Conservatism Today: A Philosophical Crisis

Until we can decide what constitutes 'conservatism' we are doomed to fail. Is libertarianism conservatism? Is laissez faire neo-liberalism?

From The European Conservative

By Mitchell Foyle-York, BA, MTh

Conservatives aail. re about to realise that they have inherited an untenable philosophy for the world in which we find ourselves. On its current course, the Anglo-American tradition is doomed to fail.

During the mid-20th Century, the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre—then a Marxist—published numerous works devoted to the pursuit of an Aristotelian Marxism. In his search to make his Aristotelian instincts compatible with Marxist theory, MacIntyre would ultimately conclude that the fish was far too big for the pond. There was something both within and beyond Marxism that was required to sustain his Aristotelianism, and the consequence of this gradual realisation would be a conversion to Roman Catholicism, followed by decades of his own unique, original philosophical inquiry. 

I mention this incredibly brief biographical survey of MacIntyre’s career because I think that many modern conservatives are about to undergo a similar realisation. The aim of this essay is no simple task, nor is it a pretty one. Essentially, I wish to argue that much like MacIntyre with Marxism, conservatives are about to realise that they have inherited something of an untenable philosophy for the world in which we find ourselves. In other words, I wish to propose that the Anglo-American conservative tradition, for all its admirable qualities and thinkers, is doomed to fail on its current course. The only way to save conservative thought and action is to radically rethink the type of soil upon which we wish to build our foundations. By this, I do not mean rethinking the goals of conservatism altogether (i.e. family, community life, faith, tradition, etc.), but rather altering our understanding of what ought to justify and define those things. 

In order to understand my argument, I would like to begin with the conditions of modernity that I believe have made conventional conservative philosophy redundant, particularly the rise of moral relativism within modern Western societies. Conservatives have made the understandable mistake of opposing moral relativism purely for its practical and intellectual ills, without giving much thought to the conditions from which it has not only sprung, but as a result of which it has become commonplace.

Conservative Leviathan

Particularly since the mid-20th Century, conservatism has devoted itself to a battle against the rise of all forms of intellectual and moral relativism. Today, rightfully or wrongly, the likes of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida have become boogeymen to those of a conservative inclination. Postmodernism, it is said, has created a new framework of relativistic worldviews, which are now seeping from the ivory towers of academia into our everyday lives and wider society. I am, like most conservatives, inclined to agree with large parts of this diagnosis. But if we are to be serious about this issue, we would be mistaken to reduce it to the postmodern monsters hiding beneath our beds.

In a 2018 interview with the National Review, perhaps the most prominent of modern conservative philosophers, Sir Roger Scruton, had the following to say: 

MK [interviewer]: One of the things that makes conservatism difficult to market, you suggest, is that conservatism does not advocate for only one universal, standard political program. In the long run, is this good or bad?

Sir Roger Scruton: In the long run it must be good to be open to the truth that different societies maintain equilibrium, order, and peace in different ways. The conservative is the one who understands his own society from within and loves and defends it.

This sentiment, as expressed by Scruton, is in some ways core to almost every strand of conservative thought. If society is built from the ‘bottom-up,’ from the organic life and instincts of the ‘little platoons,’ to speak in Burkean terms, then is it not likely that some societies will disagree with others on core moral issues? And that is precisely what we have seen throughout the entirety of human history. As Scruton said above, each society has its own beliefs and ways to maintain and better itself. 

Conservatism’s inherent localism, then, would appear to leave lots of wriggle room for relativistic tendencies. This is apparent not only on an international scale, but on both a local and national scale too. Particularly within modern Western pluralistic societies, you do not need to look very far to find an example of disagreement on very core moral issues. For example, in my hometown of High Wycombe I attended a school with a large number of Muslim students, and it was not at all uncommon for me to find myself in disagreement with them on a number of core cultural and moral issues, ranging from what we should be forbidden from eating to the nature of marriage and the role of organised religion within the state. If, within the localist nature of the ‘little platoons,’ conservatism allows the space for one county to permit, say, polygamous marriage and its neighbour only monogamous marriage in the name of respecting these distinct traditions without forcing either to succumb to the other, what is this if not moral relativism dressed up in Burkean robes? 

Scruton would say, I would imagine, that this is not proof of moral relativism underpinning the ethical reasoning of the conservative mind, but rather a mere pragmatic recognition of the fact that different little platoons, societies, religions, etc., differ in their conclusions when searching for the objective truths within our world. This is a very important distinction: disagreement on what is true is not relativistic, for it still encourages, and adheres to, the notion that objective truth exists and ought to be pursued. 

But this does not solve the issue entirely. If Scruton’s view is true, then we are essentially admitting that traditions are primarily pragmatic in nature, and their roles differ from society to society. But so long as they preserve the important things within a society or community, such as peace or a sense of existential grounding, then they are justified and must be respected by outsiders. Tradition, then, takes on the role of a conservative Leviathan: it requires no other justification, nor does it need to address any serious moral problem, so long as it swallows up anything that might threaten the self-preservation and for the West today at least) the pluralism of a society. 

It is precisely pluralism, which springs from the reality of a more interconnected world, that is the precursor to the rise of moral relativism. A natural consequence of interacting with other cultures, be it through person-to-person interaction or technological information, is that we discover that despite our differences the people behind those differences are not our enemies. This is undoubtedly a positive thing, and it is not relativism but tolerance that is necessary in order to prevent people from killing or persecuting each other over moral differences. But, as we can observe in today’s society, the logical conclusion of this tolerance—especially when combined with post-Enlightenment liberalism—is that everything and anything is permissible, so long as it does not violate some vague interpretation of J.S. Mill’s harm principle. 

What, then, is the solution to this conundrum for modern conservatives? It is already clear to many that there is an obvious strain on conservative legitimacy from the natural consequences of the clash between conservative localism and pluralist internationalism that I have briefly described above, even if they do not regard the consequences as necessarily relativistic. In response to all this, conservatives appear to have divided into two factions: 1) nationalism, and 2) economic liberalism. Let us first begin with nationalism. 

Nationalism and social contract conservatism

A few weeks ago, the National Conservatism conference took British conservative circles by storm. The conference, featuring a wide array of speakers from Tory MPs, to British university professors, to a U.S. senator, certainly ‘did what it said on the tin,’ as we Brits would say. The talk of nationalism was ripe, treading controversial ground in a political atmosphere where patriotism and the nation has become something of a dirty word. As one of the introductory speakers, the Israeli-American conservative philosopher Yoram Hazony, put it: 

National Conservatism is a little bit redundant: how can you be a conservative if you don’t value your nation? But you all know for the last 30 years at least, the English-speaking world and Europe as well have been flooded with this idea, this notion, that somehow it’s possible to be a globalist conservative, that you can be a universalist conservative; the term conservative could somehow be alienated from the idea of home, the idea of family, the idea of congregation, the idea of nation.  

All of this talk of universalisms and a borderless conservatism, Hazony goes on to say, is simply not true. It is impossible, he says, to be a true conservative if one does not remember one’s own national and religious tradition. The beginnings of the solution to the Western, post-war liberal hegemony is simple, according to Hazony: “we have to take the idea of the nation, and we have to put it back into the centre.” An example of this ideal national pride, on which Hazony places a great emphasis, is the military and national service. Young men should, he argues, feel compelled to serve in their nation’s military out of national pride, and it may require the reintroduction of national service to reinstate such an inclination. 

We also see a similar sentiment developed within the works of Roger Scruton. In Where We Are: The State of Britain Now, Scruton examines (once again) the question of nationhood and nationalism, particularly in light of the 2016 Brexit referendum, when many of Britain’s elites were shell-shocked by the radical difference in attitudes towards national identity between themselves and at least half the electorate. One argument Scruton makes is that the nation is a unifying central point for the people living within its borders: “nations are defined not by kinship or religion but by homeland.” A nation, Scruton notes, includes many different people of many different beliefs, religions, cultures, political views, and lifestyles. However, despite this, democratic nations (and I would add nations more broadly) function best when we understand the nation in terms of the ‘first-person plural,’ recognising our friends, family, colleagues, teachers, and even enemies as neighbours, belonging to the same home as ourselves.

Though I would argue that Scruton’s philosophy could not be reduced to mere nationalism, his conservative emphasis upon the nation as a social glue begins to expose the cracks of a ‘nationalist conservatism.’ As Ferenc Horcher notes, in Scruton’s view of patriotism/nationalism “territory is the defining factor” in the makeup of nationhood. This notion, I would say, is certainly present within national conservatism as a movement or a philosophy. But what does this mean, however, for the objective truth of tradition/s? Under this proclaimed conservative definition of nationhood as a territorial social contract, are traditions not reduced to mere Durkheimian social rituals, designed to create and manage social acceptance and cohesion within a society of difference? Again, we see the exact same problem of relativism emerge. 

The reason for its reemergence is rather simple: the cat is out of the bag, as the saying goes. These nationalist defences of a conservative shared tradition are a defence of the nation in the face of an increasingly globalised world. You may think they are good defences, you may think they are bad, but one thing is undeniable: we now live in a globalist, interconnected, pluralistic world, and nothing will undo that. For better or worse, Pandora’s box has been opened. Both Hazony and Scruton may have highlighted the need for a national culture and identity, but this does not solidify any shared first moral principles that have been weakened or destroyed by the rise of relativism. 

In other words, in an interconnected world there can be no illusions. In, say, Edmund Burke’s time, it may have been easy for the average person to have been unfazed by the existence of rivalling moralities and beliefs. Any existential or political threat from, say, Hinduism would have been at most a mere story from a newspaper, describing some unimaginable far-away land. Nowadays, in a globalised world and increasingly multicultural society, there can be no such illusions. Every person now knows that their nation state can only be legitimised insofar as every other person’s nation state is, and that such states can function as a social contract perfectly well—if not even better—with their own national rituals and customs. Or, in other words, to be a conservative nationalist is to reject metaphysical objectivity (which conservatives claim to defend) for social contract relativism. It is to be in ignorant bliss, clinging to one’s own territorial customs and rituals in the hope that rival ones will not impede upon them. 

Conservative nationalism, then, has failed in defending itself against the crisis of moral relativism. In fact, many conservative nationalists have inadvertently submitted to it. If the answer to these modern conservative problems cannot be national or social, then they must be metaphysical (from which the social and national must extend).

The second popular conservative response to the issues raised in this essay has been the development of an economic-focused liberal turn within conservative philosophy, and it is to this that we must now turn our attention.

A crisis of belief

Particularly since the 1960s, self-proclaimed conservatives have achieved the most electoral success by adopting forms of liberalism, particularly that of an economic bent. It has been easy (and understandable) for social conservatives to sneer at this ideological turn, but to do so is to do something of an injustice. In fact, the liberal turn of conservative thought and policy rests upon a serious attempt to (re)discover the kind of objective first shared principles that many conservatives now treat as non-existent. 

Among modern conservatives, this has manifested itself in two ways. First, the notion that the free markets are part of a natural social order. Conservatives of the 20th and 21th century owe this inclination to the political and intellectual success of the Whigs, whose understanding of free markets as answering to the benign logic of Adam Smith’s invisible hand came to be accepted as a force as natural as the wind blowing or the rain falling. Indeed, this (classical) liberal myth was able to maintain at least a shared sense of unity among the political classes until very recently. The notion of the liberal West, with its free market system, was valuable for political narrative-weaving not only during the Cold War, but also during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Or, at least, that was the case for the political classes of the United States and UK.  This appeal to freedom as a first principle was particularly clear during the Thatcher era, as well demonstrated by her famous “Britain Awake” speech: 

In the meantime, the Conservative Party has the vital task of shaking the British public out of a long sleep. Sedatives have been prescribed by people, in and out of government, telling us that there is no external threat to Britain, that all is sweetness and light in Moscow, and that a squadron of fighter planes or a company of Marine commandos is less important than some new subsidy. The Conservative Party must now sound the warning. There are moments in our history when we have to make a fundamental choice. This is one such moment—a moment when our choice will determine the life or death of our kind of society—and the future of our children. Let’s ensure that our children will have cause to rejoice that we did not forsake their freedom.

The sentiments of Thatcher within this quote are just one example of many as to how mid-to-late 20th century conservatism defined itself not only as broadly liberal, but as a response to the threats of the Soviet Union. In Thatcher’s sentiments, we see a clear appeal to freedom as a first principle that ought to be shared by all people within a civil society. The issue here is that it was a bad attempt to establish any kind of long-term first shared principles. There are two reasons for this. 

The first is a rather simple historical fact: as the old saying goes, “no empire can last forever,” and this is as true of the Soviet Union as any other attempt at imperialism. Thatcher at the very least risks implying that, were Soviet Communism to collapse, there would no longer be any serious threat to freedom. To define yourself as ‘anti’ something is to leave yourself naked once the thing you are against is removed. The post-Thatcherite (neo)liberal hegemony of modern British conservatism, particularly within the Tory Party, demands of people that they carry water in a bucket with no bottom. 

This (admittedly rather generic) point leads us to the second failure of conservative liberalism. This liberal appeal to freedom as a self-sufficient first principle has unsurprisingly had liberal consequences. It is baffling to me that some conservatives (particularly Tories) lament the cementing of Blairite social liberalism, when it is so obviously a consequence of the conservative shift to individualism (which is itself a core tenet of liberalism). The Thatcher individualist revolution offers not only a bottomless bucket, but rather an endless array of different bottomless buckets, from which one can choose based upon one’s own whim. This is not because freedom is bad. On the contrary, freedom is a natural good; it is just that freedom is not a sufficient shared first principle in and of itself. For freedom to truly flourish, one must have a well cultivated shared culture—and it is this endeavour that liberal conservatives have abandoned.  

Primarily, the liberalism of modern conservatives is primarily economic. The conservative application of liberal economics is essentially a matter of managerialism. It is an appeal to capitalism and market forces as a distraction from the tatters of modern culture. In other words, if we cannot have first shared principles—if we must really concede that ground to liberalism—then we can at least share money, growth, and Whiggish notions of ‘progress.’ Though they may not even realise it, this is also a response in many ways to the question of conservative moral relativism in the modern age. And the answer liberal conservatives give us is, in effect, “we do not care about conservatism degenerating into relativism—we are liberals, embrace it and enjoy the economic benefits instead.” They need not address the inherent flaws within the nationalist conservatives’ potential relativistic tendencies, for they have rejected the premises and the aims of conservatism altogether, and embraced relativism as a natural consequence of internationalist, pluralistic progress. Or at the very least, they have chosen to ignore it as a fact of progress—it is a mere irrelevant philosophical question, left behind by the speedy advancement of the economic, scientific age. 

An epistemological dilemma

In short, I can summarise my main points about nationalism and conservative liberalism as a response to the metaphysical crisis caused by an inherently local philosophy in a new, interconnected globalised world as follows: 1) conservative nationalism all too easily degenerates into just another form of moral relativism that conservatives claim to oppose. 2) The modern conservative (and particularly Tory) adoption of liberalism is an acceptance of the relativistic tendencies that arise from a pluralist society, and is thus no longer really conservatism. 

In reflecting upon the metaphysical state of conservatism, one is reminded of the infamous joke from the TV show Only Fools and Horses: 

Trigger: And that’s what I’ve done. Maintained it for 20 years. This old broom’s had 17 new heads and 14 new handles in its time.

Sid: How the hell can it be the same bloody broom then? 

Much like Trigger’s broom, conservatism has become a Frankenstein’s monster of incoherent, new pieces, whilst simultaneously claiming to be the same-old conservatism that it has always been. It is, particularly in mainstream politics, conservatism in name only. This philosophical incoherence, I believe, stems from an epistemological crisis within conservatism and its place in modernity. 

Alasdair MacIntyre has previously compared this modern epistemological crisis to that of the narrative within Shakespeare’s Hamlet: 

Hamlet arrives back from Wittenberg with too many schemata available for interpreting the events at Elsinore of which he is already a part … But Hamlet not only has the problem of which schema to apply; he also has the other ordinary agents’ problem: whom now to believe? His mother? Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? His father’s ghost? Until he has adopted some particular schema of his own he does not know what to treat as evidence…

Modern conservatives are now caught in the exact same crisis as Hamlet. Not only do we conservatives have a whole range of schemata available to us to interpret the current social, cultural, and political situation (e.g. national conservatism, liberal conservatism, post-liberalism, etc.), we are also facing the same dilemma of the “ordinary agent.” If we are to define conservatism extremely broadly as a conservation of Good, then we are faced with an avalanche of questions about whom we should believe:  My nation? Which tradition? Whose religion? Who (if anyone) administers the conservation of this Good? Where does this Good come from? To what end is this Good pointed? The modern, pluralist age offers us endless answers to these questions, so which ones do we believe and from whom do we believe them?

Liberal conservatives view these questions as no more relevant than  the stubborn relativist does. Nationalist conservatives, as we saw with many young audience members at NatCon, indulge in thrusting, forward-looking energy on issues such as mass migration, refugees, wokeism, or globalisation. But neither of these approaches address any of the real moral dilemmas of our day, particularly those inherent within conservative philosophy.

They are mere Nietzschean palpitations in the heart of conservatism, maniacally obsessed with questions of power and how to wield it. The real question for modern conservatives is no longer one of power and politics (if it ever really has been), it is rather an epistemological question of not only what we are to believe but whom. In a world where traditions and communities have been deconstructed almost seemingly beyond repair, where our own first principles are challenged daily by simply exiting our home and meeting our colleagues and neighbours, from where/whom do we inherit this conservative tradition? And what exactly is this conservative tradition? 

Admittedly, I do not have an answer to these questions. The aim of this essay, I must confess, is ghastly criticism. In a post-Enlightenment age where the rise of individualism, globalisation, interconnectivity, and pluralism have resulted in the destruction of all upon which conservatism rests, from where will conservatism draw its beliefs and on what will it base them? From where do we draw the knowledge/awareness of what a tradition is and what it demands of us? I am, as a Christian, inclined to believe that the answer to this epistemological crisis must be theological. But for me the situation is plain: if conservatives do not begin to answer this serious metaphysical crisis, it will die in the face of the existential challenge of interconnected modernity. It is already on a life-support machine.