Conservatism

Conservatism is one of the basic currents of democratic political life, which is founded on a (moderate) critique of liberalism. Conservatism generally accepts the political institutions of liberal democracy, but it denounces the dangers that come from the decline of traditions and from the modern emancipation of individuals. The study of the diverse traditions of conservatism must start with the explanation of its complex nature as philosophy and as political attitude; it requires a historical study of the growth of conservatism from the Enlightenment to the birth of modern democracy through the democratic revolutions of Europe and America and, in the end, a philosophical examination of its theoretical foundations. This entry begins with a definition of conservatism as both a philosophy and a political ideology, briefly traces its historical origins and development in British politics, and concludes with a look at contemporary conservative thought.

Conservatism is both a political philosophy, with its concepts, traditions and classical authors, and a political ideology, which is one of the main currents of political life in modern democratic politics. As a philosophy, it is founded on a critique of modern liberalism, which, as Philippe Bénéton has shown, is directed against what conservatism regards as three great illusions that are the consequences of individual liberalism. The first of these illusions is epistemological and comes from one of the main tendencies of modern philosophy, originating with René Descartes and the age of Enlightenment: It consists in identifying individual reason as the judge of truth. The second one, more directly political, makes individual reason the only foundation of political legitimacy. The third could be named “sociological” and leads to the notion of society as a mere aggregate of individuals, to the detriment of community and/or of social hierarchy. To these illusions, conservatism objects that the individual is never really independent, that all his or her accomplishments have some underlying communitarian or traditional condition that escapes individual reason, and that the neglect of such a debt is a danger for the community and finally even for the individual.

Conservatism is not only a philosophy but also a political attitude that interacts with other currents in political life. To understand its nature, we can start with the usual tripartition that makes conservatism one of the three basic political currents, together with liberalism and socialism: Liberalism is the center of gravity of modern democratic politics but, as it cannot satisfy all the expectations that arise in an open society, it engenders permanent criticisms that can be “socialist,” if they argue for a new reconstruction of society, or “conservative,” if they try to maintain or restore something of the “world we have lost.” In both definitions, conservatism appears not only as an expression of permanent dispositions of human nature but also as a paradoxical product of modernity, which is dependent on what it contests, namely, the faith in individual reason as the foundation of authority, and the philosophical and political order, and which can be defined by three essential features:

• 1.
  Conservatism is a modern criticism of modernity, which criticizes or even condemns some principles of modernity but does not reject all the consequences of liberal modernity.
• 2.
  Even if conservatism was strengthened by its opposition to the French Revolution, its main themes were born before it, within liberal politics, as an internal criticism of classical liberalism.
• 3.
  The most central idea of conservative thought is that of the risk of self-destruction of liberal traditions and institutions, which is supposed to be the consequence of a violent rupture with the past and/or with the “natural” basis of human societies. The diverse varieties of conservatism differ in their interpretations of this common idea.

Thus, comprehension of conservatism requires a historical examination of the growth of conservative politics between the 17th and 19th centuries and then a philosophical examination of the diverse expressions of the conservative arguments.

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