In a previous article, I introduced classical conservatism, surveying canons one through three, from Russell Kirk’s The Politic of Prudence. In particular, conservatives believe in an enduring transcendent moral order. They adhere to custom, convention, and continuity, and they follow the principle of prescription. Thus conservatives look upwards and backwards to form their ethic. In this article, we will briefly review canon four, followed by a lengthier analysis of canon five, which concern, respectively, the overlooked principles of prudence and variety.
Canon Four: The Principle of Prudence
Canon four is the principle of prudence, or wisdom—a key virtue of the classical conservative tradition. In fact, it is one of the four cardinal virtues, alongside fortitude, justice, and temperance. Conservatives display their commitment to prudence in several important ways. First, they do not simply react to the challenges of life. They are not impetuous or rash. “The march of providence is slow,” said John Randolph of Roanoke, “it is the devil who always hurries.”[1]
As things occur in their families, their cultures, and their nations, conservatives remain calm and cool and calculated. They consider the long-term consequences of their actions and their policies, not just the short-term gains, assessing whether the price is worth the cost. Conservatives act “only after sufficient reflection, having weighed the consequences.”[2] Also, they do not choose a solution merely because it is convenient or popular; in fact, wisdom may be difficult and trying.
Second, conservatives do not confront the challenges of life simply from the perspective of self. Instead, they do so from the perspective of the Divine. Proverbs 1:7 explains, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (esv). In addition, conservatives seek the advice of others, from those in the past and in the present. They follow Solomon’s exhortation for his son to follow his father’s instruction (1:8). They follow Jude’s instruction not to neglect the “faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (1:3). “Providence has taught humanity, through thousands of years’ experience and meditation, a collective wisdom: tradition, tempered by expedience,” explained Kirk. “A man should be governed in his necessary decisions by a decent respect for the customs of mankind; and he should apply that custom or principle to his particular circumstances by a cautious expedience.”[3]
By contrast, progressives do not look to divinity but to the collective or else to themselves. Neither do they look respectfully to the past. The community of their ancestors is an inconvenient obstacle to their desired path forward. As a result, progressives are far more likely to focus on the short-term gains of an action (if, indeed, that is what they are) while ignoring the long-term costs. After all, the clarion call for progress does not make much room for patience.
Canon Five: The Principle of Variety
According to the fifth canon, conservatives affirm the God-given natural variety and mystery of people in society. Kirk defined the principle of variety as “affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems.”[4] Conservatives thus reject an Enlightenment humanism that believes that human ingenuity, in itself, can understand reality. Conservatives know better. Instead, they believe in transcendence, which teaches that God creates people with multitudinous variety. They reject progressives’ attempt to make everyone equal. Rather, they affirm that everyone is different with unique interests, abilities, and gifts.
Natural Inequalities
Many figures have pointed out the principle of variety in people. This refers to those natural inequalities, or natural differences, that exist between people simply because they are individuals with different characteristics and features. Examples include Edmund Burke, John Adams, Pope Leo XIII, Abraham Kuyper, Friedrich Hayek, Pope John Paul II, Russell Kirk, Michael Novak, Thomas Nagel, Roger Scruton, Thomas Sowell, and others. Among the natural inequalities that they mention are differences in ability, capacity, complexion, energy, figure, grace, health, height, intelligence, muscles, nerves, skill, strength, talent, and will.[5] “There is no equality of persons,” wrote the Dutch statesman and theologian Kuyper. “Everywhere one man is more powerful than the other, by his personality, by his talent and by circumstances. . . . There is no life without differentiation, and no differentiation without inequality.”[6]
Because God has created people with variety and diversity, the resulting natural distinctions or inequalities create differences in aims, circumstance, personality, property (real and personal), and so forth, giving rise to orders and classes. Kirk explains that affection for variety and mystery recognizes that “civilized society requires orders and classes, as against the notion of a ‘classless society.’ With reason, conservatives have been called ‘the party of order.’”[7] Thus conservatives stand against progressives’ attempt at “political leveling” whereby “order and privilege are condemned.”[8]
Numerous conservatives throughout history have pointed to the reality of social order: For example, Plato envisioned a society in which some are artisans, some are craftsmen, and some are leaders.[9] The apostle Paul used the example of a body: Just as the ear, the mouth, and the toe play different roles to the body, while still maintaining equal significance (1 Corinthians 12:12–31), so different people play different roles in the group. All people have an ontological equality, an inalienable dignity and value and worth. But they do not manifest a functional equality, because they are distinct with varying roles and purposes. Human beings across society complement one another, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Consequently, conservatives do not confuse natural inequalities with injustice. “This way of thinking encourages people to believe that all inequalities are also abuses,” writes Scruton, “that we are ‘entitled’ to whatever goods might rectify our adverse circumstances, and that justice is not a matter of respecting others and their freedom, but a matter of imposing a regimented equality on everyone, regardless of their energies, talents, agreements or aims.”[10] However, inequality is not necessarily tantamount to injustice. “Justice and equality are not the same,” explained Ronald Nash. “There are inequalities that are just and equalities that are unjust.”[11]
Formal Justice v. Material Justice
To be sure, conservatives will not stand for unjust inequality. They will guard against unjust discriminations toward ethnicity, gender, nationality, and the like. However, conservatives are not manipulated by the idea of a material justice, which promotes socioeconomic egalitarianism and advocates for redistribution. Because they employ prudence, they recognize that such policies harm the populace in the long-term more than helps them.
Instead, conservatives work to protect a formal justice that honors due process and procedure. With Kuyper and with Kirk, they affirm and protect man’s equality before God, the magistrate, society, and the church.[12] By contrast, “equality of condition,” said Kirk, “means equality in servitude and boredom.”[13] Thus conservatives recognize that socioeconomic inequalities are not themselves unjust—to the extent that they result from the moral cultivation of natural inequalities.
Some people would criticize natural inequality as unjust and, instead, would point to a faulty notion of justice to correct such inequalities. However, Sowell criticizes that vision of “justice,” which he refers to as “social justice,” explaining that it “seeks to correct the happenstances of fate, the gods or the cosmos, and could more fittingly be called cosmic justice instead of social justice.”[14] However, as he explains elsewhere, “a cosmic injustice is not a social injustice, and proceeding as if society has both the omniscience and the omnipotence to ‘solve’ the ‘problem’ risks anti-social justice, in which others are jeopardized or sacrificed.”[15]
Thus inequality is not tantamount to injustice. Healthy civilization requires the recognition of natural and social variety. “For the preservation of a healthy diversity in any civilization,” said Kirk, “there must survive orders and classes, differences in material condition, and many sorts of inequality.”[16]
The Ignoble Noble Savage
By contrast, progressives seek to impose an artificial socioeconomic equality on man that is inconsistent with his anthropology. For example, in the early-nineteenth century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) proposed that the answer to societal injustices is to return to the state of nature, which refers to a hypothetical pre-society without orders, divisions, and classes. He pointed to the ideal of the “noble savage.” However, his anthropology was faulty, and his vision does not accord with reality. He failed to recognize the proliferating variety of man, as well as man’s natural bent to wicked behavior rather than righteous behavior.
In truth, leaders will emerge in any group, even in Rousseau’s so-called pre-society. And where leaders exist, division exists. Conservatives recognize this. At issue is whether leaders are bad or good, moral or immoral. When bad leaders emerge, the answer is not the eradication of order and structure but rather the establishment of right order and good leadership.
William Golding effectively illustrated the foolishness of Rousseauian thinking in The Lord of the Flies (1954). In that novel, adolescent boys find themselves alone on an island in the state of nature. However, the “noble savage” is not noble but is instead dishonorable. The state of nature does not bring blessing; rather, it brings disaster as things go from bad to worse to deadly as the character Jack and company rule the island. As Kirk says, “If natural distinctions are effaced among men, oligarchs fill the vacuum.”[17] That is exactly what we see in The Lord of the Flies, as destruction, mayhem, and murder ensue.
Conclusion
In sum, the conservative ethic is a principled
ethic. It respects divinity, as well as the dead. Conservatives look to
transcendence and to tradition to give them wisdom as they confront the
challenges of life, whether in family, society, or politics. And they follow a
realistic anthropology, one that recognizes that human beings are mysterious
and distinct and that a well-functioning society arises from a right view of
man.
[1]Quoted in Kirk, The Portable Conservative Reader, xvii.
[2]Ibid.
[3]Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 37.
[4]Ibid., 8.
[5]John Adams,“Letters to John Taylor, of Caroline, Virginia,” in The Political Writings of John Adams, ed. George W. Carey (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2000), 373; John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §13, quoted in Michael Novak, “American Realities and Catholic Social Thought,” in Michael Novak and Paul Adams, with Elizabeth Shaw, Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is (New York: Encounter, 2015), 135; Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, §17, quoted in Michael Novak, “Leo’s Rerum Novarum,” in Michael Novak and Paul Adams, with Elizabeth Shaw, Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is (New York: Encounter, 2015), 102; Thomas Nagel, “The Meaning of Equality,” Washington University Law Quarterly 1979, no. 1 (January 1979): 28; Michael Novak, “Six Secular Uses of ‘Social Justice,’” in Michael Novak and Paul Adams, with Elizabeth Shaw, Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is (New York: Encounter, 2015), 31; Roger Scruton, I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher’s Guide to Wine (New York: Continuum, 2010), 166; Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1984), 63, 86, 103.
[6]Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 95, 195.
[7]Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 8.
[8]Ibid.
[9]See Carl F. H. Henry, Christian Personal Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957), 102–03.
[10]Scruton, I Drink Therefore I Am, 166.
[11]Ronald H. Nash, Freedom, Justice and the State (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1980), 76–77. See also Roger Scruton, How to Be a Conservative (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 51.
[12]Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 31, 60; Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 9; Kirk, “Introduction,” in The Portable Conservative Reader, xvii.
[13]Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 9.
[14]Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society (New York: Basic, 2012), ch. 4; italics removed. He also discusses this concept of cosmic justice in Black Rednecks and White Liberals (New York: Encounter, 2006), ch. 6; Intellectuals and Race (New York: Basic, 2013), 107; and The Quest for Cosmic Justice (New York: The Free Press, 1999).
[15]Sowell, Intellectuals and Race,117; italics removed. See also Thomas Sowell, “The Money of Fools,” in The Thomas Sowell Reader (New York: Basic, 2011), 10–11.
[16]Kirk, The Portable Conservative Reader, xvii.
[17]Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 8.
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