Week 18, Lecture 18: Burke\'s Organic Society PDF

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Summary

This lecture from Week 18 explores Burke's idea of the Organic Society, and its many concepts. Topics covered include: conservatism and its definitions, the French Revolution, foundations of Burkean thought, and the 'Two Burkes' thesis....

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Monday, 23 February 2015

POLS 202: Week 18 Lecture 18 Burke’s Organic Society Defining Conservatism

- Is Conservatism an ‘ideology’ at all? • Scruton, Roger: “It is a limp definition of conservatism to describe it as the desire to conserve”

• Kirk, Russell: “Strictly speaking, conservatism is not a political system and certainly not an ideology”

- Eccleshall, Robert argues that the insistence that conservatism is not an ideology is purported largely by those sympathetic to conservatism

- An evolution, rather than stasis • Paternalism and critiques of Liberalism during the 19th Century to: • Free Market ideas and critiques of socialism during the 20th Century - Unclear borders and overlap with other ideologies • Why is conservatism associated with nationalism? • Where is the divide between authoritarian forms of conservatism and fascism? Persistent themes of Conservatism

- Tradition to be valued positively, meaning change may be undesirable • Change as dangerous, further, given that human knowledge is limited - Society should be imagined in organic terms, with its own means of change • Hierarchy and authority are features of the organic society - If change threatens tradition and organic society, property can serve as a source of security

Burke and the French Revolution

- Burke challenged the French Revolution • “An evil spirit… possesses the body of France”

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Monday, 23 February 2015

• He further described the political project of the French Revolution as “wicked, immoral, impious, oppressive; but it is spirited and daring: it is systematic; It is simple in its principle…”

• Burke also worked against notions that Britain should also go through a period of revolution

Burkean Foundations

- Change and the mistake of ‘innovation’ • Burke saw the French as ignoring the “walls” and “foundations” of a “noble and venerable castle” (society), and beginning anew, “despising everything that belonged to [them]”

- Change and reform • Burke praised the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in Britain, where reform of the current system took centre stage

- Knowledge • Burke praised the virtues of ‘practical’ knowledge, and experience - And further thought that the idolisation of figures of ideology was a threat, given that their ideas are without experience of the current system, and therefore revolution is far too attractive, and unconsidered

• Burke further praised the virtue of tradition, and the application of prejudice in assessing revolutionary thought

• An example: The vices of ‘abstract reasoning’ - The French Revolutionaries proclaimed the ‘rights of man’ in abstraction and on grounds of universality

• But the real ‘rights of man’ are the inheritance of particular traditions: “so taken up with their theories about the rights of man”, the revolutionaries have “totally forgot his nature”

- Society • Burke implies that picturing society as composed of ‘atoms’ obscures society’s reality as ‘organic’

- The French Revolution was captive to this atomistic conception • Society as a contract and a partnership 2

Monday, 23 February 2015

- Main Issues at Stake • Is Burke a conservative at all? Given how much the term has changed • Are there contradictions in Burkean thought? The ‘Two Burkes’ thesis

- An inconsistency of stances on the American and French Revolution: Burke’s support for the former, and contempt for the latter

• Does Burke move from one end of the political spectrum to another? • Or does the earlier stance anticipate the more substantive account of the ‘real rights of man’ expressed later on?

- For/against the Enlightenment: A rejection of reason? Or the modification of its dominate conception?

• Pocock, J. G. A.: “One kind of enlightenment in conflict with another” • Himmelfarb: “It was [his] powerful moral imagination, rather than any political ideology, that was Burke’s distinctive contribution not only to the analysis of the French Revolution but to the British enlightenment itself

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