School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemOrder and the reason to be conservative( 2022-11)In this thesis, I make a case for the reasonableness of conservatism and its application to the political philosophical project of identifying the kinds of institutions that beings like us should have. The recent political philosophical literature on conservatism, largely under the influence of Michael Oakeshott, has focused on potential justifications for status quo bias, holding that conservatism is a commitment to conserving the value that individuals find in existing institutions and practices. But, I claim, because individuals and their practices may conflict, they are apt to value institutions differently, and so status quo bias cannot amount to a universalizable reason to be conservative. Having established this, I go on to argue that, inspired by a careful reading of Edmund Burke, conservatism is better understood as a commitment to realising a distinctively conservative value, order, and that this has various implications for political philosophy. On this view, institutions (in the broadest sense, from our systems of law and politics to our customs and concepts) capture the historical experience of society, the accuracy to reality of which is, I claim (on a reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein) apprehensible by common sense, at least under certain conditions of order. Thus, order is conservative (of historical experience), and conservatism is a commitment to realising order. Normatively, then, I further claim that conservatism is universally motivated, because order is a basic good for beings like us. Access to historical experience is valuable both intrinsically, because as naturally social beings we rely on institutions to capture and convey accurate information about the world and society in which we live, and instrumentally, in that this information is useful for any projects we might conceive as individuals and collectively. In the final chapter, I apply this idea of conservatism to various issues in political philosophy. My aim is not to directly rebut objections to conservatism or the desirability of order, but rather to show that distinctively conservative positions on these issues follow from the theory I have developed. Identifying conservatism’s substantive commitment to order both clarifies our understanding of conservatism and brings to the surface a value claim that is often overlooked in political philosophy.