Conservatism

At a time when the label "conservative" is indiscriminately applied to fundamentalists, populists, libertarians, fascists and the advocates of one or another orthodoxy, this book offers a historically informed presentation of what is distinctive about conservative social and political thought. It is an anthology with an argument, locating the origins of modern conservatism within the Enlightenment and distinguishing between conservatism and orthodoxy. Bringing togther important specimens of European and American conservative social and political analysis from the mid-18th century through to our own day, the book demonstrates that while the particular institutions that conservatives have sought to conserve have varied, there are characteristic features of conservative argument that recur over time and across national borders. The book proceeds chronologically through the following sections: "Enlightenment Conservatism" (David Hume, Edmund Burke and Justus Moser), "The Critique of Revolution" (Burke, Louis de Bonald, Joesph de Maistre, James Madison and Rufus Choate), "Authority" (Matthew Arnold, James Fitzjames Stephen), "Inequality" (W.H. Mallock, Joseph A. Schumpter), "The Critique of Good Intentions" (William Graham Sumner), "War" (T.E. Hulme), "Democracy" (Carl Schmitt, Schumpeter), "The Limits of Rationalism" (Winston Churchill, Michael Oakeshott, Friedrich Hayek, Edward Banfield), "The Critique of Social and Cultural Emancipation" (Irving Kristol, Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, Hermann Lubbe), and "Between Social Science and Cultural Criticism" (Arnold Gehlen, Philip Rieff). The book contains an afterword on recurrent tensions and dilemmas of conservative thought.