Don't be Nostalgic: Oakeshott on Conservative Disposition
Vložit
- čas přidán 5. 08. 2024
- In this second reading from Oakeshott's essay "On Being Conservative" we get into what counts as a true conservative disposition and what does not. Two aspects of contemporary conservatism are questioned--the desire for rapid and ongoing change, supposedly for the better, and a sentimental nostalgia for an idealized past.
I appreciate your reading of some passages by this thinker. I wanted to learn a little bit about him because my hero, and spiritual brother, Richard Rorty mentions him in some of his books. I also think of David Bromwich on Edmund Burke, who says that Burke’s views are coherent, regardless of their appeal. Rorty says that many thinkers develop coherent systems, like Leibniz, Kant, Aristotle and others, but just because their systems are coherent does not alone make them good systems or views to hold. As far as innovation is concerned, if innovation is invention, then it is poetical. Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote that the essence of poetry is invention, and Harold Bloom wrote a great book, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, which carries on Dr. Johnson’s idea. As a poet, I love change.
Thanks for the trigger warning on Oakeshott's patriarchal use of the word "man". I was able to scramble into my safe zone in time to protect myself from his linguistic microaggressions.
Of course, he is giving his microapologies from beyond the grave. :)
Seriously
I watched the After Virtue set in full. I in all seriousness had my hand on heart all the time fearing she will say something on feminism or the like and consequently turn me off.. thank goodness she didn't, I deeply respect and appreciate her work, it was great to find her account!
Thanks for the wonderful education you provide.
Ty for the upload.
The conservative man complains about change, comes to accept the change, does all he can to manage the destructive elements of the change, then defends the change with passion and zeal.
@@golagiswatchingyou2966 you seem to have a very American viewpoint on this. Conservatism is not about opposing socialism, as american "conservatives" would have you believe. If anything, traditional conservatism is actually more compatible with a regulated economy, due to conservatives' resistance to the spontaneous and the unknown of the free market.
British (but more widely, European) conservatives generally have a much more varied view of economics - as Michael Oakeshott once said (cant remember the exact quote but it was something like this), economics come after social values in terms of importance.
Anyway yeah to sum up, American conservatives generally aren't really conservative.
@@yesno9355 yeah we call them neo-conservatives or cuckservatives, they have no spine and openly abandon their own ideology.
The UK does not realy have any rightwing political parties, their "rightwing" is a soft leftwing.
Many European nations are financialy conservative but socialy liberal, of course after 1970s the left has gone full maddness mode and promoted countredictory policies, say they are tolorant but hate free speech, claim they are feminists but defend islam, claim to love western values but praise non western migration, calls those who speak out Against terrorism "bigots" the list goes on and on and every response from them is less logic and more authoritarianism, they deserve the same treatment in time.
@@golagiswatchingyou2966 the UK doesn't have any *mainstream* right wing parties any more. We had UKIP, who were basically just conservatarians who later turned into cultural nationalists and we also had the BNP who were more identitarian and ethnonationalist (later on closet ethnonationalist).
Anyways, to get back on track, the whole term "right wing" is fairly redundant seeing as there is no universal right wing. Some people regard right wing to mean small government, low taxes and free trade, whereas others regard right wing to mean nationalist, big government and a regulated economy to serve the national interest.
And yes, I agree with your summary that most European nations are fiscally and socially liberal (liberal in the traditional sense in terms of the economy).
To demonstrate the point I'm trying to make here, I shall give an example in US terms. Mainstream conservatives in the US are generally neoliberals or neoconservatives. They advocate for economic liberalism and socially liberal values. Next, we have the alt lite. They are generally conservatarians who support Trump - they are populists and cultural nationalists (an example of an alt lite figure being Milo Yiannopoulos). However, they see their views as a defence of western socially liberal attitudes towards, for example, homosexuality. The problem with both these groups is that they both defend economic and social liberalism in their own way - the difference being that the alt lite wants to protect western liberal attitudes from illiberal cultures being imported. Also just to point out, a lot of people in the alt lite call themselves "classical liberals" - this is the antithesis to conservatism.
My point is that there are so many groups claiming to be conservative while not really being conservative at all.
Im a leninist, but i dig, mad respect where its due.... But question - imagine you live (as in born) in stalinist russia; being conservative then leads to stalinism, no? I.e. its logically anchored status quo irrespective of the inherent moral qualities in such.....repeat case example with the antebellum south, the failure of jim crowe and reconstruction, apartheid SA, the conquest of the americas and that holocaust, the failures of post republic rome, and so on and so on..... Being conservative each time would tell you to "stick it out" - "small changes"?????
How is it not simply a defense of privilege?
Or, how is conservativism not like a counsellor telling you to stay in an abusive marriage?
Im genuinely curious about that question!
That's a problem with classical conservatism--it can lead to just accepting the status quo. There's a moral relativism in classical conservatism that has to be corrected carefully. I did a series on Isaiah Berlin--he dealt with this issue, and you might be interested in those videos.