1. Edmund Burke and Anglo-Saxon Conservatism.
Despite the relatively substantial unity and stability
of its
central values, conservatism displays a variety
of nuances based on the
different social experiences
of its partisans at different times and in
different coun-
tries. This was already
apparent in the reaction to the
democratic revolution of the late
eighteenth century.
Edmund Burke, who, as a critic of the French Revolu-
tion, gave the first (and to date most
important) formu-
lation of conservative
political philosophy, vehemently
rejected abstract political theories and efforts to found
a
constitution on them, because he esteemed as higher
than the rationality of
philosophers the reason that
formed social and political institutions in
accordance
with natural and divine laws operating in the historical
process. It is not the task of men to impose an order
on things, but to
recognize the order implicit in them
and to act accordingly. With his
practical political
sense and philosophical inclination to identify
nature
and history Burke had too much respect for the tradi-
tional social order to be willing to
cede its fate to the
ratio and the deliberate plans of contemporary
authors,
and he was too skeptical a judge of men to have confi-
dence in their original goodness
(Rousseau) or in their
rational foresight. He approved reforms, but
rejected
revolution because it destroyed tradition and continu-
ity. He relied too heavily, moreover,
on the foundations
of a functioning English constitution to be able to
understand the revolutionary challenge to conditions
that had arisen
historically in other countries.
Burke's ideas were of particular importance to
European and American
conservatism: he assigned
priority to the historical accomplishments of
genera-
tions rather than to the plans
of individuals and the
revolutionary acts of the masses; he did not acknowl-
edge the separation of nature and
history; he legiti-
mized feeling and
tradition as forces shaping the pres-
ent,
taking religion to be the “foundation of civil
society,” and provided an arsenal of arguments against
revolution that appeared to have the weight of histori-
cal experience on their side.
