Burke and Tocqueville laid down a set of principles, based on Christian natural law and finding virtue in the husbanding of tradition and community, which together constitute a proper philosophy. Its challenge is finding goodness in an imperfect, materialist society.
In Aristotle, virtue ensures rightness of ends; prudence, or practical wisdom in given circumstances, rightness of means. In Augustine, understanding is the reward of faith. In Aquinas, society’s checking base appetites enables development of virtue. Natural law holds society promotes character: conservatives defend regimes which respect customs as promoting individual virtue. The true conservative mistrusts individual reason, finding in prejudice proofs over time which are applicable to current circumstance, finding in custom God’s purpose as well as the nature of man.
Burke and Tocqueville, whose views are elaborately explicated, could oppose common practice while supporting society as it was, defending that which exists without sacrificing commitment to virtue. Burke’s opposition to the abstract really targeted idealization, which not only omits true qualities but also inserts falsehoods, for not only simplifying human nature but also supposing hoped-for but unreal qualities. Idealization equally undermines existing authority posits false ends, the enforcement of which is tyranny. Government is not the teacher of virtue but its guardian, the keeper of tradition, manners, prejudice.
For Tocqueville, individual character and well-ordered liberty could not be imposed but were habitual; he commenced with the individual himself, one step earlier than Aristotle’s family. Liberty depends on social institutions not political character, for laws are the children of custom, which grow upward from the local. In America, local practice prevailed; in England, the laws were good because they were old. Localism and legalism interceded between the individual and the state. Whereas in France, centralization enervated custom. By doing for citizens what they ought to do for themselves, the state enfeebled its residents. Conversely, public service demonstrates independence – what, when how – from egalitarian diktat. Tocqueville sought to recall French rulers to the pursuit of virtue. Tyranny of the majority restricts worthy contributors to social and political life. Such societies will have little true diversity, few great writers and statesmen. The conservative may consider his own society superior, even if others are virtuous.
The conservative affection for the particularistic, up through the nation-state, is not the same as the republican’s requisite service to the state, for public service can take many forms. But Strauss thought Burke’s identifying tradition with wisdom was conflating the good with the existing. Strauss rejected God in arrangements: natural law and philosophy does not require a deity.
Oakeshott saw man’s ability to act properly outside norms as highly limited. Rules are an abstraction of the essential activity, which resists the cataloging of all possible experience. The less to be discussed, the sounder the social basis. Social achievement is taking next steps consistent with what’s already been done. The search for social perfection results in chaos of conflicting ideas which society can’t survive (i.e., the analogy of Babel). But custom itself is rightful, not the container of higher truth. Oakeshott called a artists and philosophers to promote Platonic lies, unrealistically in Frohnen’s view. He could not reconcile himself to the practical role of religion in rightful conduct. Kristol could not identify a pole other than compromised materialism; Kirk was so concerned with the nature of beliefs that he overlooked the sense of good character.
Best as comparative study, though having raised Strauss’ dispute with Burke, Frohnen ought to have studied the paradox of why the contemporary right looks to both Burke and Strauss.
Burke: ‘Whenever we improve, it is right to leave room for a further improvement. It is right to consider, to look about us, to examine the effect of what we have done. Then we can proceed with confidence, because we can proceed with intelligence. Whereas in hot reformations … the whole is generally so crude, so harsh, so indigested, mixed with so much imprudence and so much injustice, so contrary to the whole course of human nature and human institutions, that the very people who are most eager for it are among the first to grow disgusted at what they have done. Then some part of the abdicated grievance is recalled from its exile in order to become a corrective of the correction. Then the abuse assumes all the credit and popularity of a reform. The very idea of purity and disinterestedness in politics falls into disrepute, and is considered as a vision of hot and inexperienced men; and thus disorders become incurable, not by the virulence of their own quality, but by the unapt and violent natures of the remedies.’ Speech of Economical reform
Tocqueville: ‘… It is not the mechanism of laws that produces great events, gentlemen, but the inner spirit of the government. Keep the laws as they are, if you wish. I think you would be very wrong to do so; but keep then. Keep the men, too, if it gives you any pleasure. I raise no objection so far as I am concerned. But, in God’s name, change the spirit of the government; for, I repeat, that spirit will lead you to the abyss. Recollections of the French Revolution of 1848