From: Elizaphanian (Elizaphanian@members.v21.co.uk)
Date: Sat Oct 12 2002 - 13:28:23 BST
Hi David,
Time to draw my specific questions to a close. I doubt it'll finish the
discussion, but given what you've been saying in related parts of the
thread, I'm not sure there's a lot that I'll want to add after this one.
When you responded to my original post (which outlined how I understood the
conservative approach) I responded to you with a question: Do you believe
that each side of the political debate, defined broadly as progressive and
conservative, can be held with integrity by people who are both
intellectually able and possessed of a fund of goodwill towards their fellow
human beings?
You broke that down into the question of goodwill, and the question of
intellectual ability. On the first, you "have no good reason to doubt
anyone's sincerity of goodwill." That came as something of a relief, as some
of your comments seem to suggest that those of a conservative outlook are
(more or less) dishonest or malicious or worse. However, it is the second
aspect that is more interesting, and where we need to explore further.
Your position is broadly that those who hold conservative views are
unenlightened ["Do the unenlightened hold conservative views?... Yea, I
guess you could say that."], and quote JS Mill approvingly: "Conversatives
aren't necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservative." Trying
to press you on what you thought unenlightened actually meant in practice,
we began a discussion about ideology (which I suspect isn't going to get us
very far although I'd be glad to be shown wrong on that, simply because
we're going to start begging too many questions). But (again broadly) your
position is that dogma - roughly, an over-identification with an ideology
["the degree of dogmatism has everything to do with how closely one
identifies with the belief or idea"] - is unenlightened, whereas ideology
can be held rationally [and then "ideologies become a tool for
understanding"].
So, to sum up your answer to my original question, your answer is 'No' -
because you do not believe that Conservative views can be held by the
"enlightened"; "I think liberal intellectuals can understand Conservatives
because you can't have any ideas without social values first. So liberal
intellectuals have what Conservatives have, but they also have something
more. They have something additional that Conservatives tend to mistrust."
Extrapolating from your answers, your view would seem to be that those of
Conservative bias hold their beliefs dogmatically and unreasonably, and the
Conservative viewpoint is the voice of the static social level, pitched
against the intellectual level, "that conservatism represents social values
in the conflict between levels" in your words. Moreover, "The difference
between levels is two different ways of thinking, not just different
thoughts. Its a different kind of consciousness, a different value system."
Hence - the Conservative is unenlightened.
Now I'll pause there and say that the rest of my post is devoted to arguing
that the attitude described in that last paragraph is - to put it
charitably - unsophisticated. If that summary is not a fair reflection of
your views, then I apologise. You don't need to read on and you can point
out where I have mischaracterised your position. However, even if that is
not your own perspective, perhaps there is some benefit in deconstructing
that perspective itself, perhaps as an intellectual exercise. Who knows,
perhaps we'll get to the point of establishing whether it's an accurate
description of the MoQ or not...
So, again to recap, you see Conservative v Progressive (liberal, whatever)
as synonymous with social v intellectual.
Now, the key part of my original post was: "The Conservative attitude does
not rule out the acceptance of new ideas per se, rather it suggests that new
ideas need to prove their worth before being accepted and widely
distributed. In MoQ terms you could say that a Conservative attitude places
a higher barrier to entry around the social level, and seeks to allow only
those intellectual level innovations that have demonstrated the ability to
static latch improvements in a way that preserves social value - including
the value of the ongoing society as presently constituted. As such,
Conservatism is itself an intellectual level ideology, and not necessarily
any more or less intelligent than the alternatives."
In the light of our Socratic dialogue, I'd like to unpack that a little
more. I am arguing that Conservatism is something which operates at the
intellectual level - in other words, that it can be something held by an
'enlightened' person. I see a crucial aspect of operating at the
intellectual level to be a degree of detachment from the society which gives
birth to the intellectual perspective; to see that social environment, and
those social values, as something which is historically conditioned rather
than universal and absolutely normative; to be able to form judgements about
types of society and different types of social value; in short, to establish
whether this or that society has more Quality.
I suspect you would disagree with this understanding of the intellectual
level.
However, I think we can agree that there is a clear sense in which
Conservatism is 'anti-modern' - and that was why I referred to Conservatism
as derived from Burke. From a Conservative point of view the Modern attitude
(post Enlightenment, exemplified in the ideals of the French Revolution) has
a defective understanding of human nature and therefore of society. Most
crucially, it depends upon an exaltation of reason and of bureaucratic
efficiency and control. This is where an understanding of ideology comes in,
for Conservatism (which is itself an ideology) considers the Enlightenment
ideologies (which have various different types between liberalism and
socialism and beyond) as wholly Modern, and thus defective. As Paco has
implied, a major difference between Conservative ideologies and others is
the different account of human nature, a different anthropology.
The key difference, it seems to me, is that you perceive all anti-Modern
perspectives to be aimed at regression (ie to abolish the intellectual
level). Whereas the Conservative attitude - as an intellectual level
ideology, rather than a temperamental preference - claims that a flourishing
social level is necessary for any of the higher human aspirations to be
fulfilled. I'm sure you'll immediately interject with 'liberals want that
too' - of course - but the difference comes in how to judge whether and how
the various modifications will or will not allow the preservation of the
social level. As I understand them, Conservatives object to a desire to
'remake the world in Reason's image' - because there is more to being human
than being rational. Thus the Conservative attitude is an intellectual level
ideology which disagrees - *at the intellectual level* - with ideologies
that derive from Enlightenment understandings of human nature.
Of course, to fully describe what those understandings are would be too much
for this already long post. There's not exactly a shortage of available
material describing it though. Which is why I think your attitude is
unsophisticated. Let's take the Scalia discussion as the application of what
I am saying. In response to my distinction between fundamentalism and
conservative Catholicism you write: "Now there's a distinction without a
difference. When it comes to a discussion of social level values the
distance between Protesant fundamentalism and conservative Catholicism is a
fraction of an inch. Conservative Catholics ARE fundamentalist in their
thinking. Demoninational differences just don't matter. They're both
pre-modern and literalistic. Religion doesn't even matter. Islamic
fundamentalism, Hindu fundamentalism, whatever. In each case we're still
talking about a mythical worldview, a pre-modern, anti-intellectual
worldview. And in each case, this worldviews, when applied to politics,
result in anti-democratic, fascistic governments and the loss of rights,
especially for those who do not share the faith."
The fact that you are unable to see the difference between fundamentalism
and conservative catholicism, while consistent with your overall argument,
is at best ignorant, at worse wilfully obtuse. Fundamentalism insists on a
literal interpretation of the Bible, understood as the 'inerrant' word of
God. It is a wholly Modern phenomenon, derivative from particular strands of
Protestant thinking, which took its contemporary form from tracts published
in the early twentieth century in the US. It accepts the Modern conceit that
our views need a rationally acceptable foundation in order to be justified -
and it finds that foundation in (their interpretation of) Holy Scripture.
Catholicism is by any measure a more intellectually sophisticated attitude,
whose key difference from fundamentalism is a rejection of foundationalist
thinking, and which understands reason as inevitably corrupted by sin - and
therefore human reason on its own cannot get us anywhere, and hence, yes, it
is distinctly anti-Modern (and pre-modern in origins, although doubtless
Catholic thinkers would claim, with some justification, that the development
of the tradition has taken on board the insights of the Enlightenment, not
least at Vatican 2). Moreover, Catholicism emphasises the public aspects of
Christianity (ie social justice) whereas the various different varieties of
fundamentalist protestantism focus on the fate of the individual soul (ie
'rapture'). The fact that you see Fundamentalism (in all its guises) as
'pre-modern, anti-intellectual' just demonstrates that you haven't looked
into the matter very deeply.
And you do mischaracterise Scalia's position. You say that he urges "U.S.
citizens to combat democracy in favor of divine authority" - which would
indeed be consistent with a fundamentalist approach. This is not what he
says. His words: "The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of
democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be
resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as
possible." This is not a call to combat democracy but a call to combat the
equation of government morality with individual morality. He seems very keen
to preserve the legally and constitutionally established mores and customs
of US public life. That makes him a Conservative, not a person sympathetic
to an ideology that could fairly be described as "anti-intellectual,
reactionary, theocratic, authoritarian, lethal concoction that can only be
called American fascism."
As I see it, your understanding of Conservatism is itself a dogmatic
understanding. You see Conservatism as unenlightened, therefore it can
exhaustively be defined as the voice of the social level. Any attempt to
criticise the values of the Enlightenment (which you seem to take as
synonymous with the intellectual level) is immediately characterised as a
desire to take back those advances; it is therefore to be fought against
with all the energy that you display in your posts. Unfortunately, you are
simply repeating arguments that were already stale by the nineteenth
century, let alone the twenty-first.
But of course, I could be wrong.
Sam
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