Conservatism's Patron Saint

Morality
The abstract, rationalistic conception of Reason that Burke rejected is inseparable from a rationalistic conception of morality to which he was equally opposed. On the latter, morality is comprised of “principles” to which Reason provides all peoples in all places and at all times access. These “principles” specify “natural rights.” Today, the language of “natural rights” has been largely displaced by the idiom of “human rights,” but both expressions reflect this same rationalistic style of morality.

Burke says of “natural rights” that they are “metaphysic,” and that “like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium,” they are “refracted from their straight line” by the concrete realities of social life. The “gross and complicated mass of human passions and concerns,” as well as the fact that “the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity,” render “absurd” the rationalist’s appeals to “natural right.”

“Natural rights,” Burke asserts, are “pretended rights,” “extremes” that, “in proportion as they are metaphysically true” are “morally and politically false.” Why? Because against the doctrine of “natural rights” -- what Burke also refers to as “the rights of man” -- “there can be no prescription; against these no agreement is binding; these admit no temperament, and no compromise; any thing withheld from their full demand is so much fraud and injustice.” Furthermore, against “these…rights of men let no government look for security in the length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration.”

Burke invokes “rights” throughout his writings, but the only rights that he recognizes as legitimate are culturally specific. They are “prescriptive,” the “inheritance” of the citizens of England. That Burke frequently employs imagery -- in this case, the imagery of an “inheritance” -- is another manifestation of his abiding prejudice against the arid rationalism of the school of “natural rights,” for people do not live by reason alone, but largely by the imagination.

The idea of an “inheritance” is an “image of a relation of blood” that lends support to “the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason” by simulating “the Constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties.” By “adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections,” by “keeping inseparable, and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchers, and our altars,” we instill within ourselves “a sense of habitual native dignity,” and “our liberty becomes a noble freedom.”

Summary
This summation of it is all too brief to do justice to Burke’s thought. Hopefully, however, it supplies at least a small taste of its flavor. Burke, and the conservative tradition that he inspired, is fundamentally anti-rationalistic. That is, Burkean conservatism opposes, not reason per se, but the rationalistic conceptions of Reason and morality that have dominated the political-moral culture of the West from his time to ours. Simply put, both reason and morality are tradition-dependent. The centrality of place that Burke allots tradition in the scheme of human life his philosophical disciples have kept for it.

One final note: most of today’s “conservatives” only occasionally reference Burke, and when they do so it is almost always in order to enlist him as a foot soldier in “the War on Terror.” The only quotation of Burke’s they seem to be aware of is the following: “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” However, the formal or philosophical presuppositions that inform the substance of Burke’s positions on a host of practical issues that he faced tend to be diametrically at odds with those that underline the substantive views of most (but not all) of today’s “conservatives.”