15 - Conservatism and Its Discontents

Summary

Conservatism and modernity are both terms that suffer from considerable ambiguity and both are in need of considerable refinement. In common parlance, conservatism is opposed to liberalism, even though in practice as well as in theory, the distinction is not so easy to maintain. Conservatism and liberalism are both the products of modernity and could not exist elsewhere. The distinction between conservatism and liberalism is even more difficult to maintain in continental Europe. The term “conservatism” was coined by René de Chateaubriand whose journal Le Conservateur was issued to propagate the cause of the clerical and political restoration in France. On the continent, conservatism was frequently associated with reaction to the legacy of the French Revolution. From Joseph de Maistre to Juan Donoso Cortes and Carl Schmitt, these radicals of the Right saw themselves as engaged in a wholesale struggle against the Revolution and the intellectual tradition of the Enlightenment that helped to inspire it. They were not conservatives attempting to restore the status quo ante, but political messianists who imagined a Counter-Revolution, a mirror image of the very Revolution they sought to overthrow.