An Introduction to Conservativism: Canons One-Three
Russell Kirk (1918-94) is credited with reviving modern conservatism. He was a prolific author of more than three dozen works, including letters, non-fiction, novels, short stories, and more. At a time when many believed that conservatism was in its twilight, Kirk emerged with the dawn. Rod Dreher identifies Kirk as “one of the key figures in the renascence of twentieth-century American conservatism.”[1] If you describe yourself as a conservative, then knowing about Kirk’s contributions to the movement is vital.
According to Kirk, Edmund Burke (1730-97) is the founder of modern conservatism. He was the anti-Thomas Paine with no stomach for Enlightenment rationalism. Burke was an Irish-British parliamentarian, as well as Rector of the University of Glasgow. Burke’s most famous publication was Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).[2] A member of the British Parliament during the American War for Independence, he believed the colonists pursued a just war, a belief that stood in contradistinction to his views on the French Revolution. Whereas the French Revolution was founded on rationalism, he held, the American War was not.
Being a conservative does not refer simply to a political disposition but also to someone’s broader cultural sensibilities, including what he or she believes about aesthetics, religion, and the State. Simply put, the conservative is one who conserves. Thus, Kirk specified several principles, or canons, of conservatism based in Burke’s corpus. He articulated different variations of the conservative canons on numerous occasions. In 1953 in The Conservative Mind, he suggested six canons. About thirty years later with the publications of The Portable Conservative Reader, he varied the canons, combining some and adding others. Finally, Kirk laid out ten canons in his 1993 The Politics of Prudence.
By recognizing that Kirk developed these canons over four decades, rather than pulling them out of his thumb one afternoon, we can better appreciate them as the result of the patient, perseverant study and meditation of a seasoned scholar. Over the course of several articles, we will consider these ten conservative principles from all three sources above; a single article is hardly sufficient even to introduce these canons, much less to consider them. The remainder of this article will consider canons one through three.
Canon One: Belief in an Enduring Transcendent Moral Order
First, the conservative believes in an enduring transcendent moral order. Kirk explained:
Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. A narrow rationality, what [Samuel Taylor] Coleridge called the Understanding, cannot of itself satisfy human needs. . . . True politics is the art of apprehending and applying the Justice which ought to prevail in the community of souls.[3]
Kirk also explicated that the conservative accepts that “order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.” Fidelity to the transcendent order secures the “inner order of the soul” and the “outer order of the commonwealth.”[4]
Conservatism is distinctly premodern. Accordingly, the conservative affirms that reality is greater than what the mind alone can grasp and more than what the empirical world can manifest. The conservative believes both in nature and supernature. Conservatism thus rejects both rationalism and empiricism. Whereas rationalism holds that man gains knowledge by use of his reason, and whereas empiricism holds that man gains knowledge by appeal to his senses, conservatism affirms supernaturalism. Yes, rationality and empirical data are important, but reality entails more than they can reveal. As Keith Feiling stated, “‘[T]here are great forces in heaven and earth that man’s philosophy cannot plumb or fathom.’”[5]
In addition, conservatism refuses to follow positive law to the exclusion of natural law. Positive law refers to law that legislative bodies establish. The non-conservative believes that men may create such law without reference to metaphysics, without reference to the belief that a divine Being has embedded objective truth internally in the mind of man and externally in the structure of the world. By contrast, the conservative affirms a natural law and moral order.[6]
Kirk stated, “Our twentieth-century world has experienced the hideous consequences of the collapse of belief in a moral order.”[7] He would likely say the same of the twenty-first. In response, the conservative should boldly affirm the truth of this canon, what T. S. Eliot called the “Permanent Things,” and seek to order his or her personal and public life by it.[8]
Canon Two: Adherence to Custom, Convention, and Continuity
A second canon Kirk presented is adherence to custom, convention, and continuity. Custom and convention are the glue that holds together families, communities, and societies. They’re not always good and right. Some customs need redeeming; some conventions need reforming. But most of them are tried and true and should be honored even when their importance is not initially grasped. Kirk wrote, “It is old custom that enables people to live together peaceably, the destroyers of custom demolish more than they know or desire.”[9]
Similarly, continuity is vitally important: specifically, the continuity between generations. “Continuity is the means of linking generation to generation; it matters as much for society as it does for the individual; without it, life is meaningless,” explained Kirk.[10] This refers to what the Judeo-Christian tradition calls honor of father and mother; or to what G. K. Chesterton called the democracy of the dead.[11] Conservatives believe in the admiration of the old and respect for tradition. As Kirk said, they “prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t.”[12] Thus, respect for custom, convention, and continuity increase the chances of the populace following right principles. Liberals, by contrast, display “contempt for tradition.”[13]
In addition, custom, convention, and continuity decrease the chances of the populace pursuing wrong principles. Fundamentally, man is a sinner, and, unencumbered, he distorts that with which he comes into contact. Thus, this canon serves, said Kirk, as “checks both upon man’s anarchic impulse and upon the innovator’s lust for power.”[14] To disrupt the order of society in a sudden or drastic manner is unhealthy for societies and is a recipe for disaster. “Human society is no machine, to be treated mechanically,” Kirk contested. “The continuity, the lifeblood, of a society must not be interrupted.” Certainly, healthy change is important to a society, but it should be slow and gradual (the topic of canon ten). “Revolution slices through the arteries of a culture, a cure that kills.”[15]
Canon Three: The Principle of Prescription
A third canon the conservative affirms is that of prescription. Burke called prescription the “‘the wisdom of our ancestors.’” Kirk explained, “Conservatives sense that modern men and women are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, able to see farther than their ancestors only because of the great stature of those who have preceded us in time.”[16] A conservative disposition is that of humility and honor toward those who have preceded them.
Prescription is in reality the application of continuity. It is, said Kirk, the “customary right which grows out of the conventions and compacts of many successive generations.”[17] Whereas affirmation of continuity helps to establish intergenerational linkage, adherence to prescription seeks to take that which a previous generation has taught and to apply it meaningfully in the present for the sake of the future. Specifically, Kirk applied the principle of prescription to morality, culture, and politics.[18]
The conservative follows prescription as an outgrowth of prejudice and presumption. Now, to the modern ear, affirming such tenets may sound odd, even offensive. However, Kirk hearkened to an older, nobler understanding of these concepts. He defined prejudice as “the half-intuitive knowledge that enables men to meet the problems of life without logic-chopping,” and presumption as “inference in accordance with the common experience of mankind employing these instruments.”[19] As Lord Chesterfield stated, “The bulk of mankind have neither leisure nor knowledge sufficient to reason right.”[20] In other words, we haven’t the time or resources to reason everything out for ourselves and, as a result, must accept some things on authority, which we seek to ensure is trustworthy.
Presumption and prescription are applications of prejudice. For example, a man may rightfully display prejudice against a dog with a foamy mouth; from this prejudice, he then develops presumption and prescription. For example: Johnny shouldn’t run toward that dog (prejudice) because many have suggested it’s not a good idea (presumption) and have even suggested rules against it (prescription). The wisdom from the past warns us about foamy-mouthed dogs and equips us to develop helpful prejudice, presumption, and prescription. On the other hand, some prejudices, such as that of racism or of sexism, are wrong. Thus, prejudice is not right or wrong per se. Rather, that which is faithful to the moral order is right and that which is not is not.
The prejudice-presumption-prescription triad functions to combat the “consuming individualism” of modernity by appealing to the age-old wisdom of the past.[21] While the conservative does not interpret tradition as an absolute rule, he or she is deferential to it.[22] In fact, Kirk referred to the failure of considering the inherited wisdom of the ages as perilous: “It is perilous to weigh every passing issue on the basis of private judgments and private rationality.”[23] Or as Burke explained, “The individual is foolish . . . but the species is wise.”[24]
Conclusion
Civilization is a complex system of roots. To hack abruptly or ignorantly at the tree of convention is to do more damage than one knows. In George Santayana’s phrase, said Kirk, he “never knows how near the taproot of the tree he is hacking.”[25] The irresponsible hewing off of tradition may amount to more than a felled tree; it may result in the death of a civilization. By contrast, the conservative may carefully prune the tree, but he or she will be careful not to kill it.
The conservative affirms an enduring, transcendent moral order upon which societies build custom and convention, which then forms the basis of intergenerational continuity and prescription. At heart, the conservative is respectful of what he or she has received yet, as subsequent canons will reveal, is willing to alter that which does not conform to the moral law.
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[1]Rod Dreher, Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots New York: Three Rivers, 2006), 10. Dreher also recognizes Kirk as the “patron saint of crunchy conservatives” (26), one of the “philosophical fathers of modern American conservatism” (160), and “the paterfamilias of all crunchy cons” (246).
[2]He also authored A Vindication of Natural Society: A View of the Miseries and Evils Arising to Mankind (1756) and A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757).
[3]Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, 7th rev. ed. (Washington, DC: Gateway, 2014), 8. He stated something similar in Reader: “[C]onservatives generally believe that there exists a transcendent moral order, to which we ought to try to conform the ways of society. . . . [W]ith few exceptions conservatives recognize the need for enduring moral authority. This conviction contrasts strongly with the liberal’s utilitarian view of the state.” See Russell Kirk, “Introduction,” in The Portable Conservative Reader, ed. Russell Kirk (New York: Viking Penguin, 1982), xv.
[4]Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence (Bryan Mawr, PA: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1993), 17.
[5]Quotation in Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 8.
[6]Belief in natural law is not tantamount to belief in natural theology. A Reformed interpretation of natural law differs from a Thomistic interpretation of natural law. However, while such distinctions are relevant to the topic at hand, further discussion is beyond the present article.
[7]Kirk, The Politics of Prudence, 17.
[8]See T. S. Eliot, The Idea of a Christian Society (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1940).
[9]Kirk, The Politics of Prudence, 18.
[10]Ibid., 18.
[11]See G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Dover, NY: Mineola, 2012), 40.
[12]Kirk, The Portable Conservative Reader, xv.
[13]Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 10.
[14]Ibid., 9. See also Kirk, The Politics of Prudence, 18: “When successful revolutionaries have effaced old customs, derided old conventions, and broken the continuity of social institutions—when, presently they discover the necessity of establishing fresh customs, conventions, and continuity, but that process is painful and slow, and the new social order that eventually emerges may be much inferior to the old order that radicals overthrew in their zeal for Earthly Paradise.”
[15]Kirk, The Portable Conservative Reader, xv-xvi.
[16]Ibid., xvi; see also Kirk, The Politics of Prudence, 19-20.
[17]Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 42.
[18]Kirk, The Portable Conservative Reader, xvi.
[19]Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 42.
[20]Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, “The World” No. 112 (February 20, 1755), in The Letters and Works of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield; including Numerous Letters and Papers Now First Published from the Original Manuscripts, ed. Lord Mahon, 5 vols. (Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott, 1892), 5: 338.
[21]Ibid.
[22]Ibid.
[23]Kirk, The Portable Conservative Reader, xvi.
[24]Edmund Burke, “Speech on Reform of Representation in the House of Commons” (May 7, 1782), in The Speeches of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, in the House of Commons, and in Westminster-Hall, 4 vols. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, Paternoster-Row; and J. Ridgway, Piccadilly, 1816), 3: 47.
[25]Kirk, The Portable Conservative Reader, xvi.
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