1. Prerevolutionary Conservatism.
In prerevolu-
tionary,
pre-industrial, and corporatively (ständisch)
structured society a conservative social and
political
mentality was normal. It rested on the assumption that
law
is not made but discovered, and rulership is not
legitimized by the consent of the governed, but by
divine law.
Changes in law, religion, and societal
structure were therefore sternly
rejected; their protag-
onists were found
guilty of heresy, disturbance of the
“natural” order,
and lèse-majesté by the
established
powers. Conservative mentality is manifested, for ex-
ample, in Cicero's standardizing of the old
consti-
tutional
res publica and in the idealizing of the old
Roman way of life by Roman historians, as well as
generally in the
exemplary lessons taught by history
(historia magistra
vitae).
It was on the basis of the same views, however, that
reformers and
rebels—among them Tiberius Gracchus,
Cola di Rienzo, John
Wycliffe, and the leaders of the
German Peasant War—understood
and justified their
objectives as restoration (renovatio, restauratio, refor-
matio, Renaissance). Leopold von Ranke called Luther
“one of the greatest conservatives who ever lived.”
The
Glorious Revolution of 1688 was interpreted as the
restoration of
the traditional constitution proper to
England. Only after
“revolution” was understood as
a deliberate total
change in accordance with norms
of universally valid rational and natural
rights, as the
elimination of abuse, and as a means of emerging from
self-imposed infancy, could it no longer be represented
as restoration.
Instead, restoration became a conscious
attempt to reverse revolutionary
change, and con-
servatism became conscious
opposition to revolu-
tionary tendencies.
The change from a mood of predominant “stand-
pattism” to one of reactionary opposition and
of active
defense of positions under attack, from habitual to
conscious traditionalism, was not merely a consequence
of political
revolutions, but arose in opposition to
criticism of and changes in the
predominant mood, e.g.,
the Sophistic accusations against the Greek polis, the
changed attitudes toward the
ecclesiastical reforma-
tions of the
sixteenth century, and also towards the
Enlightenment.
The earliest translation of the antagonism between
the defenders of the
traditional social and ecclesiastical
order and their adversaries into a
party system of
political conflict took place in England during the
seventeenth century; it influenced the whole political
thinking of Europe
and North America. In England,
the influence was due to political
institutions (Parlia-
ment, State Church,
common law) and societal factors
(an aristocracy far from immune to panic,
an ascending
gentry, and an economically powerful bourgeoisie in
London). Also the wide range of political positions,
from the
patriarchalism of Filmer via Hobbes, Hooker,
Locke, and Milton to the
radicalism of Winstanley,
articulated during the fights between partisans
of Stuart
absolutism (closely connected with the Church of
England) and Puritan-Independent opponents in the
English
Parliament, which lasted for decades, gave the
necessary impetus. The same
basic political and ideo-
logical
assumptions still shaped the fundamental prin-
ciples of those Parliamentary groups which were called
by their
nicknames “Tories” and “Whigs”
around 1679,
though these parties gradually became guided by po-
litical conceptions during the eighteenth
century.
The beginnings and core of the traditionalist defense
and the formulation of
a conservative position consisted
in rejecting criticism of dogma, of the
authority of
ecclesiastical teachings, and of their influence in the
realm of secular education which became increasingly
independent. With the
extension of this criticism to
the whole hierarchical and aristocratic
culture of the
seventeenth century and to the traditional corporative
and regional institutions of Europe, conservatism
developed into a general
social and political viewpoint
opposed to the contract theory on which
monarchy
depended to support its centralizing administrative
tendencies. The Enlightenment critics, the reform
policies of progressive
governments, and above all the
French Revolution were the factors that led
con-
servatism out of mere
traditionalism and made it a
political ideology. It did not, however,
result in
the dissolution of “pre-ideological”
traditionalism.
Conservatism never attained the systematic unity
and orthodoxy of
Jacobinism, or of democratic radical-
ism,
nor even that of liberalism. Down to the 1960's
it remains an assortment of
political ideas, a political
credo that is more clearly delimited by what
it rejects
than by any positive program. The latter substantially
depends on the degree of challenge at any given time.
Thus conservatism is
conceived of as antirevolutionary
thought (Burke), as a
counterrevolutionary appeal (de
Maistre), as a “conservative
revolution” (Hofmanns-
thal).
Even when it supposes itself anti-ideological,
this misunderstanding itself
displays ideological traits.
In an “age of ideology”
conservatism has also not been
able to escape ideological alignments;
conservative
ideologies, however, remain relatively unarticulated in
any systematic theories; among the important repre-
sentatives of political conservatism, then, are a
large
number of practical statesmen, while only a few can
be named
whose influence has been exclusively through
their writings.
