French Liberalism in the 19th Century: An Anthology

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Added to PP index Total downloads 28 , of 2,, Recent downloads 6 months 7 73, of 2,, How can I increase my downloads? Sign in to use this feature. I cannot [praise or blame] human actions…on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction; Burke, WS III: For conservatives, abstract propositions cannot be simply applied to specific circumstances.

Unlike liberals and socialists, therefore, conservatives are particularist in rejecting universal prescriptions and panaceas; they reject the Enlightenment-modernist requirement that practical rationality is liberated from all particularism Beveridge and Turnbull The parallel is incomplete, however; political conservatives do not deny that there are general principles, they just deny that one should apply them. Their position is an essentially epistemic one—that one cannot know the general principles whose implementation would benefit the operation of society.

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The conservative vision is that people will come to value the privileges of choice…when they see how much in their lives must always remain unchosen. Conservative scepticism is quite distinct from Cartesian or external world scepticism, therefore, since this scepticism is based on reason; rather, it is sceptical about the claims of theoretical reason, in politics and ethics.

Nor does its scepticism constitute a critique of society in the Marxist sense. For conservatives, society rests on prejudice, not reason; prejudice is not irrational, but simply unreasoning. Burke advocated educated prejudice as an antidote to its bigoted forms—arguably, not a rejection of reason, but a scepticism about its inordinate pretensions.

Philosophers might speculate about why we have the duties that we do, but prejudice makes us act, without having to calculate all the consequences—or indeed to reason about ends. This is not the irrationalism of Nietzsche or Freud, for whom much of human behaviour is irrationally driven, but rather, a non-rationalist standpoint. It is sceptical about proposals of reform based on a priori commitment to a value such as freedom or equality.

Conservatives believe that values of justice, freedom, and truth are important and should be pursued by the state, but they interpret those values in a concrete fashion. As we have seen, it is generally recognised that conservatism is not dogmatic reaction.

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It advocates piecemeal, moderate reform, which follows from its scepticism concerning reason, and its valuing of experience concerning human affairs. But change must be cautious, because knowledge is imperfect and consequences can be unintended. According to conservatives, institutions and morals evolve, their weaknesses become apparent and obvious political abuses are corrected; but ancient institutions embody a tacit wisdom that deserves respect. Conservatives are sceptical of large-scale constitutional, economic or cultural planning, because behaviour and institutions have evolved through the wisdom of generations, which cannot easily be articulated.

The notion of tradition is central to conservatism, and its self-conscious, contrastive use arises only in modernity. For conservatives, vital political relations are organic. Unlike reactionary thinkers, they regard traditions not as static, but as in a gentle and gradual flux, encouraged by the astute reformer. Reform must be practically and not theoretically-based:. I must see with my own eyes…touch with my own hands not only the fixed but the momentary circumstances, before I could venture to suggest any political project whatsoever I must see the means of correcting the plan…I must see the things; I must see the men.

For Kekes, conservatism adopts a stance of scepticism between extremes of rationalism and fideism belief based on faith , and steers a middle course of pessimism between claims of perfectibility and corruptibility It is reaction and not conservatism that is inherently authoritarian. For conservatives, individuals and local communities are better assessors of their own needs and problems than distant bureaucrats.

Free from utopian planning, conservatives hold, society finds its own, largely beneficial, shape. But conservatism is generally regarded as a philosophy, if not a systematic one. Two contrasting interpretations of conservatism distinguish it from mere pragmatism. The judgement of whether something is broken or runs reasonably well appeals to values accepted in the relevant society.

Thus conservatives in reasonably functioning socialist, feudal and fascist countries advocate different modes of social organisation and gradual improvement, according to prevailing values. On this view, conservative particularism is relativistic. On this interpretation, particularism does not imply relativism. Revolutionary systems, and autocratic systems with no possibility of incremental change—societies that do not exhibit living traditions—are not amenable to a conservative outlook. Conservatism is situational, but some situations do not permit conservative responses. The sarcastic dismissal of Burke by a liberal defender of the Revolution, J.

In the case of public institutions, Mr. Burke had…worked himself into an artificial admiration of the bare fact of existence; especially ancient existence.

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Everything was to be protected, not because it was good, but, because it existed. Evil, to render itself an object of reverence in his eye, required only to be realised. This non-relativist position is minimally rational and universal, while remaining particularist. This terminology is elucidated further at 2. Lock regards 1 and 2 as an unBurkean choice between constructed opposites, arguing that Burke is not strongly relativist, but recognises temporal and geographical differences that amount to a kind of relativism.

Perhaps he overlooks the contestability of conceptions of the good life, and of arrangements that preserve it; liberals, for instance, stress the value of individual freedom, independent of burdensome constraints of tradition. According to 2 , there is a conservative conception of the good life, and of the arrangements that preserve it—one that rejects the over-valuation of Enlightenment rationalism and revolution.

But as we will see, conservatives must steer a course between unconservative mere pragmatism, and unconservative substantive policy. The issue recurs throughout this entry, especially in sections 2. But these are hard to separate. Liberals and socialists stress the malleability of human nature under the influence of changeable historical conditions. The anti-conservative Rousseau had an optimistic conception of human nature, blaming government and society for failings that—according to conservatives—belong to individuals.

Conservatives, in contrast, regard human nature as weak and fallible, unalterably selfish rather than altruistic Kekes Scruton is typical in regarding human beings as frail creatures of limited sympathy not easily extending to those remote in space or time Scruton Conservatism is popularly confused with neo-conservatism and with libertarianism.

But right libertarians and neo-conservatives, unlike Burkean conservatives, reject state planning for doctrinaire reasons. Conservatives reject ideologies, of which neo-liberalism is one. A plan to resist all planning may be better than its opposite, but it belongs to the same style of politics. And only in a society already deeply infected with Rationalism will the conversion of the traditional resources of resistance to the tyranny of Rationalism into a self-conscious ideology be considered a strengthening of those resources.

It seems that now, in order to participate in politics [one must have] a doctrine…. Conservatives oppose rational planning, but do not dogmatically oppose planning that works. Scruton, for instance, believes that a market economy is most conducive to prosperity, but like Adam Smith, insists that markets should work within, and not erode, customs and moral and legal traditions.

Conservatism

Conservatism differs from neo-conservatism and libertarianism in motivation or formal features, therefore. It has been argued Harvey ; Ha Joon Chang that neo-conservatives do not reduce state intervention, but simply shift its priorities, while maintaining its massive scale. Nozick and conservatism seem to share a commitment to the invisible hand of the free market, and rejection of an extensive state. But Nozick is more plausibly regarded as a right libertarian, an extreme classical or neo-liberal.

Conservatives avoid such principles. Perhaps neo-liberalism is libertarianism plus related economic doctrines, while neo-conservatism is libertarianism plus elements of traditional conservatism. Neo-liberals like Milton Friedman question drug-prohibition and conscription, which conservatives and neo-conservatives would not. Feudalism is a contested label for the economic system prevalent in Europe from after the decline of the Roman Empire until the 16 th century, and which rested on the holding of land in return for labour; in France, it persisted as the ancien regime up till the French Revolution.

A sympathiser with the ancien regime such as Burke could therefore be regarded as a feudal romantic. On feudalism, see Dyer , and Pocock Like some socialists, many 19 th century conservatives reacted against industrialism and laissez-faire capitalism with a feudal nostalgia. Conservatism may seem to share the laissez-faire doctrine, imputed to Adam Smith, of the invisible hand—according to which, in a free market, unintended consequences of actions tend to promote the general good. The evolutionary nature and anti-statism of laissez-faire theory appeal to conservatives, but as we saw, they would not reject planning in a doctrinaire way.

Hayek valued local, transient, untheoretical knowledge, and advocated unfettered markets on the conservative sceptical grounds that they best realise organic social institutions. For him it is. It is true that no revolution has proclaimed inequality, while for Burke, the social order is rooted in it; and conservatives may defend an established ruling class, regarding ruling as a skill likely to be most highly developed there. To reiterate, conservatism is not essentially associated with aristocracy and hereditary forms of government, or opposed to democracy.

For conservatives, as for Millian liberals, the viability of democracy depends on the period and conditions. While conservatism should not be assimilated with neo-conservatism or neo-liberalism, many conservatives have converted to the latter:. A political outlook that in Burke, Disraeli and Salisbury was sceptical of the project of the Enlightenment and suspicious of the promise of progress has mortgaged its future on a wager on indefinite economic growth and unfettered market forces.

Scruton also laments this development, while John Harris comments on the enduring tensions that Thatcher exposed in Conservatism:. If you profess to believe in both the unrestrained market and such old Tory touchstones as family, nation and community, you will Conservatism is further elucidated by contrasting it with liberalism. Both liberalism and socialism are more theoretically complex than conservatism, for two reasons: It is often argued that modern political philosophy is animated by the idea of freedom, while ancient political philosophy rests on a natural order discernible by reason to which humans must conform Franco The dividing line may be Rousseau, for whom the purpose of the state is not merely security of life and property, as Hobbes, Locke and conservatives concur; rather, it is freedom itself Franco In fact, Rousseau regarded the revolutionary cure as worse than the disease, and was pessimistic about political progress.

In expressing the standpoint of freedom, philosophical liberalism embraces ethical individualism—that all value and right reduces to value of or for individuals, and the rights of individuals—respect for persons, and freedom of thought and discussion, based on individual autonomy Skorupski For classical liberals, liberty thrives only when traditional sources of authority—monarchical, aristocratic, religious—are rejected.

It is often said that liberals prioritise rights over duties, while conservatives prioritise duties over rights. Conservative thinking expresses the standpoint of paternalism:. Obedience, for Scruton, is the principal virtue of political subjects, without which societies atomise and crumble; real freedom is not in conflict with obedience, but is its other side Scruton, For Oakeshott, there is no freedom without authority. For Beiser, paternalism holds that.

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The contrast with liberalism and its standpoint of freedom should be qualified, however. Burke certainly wanted to enhance freedom, but held that it is realised imperfectly in our institutions; pursuit of an abstract ideal may lose us what freedom we have. Both conservatives and classical liberals advocate limited government; it is particularist scepticism and an associated pessimism that define conservatism. For conservatives, a priori claims such as L. However, while Hobhouse, Rawls and Dworkin defend abstract and universal rights, liberals such as Mill are more historically-sensitive—through Coleridge, he drew on aspects of conservative thought.

Despite the influence of Coleridge, therefore, Mill remained a liberal and not a conservative, who valued reason above Burkean prejudice. Conservatives are not legal positivists, however, and allow some idealisation of rights; indeed, even legal positivists Bentham, Austen and Hart, in conceding that there are moral constraints, allow that there are bad laws. Burke held that the Stuart monarchs abrogated the rights of free-born Englishmen; under the Stuarts, therefore, the latter had rights that were not simply those that prevailed.

Indeed, Burke does not entirely reject the concept of natural rights. Though sceptical of appealing to rights that are beyond positive law, in his Indian writings he acknowledged that when deprived of positive legal resources, one can appeal to natural law though not natural right Bourke ; though see Stanlis , and Canavan One should not conclude, however, that conservatism is essentially a British view; all cultures have political sceptics who value experience.

Others claim Hume as a liberal. John Stewart rejects the picture of Hume clinging to a raft of custom and artifice, because as a sceptic, he has no alternative: We now examine his ideas and how they arose. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France , the Irish Whig and parliamentarian Edmund Burke — warned against revolutions and their utopian schemes for human perfectibility. Writing in , he predicted the French Revolutionary Terror of three years later:.

In the groves of [the] academy [of this new conquering empire of light and reason], at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows; Burke, WS III: His prediction is based on his view that when compliance no longer flows from customary allegiances, the result is naked force WS VIII: When Burke reflected and published, the French Revolution was in its Arcadian phase [and] his bloodstained previsions seemed nearly hysterical…Retroactively… his sombre clairvoyance took on formidable weight.

Its British friends compared the French Revolution with the Glorious Revolution of ; for Burke, it reprised , when Parliament was purged and the king executed. Burke argued that revolutionaries impose theory on political practice, when they should rather derive theory from it. In a speech of , he held it preposterous. But to reiterate, Burke advocated organic and restorative reform, not reaction:. The Reflections argue that the ancien regime could have been restored to its pre-corrupt state; summoning the Estates General for May was an opportunity for enlightened reform of the monarchy, hijacked by enthusiastic atheists and deists WS VIII: Burke had a Whig belief in limited government.

Burke differs from liberal tradition not in rejecting rights as such, but in his conception of them Lock He rejected a constitution or bill of rights that does not simply express existing practice. For him, the only reliable liberty comes through descent, justified. By a constitutional policy, working after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges, [just as] we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives.

Burke mistrusted appeals beyond positive law, but his writings on India allow, in its absence, an appeal to natural law though not natural right. The Hobbesian conception of Reflections treats natural rights as pre-social, and incompatible with society. For Burke, liberty is precarious; to say that it is assured by providential order, and has an inevitable progress, is the kind of metaphysical principle he abhorred Himmelfarb Burke misrepresents the social contract of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau as a rather temporary expedient,.

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… Burke, WS III: For Scruton , liberals tend to make present members of society dominance over those who went before, and those who come after; some conservative commentators fear that the cross-generational contract is now being broken by. Burke was a Christian thinker whose conservatism has been traced to his theological presuppositions Harris ; Cobban Many conservative writers share his religious interpretation of the contract across the generations.

But religious belief is not essential to conservatism, and Oakeshott was a secular conservative Cowling, But they caused a stormy reaction from radicals. The parliament or the people of …had no more right to dispose of the people of the present day…. Your imagination would have taken fire. In his later career, liberals believed, Burke showed himself a prisoner of the feudal and landed conception of society. For most of his career, he was regarded as a moderate reforming Whig, campaigning against the corruption and brutality of the East India Company.

Only at the end did he become the Tory scourge of Revolution. Indeed, Reflections is liberal compared to Letters on a Regicide Peace five years later, which demanded a war abroad and repression at home to extirpate revolutionary infection. The 19 th century regarded him as a liberal, treating his later career as an aberration—an interpretation reversed in the 20 th century.

Marx scathingly dismissed Burke as an opportunist:. The sycophant—who in the pay of the English oligarchy played the romantic…against the French Revolution just as, in the pay of the North American colonies…he had played the liberal against the English oligarchy—was an out-and-out vulgar bourgeois. Was he anti-reason, or just against abstract reason? Did he supplant individual with collective reason? A subtler view is that for him, individual reason cannot discern fully how social and political institutions work; it cannot see the entire process of communal adaptation, or understand by itself the principles on which it is based.

As Hampsher-Monk puts it, institutions result from trial and error, embodying accumulated historical experience in institutional reason—like precedent within Common Law, which Burke had studied. Exclusive web offer for individuals. Home French Liberalism in the 19th Century: French Liberalism in the 19th Century: Add to Wish List. Toggle navigation Additional Book Information. Description Table of Contents Editor s Bio. Summary Political and economic liberalism has generally been considered to be of marginal import in France, but at an intellectual level, it is a different story. Request an e-inspection copy.

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