Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T09:16:49.240Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Philosophy into Dogma: The Revival of Cultural Conservatism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Jeremy Rayner
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The conservative revival that has taken place on both sides of the Atlantic in recent years has been an intellectual as well as a practical accomplishment. That this remarkable fact has received scant attention from political theorists can be attributed to two main causes. First, and less important, there has been an understandable tendency to focus on personalities and party politics where expediency blurs the sharp outlines of doctrine. As President Reagan confronts the problems of a second-term presidency, as Mrs Thatcher's iron grip on her party seems to weaken and as Chancellor Kohl or Mr Mulroney make their inevitable compromises and evasions, the conservative politician in office is revealed to be not dissimilar to his liberal or socialist predecessor. Now – as Elie Kedourie noted when asking the question ‘Is neo-conservatism viable?’ back in 1982 – this is only to be expected. The constraints of democratic politics will inevitably narrow ideological differences until they appear to be little more than rhetoric. If there has been a conservative revival, its significant and enduring features must be sought elsewhere.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , October 1986 , pp. 455 - 473
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Kedourie, Elie, ‘Is Neo-Conservatism Viable?’, Encounter, LIX (1982), 24–30.Google Scholar

2 Following the usage in Dyson, Kenneth H. F., The State Tradition in Western Europe (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1980).Google Scholar

3 Cowling, Maurice, ‘The Present Position’, in Cowling, , ed., Conservative Essays (London: Cassell, 1978), p. 9.Google Scholar

4 Popper, Karl, The Open Society and Its Enemies: Volume 2, The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx and the Aftermath (London: Routledge, 1945)Google Scholar; Hobhouse, Leonard, The Metaphysical Theory of the State (London: Allen & Unwin, 1918), esp. pp. 5–7.Google Scholar

5 Cowling, , ed., Conservative Essays, preface.Google Scholar

6 ‘Multicultural Row Comes To A Head’, New Statesman, 15 03 1985, p. 14.Google Scholar

7 Arblaster, Anthony, ‘Scruton, Intellectual By Appointment’, New Socialist, 11 1985, p. 16.Google Scholar

8 Scruton, Roger, The Meaning of Conservatism, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. also The Politics of Culture and Other Essays (Manchester: Carcanet, 1981)Google Scholar; A Dictionary of Political Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1982)Google Scholar; and Thinkers of the New Left (Manchester: Carcanet, 1985).Google Scholar

9 Casey, John, ‘Tradition and Authority’Google Scholar, in Cowling, , ed., Conservative Essays, pp. 82–100, esp. pp. 88–9.Google Scholar

10 Crowther, Ian, ‘Dr. Johnson as a Conservative Thinker’, Salisbury Review, IV, No. 1 (1985), p. 38.Google Scholar

11 ‘The Jubilee’, Cambridge Review, No. 2239 (1977), p. 159.Google Scholar

12 Norman, Edward, ‘The Organization of College Chaplains’, Cambridge Review, No. 2228 (1975), p. 6.Google Scholar

13 ‘Modern Charlatanism I. The Pornography Lobby’, Cambridge Review, No. 2228 (1975), p. 19.Google Scholar

14 ‘Modern Charlatanism IV. Radical Therapy and the Laingians’, Cambridge Review, No. 2238 (1977), p. 142.Google Scholar

15 ‘Modern Charlatanism V. Buckminster Fuller’, Cambridge Review, No. 2239 (1977), p. 171.Google Scholar

16 Taylor, Charles, Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 88.Google Scholar

17 Sisson, C. H., ‘The Church as Sect’, Salisbury Review, 111, No. 2 (1985), 53–5, p. 55.Google Scholar

18 Sexton, David, ‘Infertile Fantasies’, Salisbury Review, 111, No. 2 (1985), 50–3, p. 51.Google Scholar

19 Sexton, , ‘Infertile Fantasies’.Google Scholar

20 Casey, John, ‘Tradition and Authority’Google Scholar in Cowling, (ed.), Conservative Essays, p. 99.Google Scholar

21 Scruton, Roger, The Meaning of Conservatism (Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin Books, 1980), p. 37.Google Scholar

22 Scruton, Roger, ‘The Significance of a Common Culture’, Philosophy, LIV (1979), p. 66.Google Scholar

23 Scruton, , ‘The Significance of a Common Culture’.Google Scholar

24 Casey, , ‘Tradition and Authority’, p. 87.Google Scholar

25 Cowling, Maurice, Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Offe, Claus, ‘“Ungovernability”: The Renaissance of Conservative Theories of the State’, in Offe, , ed., Contradictions of the Welfare State (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984), p. 80.Google Scholar

27 Scruton, , Meaning of Conservatism, p. 80.Google Scholar

28 Cowling, , Religion and Public Doctrine, p. xvi.Google Scholar

29 Scruton, Roger, ‘Thinkers of the Left: Perry Anderson’, Salisbury Review, 111, No. 2 (1985), 19–25, p. 19.Google Scholar

30 Cowling, , ‘The Present Position’, p. 8.Google Scholar

31 Hegel, G. W. F., The Phenomenology of Mind, ed. Baillie, J. B. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1961), pp. 212–13.Google Scholar

32 Scruton, , Meaning of Conservatism, p. 68.Google Scholar

33 See the report of a conference on the ‘New Right’ held at Aberdeen University, Times Higher Education Supplement, 30 08 1985, p. 5.Google Scholar

34 Bridges, Lee and Fekete, Liz, ‘Victims, the “Urban Jungle” and the New Racism’, Race and Class, XXVII (1985), p. 61.Google Scholar

35 Honeyford, Ray, ‘The Right Education’, Salisbury Review, 111, No. 2 (1985), p. 29.Google Scholar

36 Scruton, , Meaning of Conservatism, p. 49.Google Scholar

37 Scruton, , Meaning of Conservatism, p. 171.Google Scholar

38 Cowling, , ‘The Present Position’, p. 2.Google Scholar

39 Cowling, , ‘The Present Position’, p. 20.Google Scholar

40 Scruton, , Meaning of Conservatism, p. 139.Google Scholar

41 Crowther, Ian, ‘Slight Principles’, Salisbury Review, 111, No. 3 (1985), 49–50.Google Scholar

42 One touchstone here is the conservative attitude to T. S. Eliot; the attempt to portray Eliot as a conservative thinker (Ivens, Michael, Salisbury Review, No. 6 (Winter 1984), 39–41Google Scholar) was rejected on Leavisite grounds by Duke Maskell (111, No. 3 (1985), 29–33) but an editorial in the same issue attacked Leavis for his ‘donnish and intemperate’ attitude, explaining that Eliot's conservatism lay in the fact that he did not wish to transform the world but rather ‘to see the world transformed’, p. 48.Google Scholar

43 Kedourie, , ‘Is Neo-Conservatism Viable?’, p. 30.Google Scholar