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Modern Conservatism: The Problem of Definition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

David V. Allen
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Extract

In the more than fifty years since the publication of Carl Mannheim's classic essay “Conservative Thought,” a sizable body of literature has come into being concerning the nature of modern European and American conservatism. In this article I propose to review and assess some of the more significant pieces of this literature, to indicate my own views on the nature of conservative thought, and to map out some areas I think students of conserivatism might want to explore further. Such a study of the problem of defining conservatism is, I believe, a worthwhile enterprise, not only because of the intrinsic historical importance of modern conservatism, but also because of the light which our understanding of conservative thought may shed on the development of political theory as a whole during the last two centuries.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , October 1981 , pp. 582 - 603
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1981

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References

1 Conservatism came to describe a political ideology only after Chateaubriand started publishing Le Conservateur in 1818. The use of the term became general in Western Europe in the 1830's and 1840's. Herre, Paul, ed., Politisches Handwörterbuch (Leipzig, 1923), I: 1021Google Scholar.

2 I am using the term ideology to describe a more or less coherent political theory, which embodies cultural values, and which takes a sufficiently broad view of society to comprehend it as a whole and to see existing society as one of a number of alternative ways of structuring political and social life. Among those who have questioned the validity of using the concept conservatism to describe a Euro-American ideology are: Greiffenhagen, Martin, Das Dilemma des Konservatismus in Deutschland (Munich, 1971)Google Scholar; Kirk, Russell, The Conservative Mind, 3rd ed. (Chicago, 1960), pp. 2–6Google Scholar; Mann, Golo, “Was ist Konservativ?” Der Monat, 6 (1953–1954), 183–88Google Scholar.

3 For example: Viereck, Peter, Conservatism from John Adams to Churchill (Princeton, 1956)Google Scholar;Schuettinger, Robert, The Conservative Tradition in European Thought (New York, 1971)Google Scholar;Barth, Hans, Der Konservative Gedanke (Stuttgart, 1958)Google Scholar;White, R. J., The Conservative Tradition (London, 1950)Google Scholar.

4 The most important writer to make this position the cornerstone of his definition of conservatism is probably Rossiter, Clinton in Conservatism in America (New York, 1955)Google Scholar. This position is defended and further references are given by Huntington, Samuel, “Conservatism as an Ideology,” American Political Science Review, 51 (1957), 454–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 “Conservative Thought,” in Essays on Sociology and Social Psychology, ed. Kecskemeti, Paul (New York, 1953), p. 74Google Scholar. This is a revision of “Das konservative Denken,” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 57 (1927), 68–142, 470–95Google Scholar.

6 “Conservative Thought,” p. 77.

7 Ibid., p. 125 ff.

8 Ibid., p. 128; cf. Ideology and Utopia (New York, 1967), pp. 153–64Google Scholar.

9 “Conservative Thought,” p. 133.

10 For a critique of the epistemological problems raised by Mannheim's sociology of knowledge and in particular of his treatment of the problem of causation, see Hartung, Frank E., “Problems of the Sociology of Knowledge,” in Curtis, James E. and Petras, John W., eds., The Sociology of Knowledge: A Reader (New York, 1970), pp. 686–705Google Scholar.

11 There has been something of a revival of interest in the sociohistorical approach to conservatism, as witness Schumann's, Hans-Gerd article, “The Problem of Conservatism: Some Notes on Methodology,” Journal of Contemporary History, 13 (1978), 803–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Schumann criticizes even Mannheim for his failure “to shake off the methodology of the historian of ideas” (p. 6). A number of monographs published recently have attempted to apply the methods of social history to the study of conservative ideas. One of the best of these is Puhle's, Hans-JürgenAgrarsische Interessenpolitik und preussicher Konservatismus im wilhelminischen Reich, 1893–1914 (Hannover, 1966)Google Scholar, which will be discussed below.

12 New York, 1959.

13 Ibid., p. 6.

14 Ibid., pp. 8 and 1.

15 Ibid., p. 17.

16 New York, 1976.

17 Ibid., pp. 11–12.

18 The Conservative Mind, pp. 7–8.

19 For a perceptive brief critique of Greiffenhagen's book see Fichtner, Paula Sutter, “German Conservatism,” Review of Politics, 36 (1974), 339–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Greiffenhagen, , Dilemma, p. 16Google Scholar.

21 Ibid., p. 12.

22 Ibid., p. 15.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid., pp. 223–45.

25 There has been considerable controversy, especially among students of German conservatism, as to whether modern conservatism had emerged in outline prior to the French Revolution and Burke's Reflections. See, for example, Valjavec, Fritz, Die Entstehung der politischen Strömungen in Deutschland, 1770–1815 (Munich, 1951)Google Scholar;Epstein, Claus, The Genesis of German Conservatism (Princeton, 1966)Google Scholar;Bussmann, Walter, “Ein Beitrag zum euröaischen Konservatismus in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Hartmann, Wolfgang, ed., Festschrift Klaus Lankheit: zum 20, Mai 1973 (Cologne, 1973), p. 38Google Scholar.

26 The importance of these classical and medieval sources is pointed out by Schuettinger, , Conservative Tradition in European Thought, p. 30Google Scholar. See also Chaimowicz, Thomas, “Die Widerentdeckung Burkes,” in Kaltenbrunner, Gerd-Klaus, ed., Rekonstruktion des Konservatismus (Freiburg, 1972), pp. 389–406Google Scholar.

27 For Burke's sources, see (in addition to the previously cited works by Auerbach and Chaimowicz): Canavan, Francis P., The Political Reason of Edmund Burke (Durham, N.C., 1960), p. 29 ff., p. 197 ff.Google Scholar;Wilkins, Burleigh-Taylor, The Problem of Burke's Political Philosophy (Oxford, 1967), pp. 15–49Google Scholar; Hearnshaw, F.J.C., Conservatism in England (London, 1933)Google Scholar.

28 For the antecedents of Bonald and De Maistre see Mazlish, Bruce, “Burke, Bonald and De Maistre: A Study in Conservatism” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1955), pp. 25–28Google Scholar.

29 See Graham, John T., Donoso Cortés (Columbia, Missouri, 1974), esp. pp. 82–88Google Scholar. Bossuet, Chateaubriand, and De Maistre seem to have played the most important part in Cortés' intellectual formation. Cortés cites Burke favorably and may have been influenced by Leibniz, Hegel, and Gorres.

30 For the diverse sources of the Action francaise see: Muret, Charlotte, French Royalist Doctrine since the Revolution (New York, 1933)Google Scholar;Nolte, Ernst, Three Faces of Fascism (New York, 1966), pp. 29–53Google Scholar;Bayle, Francis, Les Idées politique de Joseph de Maistre (Lyon, 1944), pp. 135–42Google Scholar. For the intellectual origins of the German version of radical conservatism see: Mohler, Armin, Die konservative Revolution in Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1950)Google Scholar;Klemperer, Klemens von, Germany's New Conservatism (Princeton, 1957)CrossRefGoogle Scholar;Stern, Fritz, The Politics of Cultural Despair (Berkeley, 1960)Google Scholar;Lougee, Robert, Paul de Lagarde (Cambridge, Mass., 1962)Google Scholar.

31 See, for example, the anonymous reviewer of Müller's Elemente des Staatskunst in the Gottinger Gelehrte Anzeigen (1810), 900. Among recent writers see Lougee, Robert W., “German Romanticism and Political Thought,” Review of Politics, 21 (1959), 631–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar;Aris, Reinhold, History of Political Thought in Germany from 1789 to 1815 (New York, 1965), pp. 305–307Google Scholar.

32 Neither writer uses the term alienation extensively as a category of analysis, but see Berlin's comments on De Maistre, in The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History (New York, 1970), p. 48 ff.Google Scholar; and Rosenberg's, comments on the “radical” character of Carlyle's thought throughout The Seventh Hero: Thomas Carlyle and the Theory of Radical Activism (Cambridge, Mass., 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 See O'Brien's, Conor Cruise “Introduction” to Burke's Reflections (Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 34–41Google Scholar;Kramnick, Isaac, The Rage of Edmund Burke: Portrait of an Ambivalent Conservative (New York, 1971)Google Scholar.

34 Levin, Michael, “Marxism and Romanticism — Marx's Debt to German Conservatism,” Political Studies, 22 (1974), 400–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 The weaknesses of Weiss's book are too numerous and too evident to warrant detailed discussion. Typical of the conceptual flaws in the work is his treatment of fascism as an extreme form of conservatism — a generalization which contains elements of truth, but which stretches the concepts of both conservatism and fascism to such an extent as to mislead the reader concerning the character of both movements. See Conservatism in Europe, 1770–1945 (London, 1977), pp. 7Google Scholar; 156.

36 Epstein even hoped that his book would “serve as one of many preliminary studies for the general history of modern European conservatism to be written in the future” (Genesis of German Conservatism, p. 7).

37 “From Romanticism to Realpolitik: Studies in Nineteenth-Century German Conservatism” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1971)Google Scholar.