The Seventh Principle of Conservatism, from the Orthodox Conservative website.
From Orthodox Conservatives7. That we human beings are flawed and imperfectible beings. (Utopian ideologies that rely upon humans to act according to a determined code in all situations are doomed to fail.)
7. That we human beings are flawed and imperfectible beings
Liberals begin with the idea of the individual as a self-contained being, acting entirely rationally with full access to this complete identity and all the knowledge they possess. Chantal Mouffe describes this individual as the "unencumbered self" – unencumbered because they are not. The reality is that we are not created as autonomous beings, but have only the knowledge that we do by interacting with one another and in the institutions that shape us.
Rationality cannot be enough on its own to guide our actions - the basic facts of life in a biological sense are not instruments of rationality by motives of sustenance. Food, drink, sex - these are emotive, and cannot be rational - but they can be rationalised. Consider Buridan's ass: a donkey, dying of thirst, between two equally distant, equally large pails of water. He must make a decision, but reason alone cannot guide his action. Instead, we should think of reason as the faculty for understanding our emotive desires, and to overcome them.
The most recognisable form of this principle comes from Christian doctrine, that of Original Sin; because we were cast out from Eden in the Fall, we are forever tainted with the burden of Adam and Eve’s abuse of free will. But the belief does not have to be theological; instead, simple logic can help us to understand this principle. Truly perfect beings can create truly perfect things – and yet human beings never have. In this understanding, the conservative rejects the possibility of perfecting humans as the utopian dreams of doing, and instead focuses on understanding the truth of humans as they are; ones of limited capacity for action, and therefore limited capacities for knowledge (see principle three).
Because of this, conservatives believe no human order will ever be perfect; consider the view of the social bond that conservatives possess (akin to the Social Contract theory). Social Contract theory presumes each signatory to be perfectly rational in his capacities; Hobbes’ proposed understanding of social obligation was that we engage one another to decide on rules for harmonious living, due to his perception of the ‘state of nature’ as being a ‘war of all against all’, where life was ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’, but the essential proviso was that “there can be no obligation on any man, which arises not from some act of his own”. In essence, every citizen gives his consent to be ruled.
But how can this consent be understood? Briefly, the theory suggests each member of society tacitly agrees to the rules by which he is governed through membership, and in doing so metaphorically signs the social “contract”. This is a compelling argument for obligation; after all, you have had a say in the way you should be governed, meaning you have rational cause to obey the laws, and also you have ration cause to disobey the law where it is used to abuse you.
However, the error made in understanding Social Contract theory is to assume the contract precedes the association of the signatories. John Rawls’ ‘veil of ignorance’ theory, for example, assumes the future signatories of the contract are assembled for the pure purpose of signing the contract, that they may live together in future, in harmony. However, Scruton has highlighted the mistaken assumption here; the signatories of the contract have associated with one another before the issue has arisen. It is hard to identify exactly when the issue of harmonious living may have arisen, but the group, who is now called upon to sign the contract, had a reason to associate in the first place. We cannot say for certain what that reason was for this specific group, but it must have been strong enough to encourage a persistent association following the issue leading to the signing of the contract: maybe it was the basic survival instinct; maybe it was familial obligation; maybe it was love. Regardless, “the social contract requires a relation of membership, and one, moreover, which makes it plausible for the individual members to conceive the relation between them in contractual terms”.
The other presumption of consent is that the individuals ‘signing’ the contract possess the knowledge required to do so, by which we mean a full awareness of the different possibilities and outcomes that precede and follow his decision. If he does not know all of these different possibilities, how can he truly be making an informed and authentically consensual decision? The answer is, he cannot; instead, the knowledge that individual must draw on in his decision-making comes from that very society to which he is supposedly ‘signing’ a contract with (see principle three).
Rationality cannot be enough on its own to guide our actions - the basic facts of life in a biological sense are not instruments of rationality by motives of sustenance. Food, drink, sex - these are emotive, and cannot be rational - but they can be rationalised. Consider Buridan's ass: a donkey, dying of thirst, between two equally distant, equally large pails of water. He must make a decision, but reason alone cannot guide his action. Instead, we should think of reason as the faculty for understanding our emotive desires, and to overcome them.
The most recognisable form of this principle comes from Christian doctrine, that of Original Sin; because we were cast out from Eden in the Fall, we are forever tainted with the burden of Adam and Eve’s abuse of free will. But the belief does not have to be theological; instead, simple logic can help us to understand this principle. Truly perfect beings can create truly perfect things – and yet human beings never have. In this understanding, the conservative rejects the possibility of perfecting humans as the utopian dreams of doing, and instead focuses on understanding the truth of humans as they are; ones of limited capacity for action, and therefore limited capacities for knowledge (see principle three).
Because of this, conservatives believe no human order will ever be perfect; consider the view of the social bond that conservatives possess (akin to the Social Contract theory). Social Contract theory presumes each signatory to be perfectly rational in his capacities; Hobbes’ proposed understanding of social obligation was that we engage one another to decide on rules for harmonious living, due to his perception of the ‘state of nature’ as being a ‘war of all against all’, where life was ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’, but the essential proviso was that “there can be no obligation on any man, which arises not from some act of his own”. In essence, every citizen gives his consent to be ruled.
But how can this consent be understood? Briefly, the theory suggests each member of society tacitly agrees to the rules by which he is governed through membership, and in doing so metaphorically signs the social “contract”. This is a compelling argument for obligation; after all, you have had a say in the way you should be governed, meaning you have rational cause to obey the laws, and also you have ration cause to disobey the law where it is used to abuse you.
However, the error made in understanding Social Contract theory is to assume the contract precedes the association of the signatories. John Rawls’ ‘veil of ignorance’ theory, for example, assumes the future signatories of the contract are assembled for the pure purpose of signing the contract, that they may live together in future, in harmony. However, Scruton has highlighted the mistaken assumption here; the signatories of the contract have associated with one another before the issue has arisen. It is hard to identify exactly when the issue of harmonious living may have arisen, but the group, who is now called upon to sign the contract, had a reason to associate in the first place. We cannot say for certain what that reason was for this specific group, but it must have been strong enough to encourage a persistent association following the issue leading to the signing of the contract: maybe it was the basic survival instinct; maybe it was familial obligation; maybe it was love. Regardless, “the social contract requires a relation of membership, and one, moreover, which makes it plausible for the individual members to conceive the relation between them in contractual terms”.
The other presumption of consent is that the individuals ‘signing’ the contract possess the knowledge required to do so, by which we mean a full awareness of the different possibilities and outcomes that precede and follow his decision. If he does not know all of these different possibilities, how can he truly be making an informed and authentically consensual decision? The answer is, he cannot; instead, the knowledge that individual must draw on in his decision-making comes from that very society to which he is supposedly ‘signing’ a contract with (see principle three).
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