Conservatism

Development of the thought

Conservatism did not produce nor does not tend to produce treaties of system like the Léviathan of Thomas Hobbes or the Two Treatises off Government of John Locke. Because of that, which wants to say “to be preserving” was often the object of a debate, embourbé by association many (and often paradoxical) political parties and ideologies. Scholar R.J. White declared as follows:

" To put conservatism out of bottle and to label it is like trying to liquefy the atmosphere… The difficulty comes from the nature of the thing. Conservatism is less one doctrines political that a practice of the spirit, a manner of feeling, a lifestyle. "

Although the political thought, since its whole beginnings, contains many features which one could retrospectively describe as conservative, it is only with the Age of Enlightenment, in particular in the reactions to the events surrounding the French revolution of 1789, which conservatism started to appear like a distinct attitude or a manner of thinking. Many suggests an earlier birth of a preserving provision, in the continuations of the Réforme, especially in works of the theologist Anglican Richard Hooker promoting moderation in the political balance of the interests towards the goals of social harmony and community property. But it is only starting from the polemic of Edmund Burke - Réflexions on the Revolution of France - which conservatism gained a real influence.

The Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke which combatit with so much of rage the French revolution, also sympathized with certain claims of the American Révolution. This traditional preserving tradition often insists on the fact that conservatism does not have an ideology, in the direction of a utopian program . Burke developed its ideas in reaction with the idea “of the Lights” of a company guided by an abstract reason. Even if it did not use the term, it anticipated the critic of the Modernisme, which for the first was used at the end of the 19th century by the preserving monk Dutch Abraham Kuyper. Burke was in conflict with the Lights, and pled in the place for the values of the tradition.

Certain men, pled Burke, have less reason than others, and thus certain men would set up worse governments that others if they were based on the reason. For Burke, the installation of a government cannot be based on abstractions like the " Reason " , but on the historical development of the State and other important institutions of the company like the family or the Church.

" We are afraid to could men to off live and trade each one his own private stock reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would C better to general avail themselves off the bank and capital off old nations and. Many off our men off speculation, instead off exploding general damages, employ to their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. Yew they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continues the damage, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat off damage, and to leave nothing goal naked reason; because damage, with its reason, has have justifies to give action to that reason, and year give affection which will it permanence. "

Burke argued that the tradition is a base more solid than the purely abstract things (like the " Raison"). The tradition is formed with the wisdom of several generations and the risks of time, whereas the " Raison" can be only the mask of the preferences of one man, and whom it represents as well as possible the wisdom not-tested of a generation. Any value or existing institution which passed through the correct influence of the last experiments must be respected.

However, the conservatives do not reject the change. As Burke wrote, " a State which does not have the means of carrying out changes does not have the means of being maintained ". But they insist that the change is organic, rather than revolutionary. An attempt to modify the fabric complexes human interactions which forms the human society, with an aim into practice of putting doctrines or a theory, runs the risk to be seen passing under the hard law of the Perverse effect. Burke recommenda vigilance against the possibility of moral risks. For the conservatives, the company something of is enraciné and organics: to try to remove it or modify it for the plans of any ideologist, it is to attract great not-predicted disasters.

The conservatives strongly preach the right to the property. Carl B. Cone, in Burke and the Nature off Politics , pointed that this point of view, expressed like a philosophy, also served the interests of implied people

" Ace Burke had declared… this law… encroached upon property rights… . To the eighteenth century Whig, nothing was more sacred than the rights off property,… the protest could not Be entirely frank, and it masked personal interests behind lofty principles. Thesis principles were not hypocritically pronounced, goal they did not reveal the financial interests off Rockingham, Burke, and other let us persons who opposed the East India legislation ace members off parliament, ace holders off East India stock… "

Benjamin Disraeli, itself a member of the conservative party in England, wrote in 1845, " A conservative government is a hypocrisy organisée." This comment was written when the conservative party was divided into two groups, based on which would have benefitted personally or not from the abolition of the Corn Laws.

At the end of the Napoleonean period, the Congrès of Vienna marked the beginning of a preserving reaction in Europe to contain the liberal and nationalist forces slackened by the French revolution. The historians Will and Ariel Lasting describe the preserving philosophy of this time like " to defend the need for the religion, the wisdom of the tradition, the authority of the family, the advantages of a legitimate monarchy, and the constant need to maintain the dams political, morals and economic against the always surging sea of popular ignorance, cupidity, violence, the barbarism and the fertility ". The Viscount Louis de Bonald determined the principles of French conservatism in the Théorie of the political power and religious in 1796: " absolute monarchy, hereditary aristocracy, patriarchal authority in the family, and the moral and religious sovereignty of the popes on all the kings of Christendom ". With Louis de Bonald, Joseph de Maistre was the most influential spokesperson for conservatism counter-revolutionary, with a emphase on monarchy like safeguards order in the company. The movement legitimist is the political incarnation of this preserving thought of the time.

Aspects of conservatism

Like any political philosophy, conservatism is interested not only in the work of the political institutions but also in all the other aspects of the human life.

Aspects cultural and social

Cultural conservatism is a philosophy which encourages the safeguarding of the heritage of a nation or a culture. The culture in question can be as broad as the Occidental culture or the Chinese Civilization or be as small as the Tibet. The cultural conservatives try to adapt standards transmitted in the past. The standards can be romantic, as the movements against the metric system which require the safeguard of the system of weight and measurements of the the United Kingdom. They can be institutional: in Occident, that as well includes the Chevalerie and the Féodalisme that the Capitalisme, the Laïcité and the Rule of law.

According to a branch of cultural conservatism called social Conservatism, the standards can be also morals. For example in certain cultures, of the practices such as the Homosexualité are allowed like bad. In other cultures, the women who show their faces or their members in public are regarded as immoral, and the conservatives in its cultures often support laws prohibiting such practices. Other conservatives hold a more positive approach, by supporting laws of the good Samaritan - laws requiring of charity - if their culture regards his acts as moral.

The cultural conservatives often argue that the old institutions to places or cultures private individuals and that would thus have to be left perdurer adapted. According to whether they are more or less universalizing (or skeptics), the cultural conservatives can or cannot accept cultures which differ from their. Many conservatives believe in a universal morality, but of others admit that moral codes can differ from a nation with another, and that they should try to support their moral codes only in their own culture. Thus a cultural conservative can doubt that the broad French ideals are adapted in Germany.

Religious aspect

The religious conservatives seek to preserve the lesson of certain particular religions, some times by proclaiming the value of its lesson, other times while seeking to give the force of law to its lesson. Religious conservatism can encourage, or be encouraged by, of the secular habits. In other places or at other times, religious conservatism can be itself in dissension with the culture in which the believers are. In certain cultures, there are conflicts between two or several groups of religious conservatives, each one declaring that their sight is correct and that those their opponents are false.

Conservative governments influenced by religious conservatives can promote by broad campaigns the return to traditional values. A modern example is the countryside “Back to Basics” of British the Prime Minister John Major. In the European Union, a preserving campaign tried to specify certain values of conservatism in the European Constitution fallen through, in particular the call of the pope Jean-Paul II to include there a reference to God and Christianity but this call was rejected in block by the French Republic and its president Jacques Chirac.

Tax aspect

Tax conservatism is an economic philosophy of prudence in the governmental expenditure and the national debt. Edmund Burke, in its Reflections on the Revolution of France , articulated its principles:

… T is to the property off the citizen, and not to the demands off the creditor off the state, that the first and original faith off civil society is pledged. The claim off the citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, superior in equity. The fortunes off individuals, whether possessed by acquisition gold by descent gold in virtue off has participation in the goods off nap community, were No leaves off the creditor' S security, expressed gold implied… public He, whether represented by has monarch gold by has senate, edge pledge nothing public goal the estate; and it edge cuts public No estate except in what it derived from has just and proportioned broad imposition upon the citizens At.

In other words, a government does not have the right to be involved in debt in an important way for then throwing the burden of it on the back of the taxpayer; the right of the taxpayer not to be surtaxed in an oppressive way is more important than to refund the loans than a government could contract imprudently.

Environmental aspect

Preserving political philosophy promotes the conservation of the environment. Russell Kirk wrote in The Conservative Mind :

The modern spectacle off vanished forests and eroded Lands, wasted petroleum and ruthless mining, national debts recklessly increased until they are repudiated, and continual revision off positive law, is obviousness off what old year without veneration does to itself and its successors.

Influence and interaction

Patriotism

Economic policy

Regional policies

There exists in the world a certain number of parties being called “Conservative party”. One can quote in Great Britain the party Tory, the Conservative party of Canada to the Canada.

In the same way, to the the United States, the political debate generally opposes to the progressists of which a part is found within the democratic party, to the conservatives members of the Republican party.

Other uses of the word

The term of " conservatisme" often a pejorative connotation or polemic has. Many movements were already taxed with “conservatism”, sometimes by refusing this qualification: liberal democratic Christians, …

In a reciprocal way, part of the right (in particular its Liberal fringe ) adapted the topic of modernity and turned over against the left the charge of conservatism: the term could be used against the trade unions French, the altermondialists, the Socialist party, etc

On the other hand, some assert conservatism (or a share of conservatism), and not only on the right: it is in particular the case of Hannah Arendt which explains in its test the crisis of education that is “to preserve what is new and revolutionist in each child who education must be preserving”. Conservatism in education is then the condition of the future revolutions.

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