Edmund Burke and Classical Conservatism
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- čas přidán 11. 07. 2024
- A discussion of some of the central ideas of classical conservatism through Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Classical conservatism is in some ways very different from today's conservatism, which is what Burke would have recognized as "Classical Liberalism."
Love the part about license vs liberty. Your lectures are so excellent and I love the analogies you give!
Price's behaviour then is the same as academic behaviour today - they run the state by owning what the people think.
very good lecture thank you so much for sharing this ☺
I feel the greatest criticism of classical liberalism is that in a more disordered society which is too free the strongest will have too much power but how is this different than the strongest in a monarchy or oligarchy? In one the law consecrates the strong backing it with extra legitimacy whereas in the other the strongest must defend the power it has. Also, strong has often been misconstrued with toughest or most brutish but as we’ve seen according the theory of evolution that it’s not the survival of the fittest as in that which is most brutish but the most well adapted and that is an element of the environment. If the environment or culture is one which is more opposed to brutishness in and of itself perhaps the most well adapted is that which creates the greatest well being. In this case the strongest isn’t necessarily a bad thing and there’s still the idea of free market pressures for such an entity to compete for the share of power it has amassed. Help me out here because classical conservatism is brand new to me.
I can give you my perspective on the matter. Think of society like a chicken coup. Chickens and roosters will peck at each other until they figure out who is in charge. Humans, because we can reason, we can also abuse reason. So when we start from scratch, not only do we start pecking each other, we also use our higher intellect to be more creative in how to establish power - essentially creating the potential to behave worse than animals. The established social order is meant to prevent that (mob rule). Chivalry for instance is meant to use men's strength to protect the weak - giving them purpose in a controlled way. If you take away that purpose, then men have to find purpose on their own. Without any guidance that can be dangerous. And that is the same with women but for different reasons. Chivalry has another benefit as well. It allows the strong to teach the weak how to be stronger since they are no longer competing in a destructive sort of way. This gives all men a chance to feel purpose rather than to just be under the boot of the strong. That is not to say that monarchy would be the only way for this to occur (although I am a monarchist). It is rather that because monarchy was the established order, it was worth protecting.
If you think of it, most revolutions have happened by military. This is because the military has power, and often the ability to take away power from those in charge. If this is done to reestablish order than it can work. But more often than not, the dictator who gains power cares more about preserving his own power rather than establishing lasting peace. But with monarchy, someone is raised to be a leader from birth since he/she does not necessarily have to focus on fighting for a right to rule.
With our current systems, it is not as equal as people make it out to be. One has to be very wealthy to run for the higher offices - the kind of wealth that not even kings would have had. Kings often have been the ones who have protected the lower classes from the wealthy.
One of the benefits of monarchy is that they are meant as sort of a paternal or maternal figurehead over society, which is more unifying. We tend to despise the leader who we did not vote for in one way or another, as well as those who voted for him. One can ask if everyone having the right to vote takes away the actual value of that vote. Does everyone having something mean that no one has it? Anyway, I hope that helps answer your question to some extent.
Very good. Thanks for sharing.
Just started listening. Very interesting. I wish we could see your face as you speak. 😀
My later vids do have me in the right hand corner:)
Orea Linda Conservationalism of our culture it’s alive in the west we are the Bear Flag RePublic