Why conservative political philosophy and theory is so marginal in the discipline.

A few weeks ago (recall) I explained why it is completely natural that conservatism has disappeared from social science for methodological and substantive reasons. I also explained that this made the status of conservativism much more intense and fraught in the humanities, which (I don’t need remind anybody) is a shrinking pie. I don’t understand why conservatism has disappeared from literature, art history, history (if it has), but after teaching a course on conservativism (and modern Machiavellianism), I have a hypothesis about what happened in political philosophy and political theory.

Before I go there, let me reiterate that I know some conservative academics who have experienced persistent discrimination in the academy or felt silenced in the context of group conformism. So what follows is not to make light of their experiences. Nor do I wish to deny the plausibility of models that show that even modest inequality in group resources and relatively neutral hiring patterns can entrench local hierarchies all other things being equal. Okay so much for set up. Below I’ll also explain what I mean by ‘conservative.’

First, on the surface it is deeply puzzling that conservatism has disappeared from professional philosophy. There are four reasons for surprise: first, some influential mainstream professional philosophers have conservative sensibilities and/or were outspoken in their conservatism: for example, Wittgenstein, Quine, Anscombe. Second, because analytic philosophy is not committed to doctrine lots of work can ‘sneak in;’ to offer a pertinent example, a branch of (Dutch reformed) Protestantism has been very influential in analytic philosophy of religion, and helped shape debates in metaphysics and epistemology. Third, analytic political philosophy has space for vigorous debates among liberals, libertarians, classical liberals, feminists, social democrats, and Marxists. So, it is not self-evident why conservatism couldn’t be a position in the mix. (I am not claiming these have equal status; Rawls’ shadow is real.) I’ll list the fourth reason below, althought it is connected to this third one.

As the previous paragraph already hints, by ‘conservative,’ I don’t mean a position that is intrinsically pro free-markets, committed to property rights, anti-abortion’, or pro Trump. So, by ‘conservative’ I mean something distinct from what is often treated as conservative in the media or public nor do I wish to track the commitments of a particular political party in the United Kingdom or Canada (etc.). So, if your favorite ‘classical liberal’ seems conservative, I will still group him (yep!) among the liberals.*

Conservative political philosophy has an originating thought that goes something like this: political life is centered on groups or collectives that need to use violence to constitute and maintain themselves and, thereby, establish order. I call it ‘originating’ because I don’t want to call it an ‘axiom’ or a ‘foundation.’ In fact, it is quite noticeable that for nearly all mid twentieth century conservatives pacifists/pacifism is a polemical target.

To students this originating thought has similarity with Hobbes’ philosophy, but in Hobbes all of this is preceded by individuals who have pre-political rights and who generate a social contract without violence. The conservative originating thought also has a similarity to Marxist’ critical analysis of the modern state, but the Marxist believes, as the Conservative does not, that one can reach a democratic future where there is no more need for violence (and, from a certain angle, no more politics). In contemporary political philosophy the position is sort of familiar from the way Bernard Williams has updated Max Weber. But Williams blocks the road to conservatism by insisting on what he calls, a basic legitimation demand.

I don’t mean to deny that for conservatives shaped by Burke (whose invention as a conservative is subject of a fine book (here) by Emily Jones) political life or “society” is simultaneously “indeed” also understood as “a contract…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.” But this pact is very different in character than the one we find in the so-called social contract traditions. It is ground in ‘necessity’ and it generates obedience “by consent or force.” (This reinforces the claim about the originating thought.)

Okay, let’s return to the originating thought. The order that is established may well have, as a by-product, features that overlap with commitments one finds among liberals: respect for property rights, respect for the law, a suspicion of utopianism, etc. So, what came to be known as ‘fusionism’ (think Frank Meyer) Stateside worked with these partially overlapping commitments between conservatism and (right-wing) liberalism.

In addition, the originating thought helps explain why conservatives are attentive to the art of government (this is something that Oakeshott, Burnham, Vermeule, and, say, Strauss have in common). Establishing and maintaining order is never taken for granted. One (of several) reason(s) why Foucault in the late 1970s started to sound suspect to his left-Friends, is that he also got very interested in this problematic.

But the more important consequence of the originating thought is that the order established can allow one to pursue the common good. That is to say, the conservative rejects the idea that the state must be neutral. Of course, the content of the common good is deeply contested even among conservatives (including among ones where one may, say, expect agreement, say Catholics)—some of the fiercest debates involve the role of religion and the status of the church or rites in this common good. I don’t mean to suggest all conservatives are so-called perfectionists (they may well be skeptical about that possibility). But the interest in the common good explains the conservatives’ special interest in institutions that help secure shared morality: education, family, religion, civic culture, etc. Or in institutions that help secure a certain commons sensibility: aesthetics, the arts, literature, etc.

Here’s the fourth reason for surprise: conservative political philosophy is, thus, highly normative. And in the division of academic labor, political philosophy, political theory, social theory, and applied ethics are the normative disciplines par excellence. So, it ought not create barriers to welcoming conservative thought. In my view, conservatives do thrive in many areas of legal philosophy and bio-ethics, and I doubt this is a coincidence.

Okay, a lot more can be said, of course, about the great variety of conservatisms out there. But it’s time to begin to unveil my hypothesis. Before I get there, I want to forestall one possible confusion (because in my experience most of my academic friends don’t read conservative political theory—I do it because i have started teaching it while writing my book on a liberal credo). Many contemporary critics of conservatism often assume that these cannot be moral egalitarians. And while there surely are conservatives who do embrace forms of moral hierarchy, most of the (Abrahamic) religious conservatives are quite principled moral egalitarians (despite being at ease with political hierarchy). And again this is why they are at ease in applied ethics and legal theory.

Okay, I suspect there are two principled reasons why it’s difficult for conservative political philosophy to gain traction in political philosophy. (That leaves open there may be ideological biases.) First, conservatives reject the terms of the debate among liberals vs Marxists and liberals vs libertarians. They are suspicious of what we may call ‘rights first’ accounts without accompanying obligations, and (more important) they reject the idea that the point of political life is to secure rights.

Again, and to avoid confusion, many conservatives think that undoubtedly that the maintenance of social order can be beneficial to the achievement of some rights and some conservatives may well also think that the respect for rights is conducive to social order. (Burnham goes much further and implies that what the liberals care about only can be achieved through a focus on the maintenance of political competition within political orders.) If one reads through twentieth century conservatism, there is a persistent strain of concern about what we may call ‘rights inflation.’ And that’s because the focus on achieving rights detracts from projects the conservative values much more. This is why a consistent conservative tries to change the conversation rather than engaging constructively with Rawls’ shadow. It is, however, very difficult to change the disciplinary conversation for the following reason.

For all of this is not sufficient to explain what’s going on. After all, it’s quite noticeable that there are few constructive conservative projects out there. Much of the best writing (outside the culture wars) is critical of (left and right) liberalism, essayistic, or a species of apologetics. Even John Kekes, who is an important exception to my narrative, wrote many more books explaining what he is against than what he is for.

I think lurking here is that conservatism has an an instinctive mistrust of systematicity. This is especially visible in the more literary conservatism that Kirk propagated. The exceptions tend to draw their systems from past masters, Aquinas and Hegel. But that raises an important problem (which is my second principled reason): working out what, say, Thomism or Right Hegelianism might mean today generally involves (i) a hermeneutic aspect, (ii) a reconstructive aspect, and (iii) a constructive (forward-looking) aspect. But the norms of the discipline in analytic philosophy today treat (i-ii) as ‘history.’ And while many normative theorists are interested in some historical figures, they have little appetite for engagement with (i) and (ii). And so taken as self-standing (iii) looks entirely ungrounded or unprincipled, that is, ‘bad philosophy,’ compared to the systematic rigor of utilitarianism and the method of reflective equilibrium of the Rawlsian.

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*There are interesting hybrids: even in his most ordoliberal phase, Röpke has instincts that are conservative in character. Raymond Aron’s liberalism is shaped by enormous admiration for Burnham’s Machiavellianism (and so forth). There also people who are better known as conservatives, like Scruton, whose commitments are so Kantian that the difference with (what I call) rechtslehre liberals is rather minor.