so too do they misunderstand the nature of our social relations

Society is a community, not an association And communities are built on feelings for

each of the members, not on rational calculation

“Atheists are not our preachers; madmen are not our lawgivers. We know that we have made no discoveries, and we think that no discoveries are to be made in morality, nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grace has heaped its mold upon our presumption and the silent tomb shall have imposed its law on our pert loquacity. In England we have not yet been completely embowelled of our natural entrails; we still feel within us, and we cherish and cultivate, those inbred sentiments which are the faithful guardians, the active monitors of our duty, the true supporters of all liberal and manly morals. We have not been drawn and trussed, in order that we may be filled, like stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff and rags and paltry blurred shreds of paper about the rights of men. We preserve the whole of our feelings still native and entire, unsophisticated by pedantry and infidelity. We have real hearts of flesh and blood beating in our bosoms...”

“We fear God; we look up with awe to kings, with affection to parliaments, with duty to magistrates, with reverence to priests, and with respect to nobility. Why? Because when such ideas are brought before our minds, it is natural to be so affected; because all other feelings are false and spurious and tend to corrupt our minds, to vitiate our primary morals, to render us unfit for rational liberty, and, by teaching us a servile, licentious, and abandoned insolence, to be our low sport for a few holidays, to make us perfectly fit for, and justly deserving of, slavery through the whole course of our lives.”

“YOU see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to confess that we are generally men of untaught feelings, that, instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.

“Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision skeptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.”

1. the conservative tradition burke’s “reflections on the revolution in france” demaistre’s...

Documents

french revolutionelections

french revolutionreflections

french revolution1788

french revolutionthird

french revolutionking

biographical backgroundburke

biographical backgroundgets

king louis