Who Are the Post-modern Conservatives?

McManus, Matthew

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-24682-2_4

Matthew McManus⁴

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism ((PASTCL))

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Abstract

This chapter traces the genealogy of post-modern conservatism in the work of major right wing thinkers. In particular it looks at the work of Edmund Burke, Joseph de Maistre, Michael Oakeshott, Lord Devlin, Robert Bork, and of course Peter Lawler-who originated the term post-modern conservatism. It also distinguishes this approach from other variants of conservative thought, from neoliberalism to Straussianism. It then analyzes the characteristics of contemporary post-modern conservatism, framing it as a reactionary outlook driven by resentment and fears of decline. It concludes with an examination of the agonistic politics of post-modern conservatism, particularly how the enemies of the movement are determined.

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Notes

1.
Terry Eagleton. The Illusions of Postmodernism (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1996) pg 13–14.
2.
Peter Augustine Lawler. Postmodernism Rightly Understood: The Return to Realism in American Thought (Lanham, MA: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, 1999).
3.
Many of these are reprinted in excellent collections such as Peter Augustine Lawler. Stuck with Virtue: The American Individual and Our Biotechnological Future (Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2005).
4.
Frank S. Meyer. In Defense of Freedom and Related Essays. With a Foreword by William C. Dennis (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1996) at pg 60.
5.
Corey Robin. The Reactionary Mind Second Edition: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018).
6.
Ian Shapiro. The Moral Foundations of Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003).
7.
Roger Scruton. Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition (New York, NY: All Points Books, 2017).
8.
Russel Kirk. The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (Washington, DC: Gateway Editions, 2016).
9.
In particular his work on morality. See David Hume. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1983).
10.
J.G. Herder. Another Philosophy of History and Selected Political Writings, trans. Joannis D. Evrigenis and Daniel Pellerin (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Inc., 2004).
11.
Montesquieu. The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Thomas Nugent (New York, NY: Hafner Publishing Company, 1966).
12.
Corey Robin. The Reactionary Mind Second Edition: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018).
13.
Russell Kirk. The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (Washington, DC: Gateway Editions, 2016).
14.
Edmund Burke. A Philosophical Enquiry in the Sublime and Beautiful (London, UK: Penguin Books, 1998).
15.
Ian Shapiro. The Moral Foundations of Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003).
16.
Terry Eagleton. The Illusions of Postmodernism (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1996) at pg 33.
17.
Paul Langford. “Edmund Burke.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Accessed January 2, 2019.
18.
See David Womersley. “Introduction.” In Edmund Burke. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful (London, UK: Penguin University Press, 2004) pgs xxvi–xxvii.
19.
Edmund Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009).
20.
See Jeremy Bentham. “Anarchical Fallacies.” In Selected Writings on Utilitarianism (Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 2000). This point of connection is highlighted by Douzinas. See Costas Douzinas. The End of Human Rights: Critical Thought at the Turn of the Century (Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, 2000).
21.
This observation is made by Corey Robin in his analysis of Burke’s theory of value. See Corey Robin. The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018) pgs 105–132.
22.
In a weird irony, I remember describing Foucault et al. as “historical empiricists” some time ago. Apparently this is a better description of true conservatives. See Ofir Haivry and Yoram Hazony. “What Is Conservatism?” American Affairs, May 2017. https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/05/what-is-conservatism/.
23.
Yoram Hazony. The Virtue of Nationalism (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2018).
24.
See Garrett Sheldon. “Burke’s Catholic Conservatism.” Intercollegiate Institute, June 12, 2015. https://isi.org/intercollegiate-review/burkes-catholic-conservatism/.
25.
Russell Kirk occasionally put forward this interpretation, though he was more prone to characterising Burke as a prudentialist. See the analysis below.
26.
See Soren Kierkegaard. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992) and Soren Kierkegaard. The Sickness Unto Death, trans. Alastair Hanney (London, UK: Penguin Books, 2008).
27.
Russell Kirk. The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (Washington, DC: Gateway Editions, 2016).
28.
Uday Mehta. Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
29.
Like “pragmatism” prudence isn’t very useful in generating a reflective account of the kind of reasoning deployed in making epistemic and normative judgements.
30.
Ian Shapiro. The Moral Foundations of Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003) and Frank S. Meyer. In Defense of Freedom and Related Essays. With a Foreword by William C. Dennis (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1996). Meyer’s primary criticism is that Burkeanism is insufficiently principled to serve as an effective philosophy for the conservative movement.
31.
Edmund Burke. A Philosophical Enquiry in the Sublime and Beautiful (London, UK: Penguin Books, 1998).
32.
Joseph De Maistre. The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions: Studies on Sovereignty Religion, and Enlightenment (London, UK: Routledge, 1965).
33.
Edmund Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009) at pg 32.
34.
Edmund Burke. A Philosophical Enquiry in the Sublime and Beautiful (London, UK: Penguin Books, 1998).
35.
Edmund Burke. A Philosophical Enquiry in the Sublime and Beautiful (London, UK: Penguin Books, 1998).
36.
Edmund Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009).
37.
Michael Oakeshott. Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1991).
38.
Isaiah Berlin. The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays, ed. Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997).
39.
Joseph De Maistre. The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions: Studies on Sovereignty Religion, and Enlightenment (London, UK: Routledge, 1965).
40.
See Jack Lively. “Introduction.” In Joseph De Maistre. The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions: Studies on Sovereignty Religion, and Enlightenment (London, UK: Routledge, 1965).
41.
I am drawing a great deal on Berlin’s seminal essays on De Maistre’s biography and thinking. See Isaiah Berlin. “The Counter Enlightenment.” In The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays, ed. Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997) and Isaiah Berlin. “Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism.” In The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy (New York: Knopf, 1991).
42.
See Jack Lively. “Introduction.” In The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions: Studies on Sovereignty Religion, and Enlightenment, ed. Joseph De Maistre (London, UK: Routledge, 1965) at pg 2.
43.
Joseph De Maistre. The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions: Studies on Sovereignty Religion, and Enlightenment (London, UK: Routledge, 1965).
44.
Joseph De Maistre. The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions: Studies on Sovereignty Religion, and Enlightenment (London, UK: Routledge, 1965).
45.
Joseph De Maistre. The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions: Studies on Sovereignty Religion, and Enlightenment (London, UK: Routledge, 1965) at pg 71.
46.
Joseph De Maistre. The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions: Studies on Sovereignty Religion, and Enlightenment (London, UK: Routledge, 1965).
47.
Joseph De Maistre. The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions: Studies on Sovereignty Religion, and Enlightenment (London, UK: Routledge, 1965) at pg 53.
48.
Jan-Werner Muller. What Is Populism? (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).
49.
Joseph De Maistre. The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions: Studies on Sovereignty Religion, and Enlightenment (London, UK: Routledge, 1965).
50.
Michael Oakeshott. Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays: New and Expanded Edition (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Press, 1991) at pg 408.
51.
Perry Anderson. “The Intransigent Right at the End of the Century.” London Review of Books, Vol. 14, 1992.
52.
Corey Robin. The Reactionary Mind Second Edition: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018).
53.
John Gray. “Last of the Idealists.” Literary Review, July 16, 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20140717092255/http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/gray_07_14.php.
54.
This has some relation to Oakeshott’s position within the idealist tradition. While Oakeshott’s earlier philosophical idealism never entirely disappeared, as reflected in the tendency even in later essays to focus more on the history of ideas than on material processes and technological developments, the metaphysical drama often associated with idealism became remarkably muted in his work, particularly relative to auspicious predecessors such as Hegel and the British idealists like Bradley.
55.
The exemplar of course being Bentham. See Jeremy Bentham. Selected Writings on Utilitarianism (Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 2000).
56.
See Richard Rorty. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
57.
Michael Oakeshott. The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996).
58.
For Heidegger’s own critical account of modernity, see Martin Heidegger. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 1977).
59.
See David Boucher. “British Idealism and Michael Oakeshott’s Philosophy of History.” History and Theory, Vol. 23, 1984.
60.
Michael Oakeshott. Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1991).
61.
His classic book is of course H.L.A. Hart. The Concept of Law, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). For Hart’s persuasive rebuke to Devlin type arguments, see H.L.A Hart. Law, Liberty, and Morality (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1963).
62.
James Morton. “Obituary: Lord Devlin.” The Independent, August 11, 1992. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-lord-devlin-1539619.html.
63.
Patrick Devlin. “The Enforcement of Morals.” Maccabaean Lectures of Jurisprudence, March 1959.
64.
Patrick Devlin. “The Enforcement of Morals.” Maccabaean Lectures of Jurisprudence, March 1959 at pg 133.
65.
Patrick Devlin. “The Enforcement of Morals.” Maccabaean Lectures of Jurisprudence, March 1959 at pg 142.
66.
Given the changing demographics of American society, which some expect will lead the majority to increasingly vote for the left liberal causes, one wonders if Bork might have to revise his thesis.
67.
Robert Bork. Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges (United States of America: Vintage Canada, 2002) pgs 8–9.
68.
Robert Bork, Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges (United States of America: Vintage Canada, 2002) at pg 5.
69.
Oddly, in Bork’s case this does not appear to extend to respecting individuals of different sexual orientations, acknowledging the adverse circumstances which still prevent women from obtaining equality with men in the workplace, recognising the parallel moral histories of America and other states which share its “Anglo American heritage” when making legal decisions, or acknowledging that it might be “useful” to look at how countries with complex relations to capital punishment might render decisions in cases related to the death penalty.
70.
Robert Bork. Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges (United States of America: Vintage Canada, 2002) at pg 5.
71.
See Antonin Scalia. A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
72.
Carl Schmitt. The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2007).
73.
Joseph De Maistre. The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions: Studies on Sovereignty Religion, and Enlightenment (London, UK: Routledge, 1965).
74.
Robert Bork. Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges (Toronto, ON: Vintage Canada, 2002).
75.
James Boyle. “A Process of Denial: Bork and Post-modern Conservatism.” Yale Journal of Law and Humanities, Vol. 3, 1991 at pg 266.
76.
Peter Augustine Lawler. “Conservative Postmodernism, Postmodern Conservatism.” Intercollegiate Studies Institute, October 8, 2014. https://isi.org/intercollegiate-review/conservative-postmodernism-postmodern-conservatism/.
77.
See Kevin Mattson. “The Rise of Post-modern Conservatism.” In American Thought and Culture in the 21st Century, ed. Martin Halliwell and Catherine Morley (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2008).
78.
This is more Rorty the ironist and social commentator than the analytically minded philosopher engaging with W.V.O. Quine and Kant. See Richard Rorty. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
79.
Peter Augustine Lawler. Postmodernism Rightly Understood: The Return to Realism in American Thought (Lanham, MA: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, 1999).
80.
Peter Augustine Lawler. Stuck with Virtue: The American Individual and Our Biotechnological Future (Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2005).
81.
Yoram Hazony. The Virtue of Nationalism (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2018).
82.
Patrick Deneen. Why Liberalism Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018).
83.
The reference to a speech by Burke appears in Ofir Haivry and Yoram Hazony. “What Is Conservatism?” American Affairs, May 2017. https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/05/what-is-conservatism/.
84.
Peter Augustine Lawler. American Heresies and Higher Education (Indianapolis, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2016).
85.
Peter Augustine Lawler. Postmodernism Rightly Understood: The Return to Realism in American Thought (Lanham, MA: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, 1999).
86.
The critique of emotivism I am referring to is best expressed by Macintyre. See Alasdair Macintyre. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre-Dame Press, 1981).
87.
Peter Augustine Lawler. Postmodernism Rightly Understood: The Return to Realism in American Thought (Lanham, MA: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, 1999) at pg 187.
88.
Peter Augustine Lawler. Postmodernism Rightly Understood: The Return to Realism in American Thought (Lanham, MA: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, 1999) at pg 179.
89.
American post-modern conservatives may even admire the inequities produced by capital, giving them a naturalistic justification based on civilisational, ethnic, racial, and gender prejudices. But post-modern conservatives as I frame them disdain neoliberalism capitalism specifically for its role in undermining national sovereignty and promoting a cosmopolitan vision of the world which destabilises the sense of identity and order they feel entitled to.
90.
To give just a few examples, I do not think the neoliberalism of figures like Hayek or Friedman prefigures the emergence of post-modern conservatism. Indeed the latter often see themselves as superseding the former. The anti-modernism of T.S. Eliot or Russell Kirk cannot be easily placed in this genealogy, though their positions do overlap in some respect. The classicism of Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom, and the religious conservatism of Finnis are almost radically opposed to the epistemic and meta-ethical positions of the post-modern conservatives. Indeed the Jaffa v Bork debate highlighted these tensions quite early. The individualistic and experimental libertarianism of Nozick in many respects has more in common with left accounts of self-creation such as the work of Roberto Unger, than it does any of the tradition-focused variants of conservatism discussed above. The doggedly moderate conservatism of Roger Scruton is temperamentally allergic to the extremes of post-modern conservatism. The neoconservative internationalism of figures like Bill Kristol or Steve Frum bears some resemblance, but remains too committed to an aggressively and militaristically asserted universalism to be classed as a kind of proto post-modern conservatism.
91.
James Boyle. “A Process of Denial: Bork and Post-modern Conservatism.” Yale Journal of Law and Humanities, Vol. 3, 1991 at pg 313.
92.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008).
93.
Carl Schmitt. The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2007).
94.
Progressives in the late nineteenth (or do you mean late twentieth and early twenty-first?) and early twentieth century tended to associate with historically marginalised groups, and formulated the relationship between these identities and politics in a myriad of reflectively critical ways. Theoretically, they often stressed the fundamentally plastic and fluid qualities of the associated identities, either referring to their intersectional character or stressing that they were only being invoked as a kind of “strategic essentialism” to mobilise political energies. In practice, this meant that many leftists had a mixed relationship to the identities they affiliated with; neither wanting to abandon their political potential nor being entirely defined by them. Of course many progressives were unable to abandon this latter temptation, giving into what Wendy Brown would call their various “wounded attachments.” These individuals and groups would often be the most vocal in defining themselves in a manner similar to the post-modern conservatives, as we shall see shortly.
95.
See Gayatri Spivak. A Critique of Post-colonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
96.
Charles Taylor. Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
97.
I delayed explaining my earlier use of the Jamesonian term until here, since this topic is where it is most relevant.
98.
Fredric Jameson. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991) at pg 21.
99.
One might object to this by claiming that this account of contradictions presupposes a kind of authentic identity which individuals might have inhabited prior to the post-modern period when no such thing existed. Individuals, it may be claimed, have always assembled their sense of identity by appeal to myriad and sometimes contradictory sources. This is certainly true, and as mentioned earlier, it has become a deepening problem throughout the course of modernity. My point is that in post-modernity the qualitative aspects of this trend become more apparent as the destabilisation of traditional sources of the self reaches its climax. Consequently, the depth of the contradictions also reaches a new level with pastiche, in no small part because the identities the post-modern conservative affiliates with are so much the product of technological imperatives and isolation within various communication bubbles. This highlights their inauthenticity to a new degree. As Jameson might say, what matters is the cleaned up simulacrum presented through new media and the fantastic qualities associated with the stereotyped pastiche. The reality of these identities as they might have been in the past has long since faded away.
100.
Joseph De Maistre. The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions: Studies on Sovereignty Religion, and Enlightenment (London, UK: Routledge, 1965).
101.
Michael Oakeshott. The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996).
102.
As presented in “The Genealogy of Morals.” In Friedrich Nietzsche. Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, NY: The Modern Library, 2000).
103.
Friedrich Nietzsche. Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 2000) at pg 472.
104.
Gilles Deleuze. Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1983) at pg 111.
105.
Gilles Deleuze. Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1983).
106.
Hannah Arendt. The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, NY: Harcout, 1955).
107.
Carl Schmitt. The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2007).
108.
Carl Schmitt. Political Theology (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2005).
109.
Carl Schmitt. Political Theology (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2005) at pg 5.
110.
Carl Schmitt. Constitutional Theory, trans. Jeffrey Seitzer (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008) at pg 260.
111.
Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin. National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy (London, UK: Penguin Books, 2018).
112.
Ernesto Londono. “Far Right President Jair Bolsonaro Pulls Brazil from UN Pact Designed to Protect Migrants.” Independent UK, January 10, 2019. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-migration-accord-united-nations-venezuela-refugee-crisis-a8721461.html.
113.
Bruce Douglas. “Brazil’s Bolsonaro Considers Refugee Camps for Venezuelans.” Bloomberg, November 24, 2018. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-24/brazil-s-bolsonaro-considers-refugee-camps-for-venezuelans.
114.
Front Page News. “Kevin Mattson Interviewed About His New Book on the Conservative Mind.” History News Network, October 13, 2008. http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/55679.html.
115.
Robert Bork. Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges (Toronto, ON: Vintage Canada, 2002).
116.
Ian Shapiro. The Moral Foundations of Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003).
117.
Herself quite a prominent critic of post-modern theorising. See Catherine MacKinnon. “Points Against Postmodernism.” Chicago-Kent Law Review, Vol. 25, June 2000.
118.
Carl Schmitt. The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2007).
119.
One might even be willing to go so far as to posit, in a Zizekian style, that the antagonist is in fact the foundational element of the entire post-modern conservative worldview. The policies which post-modern conservatives put forward are in this sense ancillary to the more basic and confrontational resentment. This thesis strikes me as too extreme, but it is by no means implausible.

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Department of Political Science and International Relations, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico
Matthew McManus

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McManus, M. (2020). Who Are the Post-modern Conservatives?. In: The Rise of Post-Modern Conservatism. Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24682-2_4

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