Conservatism: A Rediscovery Part 3

I'm still only a little way into Yoram Hazony's Conservatism: A Rediscovery. Already, though, some of the strengths, and a possible weakness, of the book have emerged, which I think are worth covering.

The strengths are easier to describe, so I'll start there. Hazony identifies conservatism with a Burkean political philosophy. He presents a case, persuasively in my view, that this Burkean conservatism not only has a long pedigree, but also was influential for a long time in Anglo cultures. Conservatism, therefore, has not always been the philosophy that always loses.

Some of the key figures in this tradition are new to me. Sir John Fortescue, born in the fourteenth century, is described by Hazony as the "first truly outstanding expositor" of Anglo conservatism. Richard Hooker, who I was already familiar with, is mentioned as the next great figure, followed by "the greatest conservative", John Selden, who lived in the early seventeenth century and who was described by John Milton as "the chief of learned men reputed in this land". Only then does Hazony get to Edmund Burke, the famous critic of the French Revolution in the later 1700s.

Sir John Fortescue

Hazony delineates the difference between these conservative men and their opponents as a difference between those who are empirically minded, i.e., who take seriously what has been learned through long experience, and those who are rationalists, i.e., who think that society can be remade from scratch through abstract reason. 

Richard Hooker

There is much to be said for making this distinction. For instance, the conservatives in this tradition noted that it was difficult for those wanting to start from abstract principles to really know the longer term consequences of what they were proposing. As Hazony summarises Burke:

The more general and abstract the principle proposed, the more certain one may be that its consequences will not be confined to what has been discussed and foreseen. (p.28)

Burke has been proven right on this score over and over. For instance, it has been a constant theme of my own writing, that those who proposed to make individual autonomy the ruling principle did not understand where this principle would ultimately lead. 

The Burkean conservatives are also on strong ground when they express scepticism that the reason of one person is sufficient for rejecting an entire tradition and starting over (as the French revolutionaries did, deciding that 1792 would become Year 1). In Burke's own words,

The science of government being therefore...a matter which requires experience and even more experience than any one person can gain in his whole life, however sagacious and observing he may be, it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society. (p.26)

So why then am I still a little uneasy in wholeheartedly embracing this tradition? It is not because I believe that anything it represents is false - in fact, I think it has much to teach us - but that it leaves too much out. It is too limited in what it seeks to conserve, and in what it is willing to positively describe and adhere to.

I think this comes out a little in a section of the book detailing the historical empiricism of John Selden. Hazony quotes Selden as follows:

The way to find out the Truth is by others' mistakings: For if I [wish] to go to such [and such] a place, and one had gone before me on the right-hand, and he was out, [while] another had gone on the left-hand, and he was out, this would direct me to keep the middle way that peradventure would bring me to the place I desired to go. (p.17)

 Hazony follows up the quote by adding:

Selden thus turns to a form of pragmatism to explain what is meant when statesmen and jurists speak of truth.

The problem that immediately struck me on reading this is that although this might instruct you in how to get to a certain place the best way, it has little to say in where you should be going. For instance, if what you want is to secure the rule of a political elite, and to keep wages and conditions low for the workers, then a policy of divide and rule may well be, at a pragmatic level, a time-tested way of achieving this aim. It would then represent a "truth" of politics.

Yazony seems to be aware of this problem because he then states,

Selden recognised that in making these selections from the traditions of the past, we tacitly rely upon a higher criterion for selection, a natural law established by God, which prescribes "what is truly best" for mankind in the most elementary terms. 

So we now have a "higher criterion for selection" than historical empiricism, which is natural law. I have no issue with this approach, i.e. of using natural law to decide "what is truly best" and then historical empiricism to determine what works over time, but there is a further problem.

Yazony states that when we make selections we tacitly rely on natural law, and that we do so in the most elementary terms. I don't think this works out well in practice. The forces of liberal modernity are so great, that you need to declare what you are defending explicitly and in some detail.

You can see this from the work of Selden himself. Hazony describes Selden's approach to natural law in the following passage:

In his Natural and National Law, he explains that this natural law has been discovered over long generations since biblical times and has come down to us in various versions. Of these, the most reliable is that of the Talmud, which describes the seven laws of the children of Noah prohibiting murder, theft, sexual perversity, cruelty to beasts, idolatry and defaming God, and requiring courts of law to enforce justice. The experience of thousands of years has taught us that these laws frame the peace and prosperity that is the aim of all nations, and that they are the unseen root from which the diverse laws of all the nations ultimately derive. (p.17)

This is simply too elementary to have much force. Most liberals could accept most of this (except perhaps the prohibition of sexual perversity). And it still doesn't give clear guidance on what exactly is being conserved. If the ultimate aims are peace and prosperity, then does this justify the "Economic Man" approach to national policy, in which what matters ultimately is GDP growth? 

There is another problem with leaving the goods you are seeking to conserve only tacitly understood in elementary form. The critical issue for a period of time may have been the one outlined by Hazony, namely that of historical empiricists defending existing national institutions versus abstract rationalists seeking to completely remake society on the basis of universal rights. But it is not the only dividing line. 

One aspect of liberalism is its radical individualism. Many liberals do not recognise objectively existing values that a community can orient itself toward. Instead, they emphasise the idea of individuals autonomously choosing their own goods and allowing others to do the same. This then leads to a certain kind of permissive society that at the same time intrusively enforces a political moral code centred on non-interference, i.e., on non-discrimination, tolerance, openness and diversity.

There are different ways that liberals ground this approach to politics. It can be done via something similar to an historical empiricism, namely on the grounds that privatising concepts of the good is necessary to avoid conflict, as occurred at times in European history. But it also reflects certain metaphysical beliefs, such as that there are no objective values embedded in reality, with value coming instead either from acts of will or perhaps from having individual desires or pleasures satisfied. 

The point is that it is not clear that Burkean conservatism directly confronts these aspects of liberal modernity. The task for those who wish to conserve becomes more complicated. Conservatives have to make a multi-faceted assertion, namely that objective values do exist, that they can be discerned and rationally justified, that they can be held in common within a society, and that without a notion of a common good, there is considerable detriment to the good of individuals.

In making these assertions, it is necessary for conservatives to be very open in identifying the goods they wish to uphold within a community, and to go beyond broad concepts like "peace" or "prosperity" and instead to think through and describe a workable framework that takes into account different aspects of nature and reality, as well as to order the different kinds of goods (i.e., what is higher, what is lower) that are present to us.

Conservatism: A Rediscovery Part 2

I'm reading the book Conservatism: A Rediscovery by Yoram Hazony. In the first post on this topic I focused on Hazony's dismay that conservatism was often understood to mean conserving Enlightenment liberalism and I illustrated his point with the following social media post:

Rebecca is one of those people that Hazony is frustrated with. She identifies conservatism with the liberal principle of individual autonomy, of a freedom "to be who we want and do as we wish".

Interestingly, quite a few readers challenged Rebecca's claim that Christianity was set against the American political founding. Rebecca often argues that Christianity is a source of authoritarianism and therefore does not fit in with the "constitution, freedom and liberties". Her opponents had this to say:

And this:

Which raises the interesting question of what role Christianity had in making the American political system successful or not. My own view is that America would have floundered without it, but that it is nonetheless not sufficient in itself as a basis for a successful political conservatism.

Why did America need Christianity? Well, Christianity provided something of a limit to the worst features of political liberalism. If liberalism says "what matters is that I am free to be who I want and do as I wish" then all that matters is that I do not interfere with others doing the same. The moral focus tends to be on non-interference: on openness, tolerance, non-discrimination and on on. But otherwise there is a very permissive society in which anything goes.

But Christian metaphysics introduces a different kind of principle. If God created the world, including us, then there is a good in the reality that we inhabit that we can discipline ourselves to follow. Value does not simply come from the act of choice itself; what we choose matters. There are qualitative distinctions between what is higher and lower within our character and within our actions. Christian metaphysics upholds the ancient Western characteristic of thinking of some things as having a noble quality and others as base.  

And so, even if political liberalism was permissive, the Christian culture that was embedded in American life was not. It had standards of decency, and positive ideals of human character. However, once the influence of Christianity ebbed, then the dissolving logic of political liberalism was able to unfold, to the detriment of American social life. There was no longer a clear way to define the good, or to acknowledge any form of authority outside of our own wills (expect what was defined formally by the law). 

Which raises a further question. Could the formula of Christianity plus political liberalism ever be a viable one? I don't think so. First, it is inevitable that those raised in a public culture that is liberal will chafe against the restraining influence of Christianity. If you believe that what matters is individual preference, then the standards once set by Christianity, which are accorded an authority outside of our own wills, will come to be looked on negatively as "authoritarian". In recent times this way of thinking has become more extreme with some on the left worried about a tyrannical Christian theocracy:

At the same time, if liberalism is installed as the system through which public life is organised, then it is likely to exert an influence on the Christian churches, making them increasingly liberal over time. This is a widespread issue, not just affecting American churches. In 1975 the Catholic Church made reference to the problem in a document titled Persona Humana:

What the Catholic Church recognised here is a tendency to erase qualitative distinctions in our character and acts, and therefore to collapse into secular liberal values, by appealing to the idea of everyone having equal dignity as images of God and/or that the only thing that matters is that we love one another (the "all you need is love" mantra). 

Finally, there are aspects of tradition that are not as clearly or definitively upheld in the Bible as they might be, and therefore a political conservatism or traditionalism is needed alongside Christianity to defend them. For instance, the Bible does assume that people belong to nations, i.e., that these are the expected forms of human community that derive from and that are blessed by God (see here). However, the defence of nations is not an overt focus of the New Testament, and so it is not likely that a Christian culture, by itself, would prove adequate to this particular cause - at least not in the modern era when such powerful forces are dedicated to a globalist order.

And so I don't think the combination of an Enlightenment liberalism, restrained by a Christian culture, was ever likely to hold. There needed instead to be a mutually reinforcing relationship between a certain type of conservative politics and Christianity. What that conservative politics would look like then becomes the key issue.

Conservatism: A Rediscovery Part 1

I've begun reading Conservatism: A Rediscovery by Yoram Hazony. As I'd hoped, it is proving an excellent book for stimulating thinking on some important issues. I'm not far in enough to give an overall assessment, but there are already some points I think are worth making.

First, Hazony deplores the way that conservatism is confused with classical liberalism (he calls it Enlightenment liberalism). He wants the two clearly demarcated:

Which brings us to the second remarkable fact about contemporary conservatism: the extraordinary confusion over what distinguishes Anglo-American conservatism from Enlightenment liberalism (or "classical liberalism" or "libertarianism" or, for that matter, from the philosophy of Ayn Rand). Indeed, for decades now, many prominent "conservatives" have had little interest in political ideas other than those that can be used to justify free trade and lower taxes, and, more generally, to advance the supposition that what is always needed and helpful is a greater measure of personal liberty. And if anyone has tried to point out that these are well-known liberal views, and that they have no power to conserve anything at all, he has been met with the glib rejoinder that What we are conserving is liberalism or that Conservatism is a branch or species within liberalism, or that Liberalism is the new conservatism. (p.xvii)

I think he is right. Where I might disagree is that this has gone back further in time than he perhaps realises. But to illustrate his point, take a look at the following comment on social media:

She defines conservatism as "our freedom to be who we want and do as we wish". This is the underlying principle of liberalism. Professor John Kekes defines liberalism as follows:

the true core of liberalism, the inner citadel for whose protection all the liberal battles are waged [is] autonomy … Autonomy is what the basic political principles of liberalism are intended to foster and protect.

And what do liberals mean by the term autonomy? According to Professor Raz,  "Autonomy is an ideal of self-creation, or self-authorship"; similarly, Professor Sumner writes of the "conception of the person as self-determining and self-making".

Does it make sense to think of a "freedom to be who we want and do as we wish" as conservative? No, because, as Hazony points out, this formula "has no power to conserve anything at all". In fact, there is a dissolving logic to it. If the point is to make me as an individual as autonomous as possible, so that I can choose in any direction without negative consequence or judgement, then anything that is not open to individual choice has to be rejected as an oppressive limit on the self that the individual has to be "liberated" from or that needs to be socially "deconstructed".

And so, unsurprisingly, the woman quoted above has some very radical views on family life. She sees the unchosen biological role of women as limiting and oppressive and so looks forward to technology making the family redundant:

This is an admittedly extreme example, but it illustrates my point that people who hold to the formula of maximising a freedom to be who we want and do what we wish are likely to end up with a mindset that is dissolving of society - despite claiming to be conservatives. Rebecca is even willing to dissolve motherhood itself.

If you do not see the good in things, including things given as part of the nature of reality, and therefore wish to conserve them, but only see the good in the act of choice itself, and therefore are focused on removing any constraints on choice, regardless of the consequences, then you are a liberal and not a conservative. And a large majority of politicians in the right-wing parties are liberals and have been for many decades.

I'll finish with one last example of what Yazony is referring to when he deplores the confusion between conservatism and liberalism. Jeremy Boreing is the co-founder of the media company The Daily Wire:

Was marriage about treating women as chattel?

When I debate women on social media it is surprising how often a particular view of the past emerges. There are women who hold firmly to the belief that prior to recent times women were viewed as chattel, i.e., as property, and that marriage as an institution existed as a kind of property transfer of women from one man to another.

I have just finished a book by Judith Hurwich, an adjunct professor specialising in family history. Titled Noble Strategies: Marriage and Sexuality in the Zimmern Chronicle, it focuses on the nobility of southwest Germany in the period 1400 to 1600, though she also makes many comparisons to the family life of nobles elsewhere in Western Europe. 

Recreating the Landshut Wedding of 1475

It should be noted that it is difficult to describe marriage practices exactly as they existed in the European past, because there was variation across time, place and social class. Nonetheless, a solid picture emerges in Judith Hurwich's book about the main motivating factors surrounding marriage in this era.

To summarise, there were two main influences on family life among the nobility at this time. The first was a lay model of marriage based around duty to kin. For the nobility, the main aim was to preserve the noble lineage, both in the sense of producing heirs, but also marrying upward rather than downward. To succeed in this aim was difficult and required a strategy that involved both sexes. 

The second influence, one that apparently grew in power over time, was an ecclesiastical model of marriage, in which the ideal of lifelong, monogamous, harmonious and even affectionate relationships was emphasised. The nobility was less influenced by the Church model than was the urban patriciate, but nonetheless it made inroads into the aristocratic culture of family life.

Dowries & morning gifts

In order for a woman to marry, her family had to pay a very large sum of money, the dowry, to the groom. The amount of money depended on the wealth and status of the family. The bride also brought her trousseau, consisting of clothing, jewelry and silver plate. The groom's family, for their part, provided the bride with a morning gift, usually between one third and one half the value of the dowry. This became the property of the bride and was used by her as income during the marriage. The bride was also entitled to a pension and an estate to live on, if and when she became a widow. The amount of the pension was a return on land equivalent in value to the dowry and morning gift.

The dowry was a sizeable sum of money for noble families - a considerable drain on the family assets. Therefore, it was considered to be a "premortem" inheritance, i.e., an inheritance given to the bride whilst her parents still lived. Daughters receiving a dowry were therefore expected to renounce their right to a postmortem inheritance, though they could do so with conditions attached. For instance, daughters might still inherit the parental estate if they outlived their brothers.

What all this suggests is that financial considerations were indeed an important aspect of marriage, but not in a way that made of women themselves "chattel". 

Noble strategies 

In Germany there was a system of partible inheritance rather than primogeniture. It was considered unfair for the oldest son alone to inherit, and therefore estates would be divided among all the sons. This meant, however, that families needed just the right amount of sons. Not enough and the lineage might die out. Too many and the family estate would lose too much land.

And so there was a system in which many sons were not allowed to marry. The sons who were not chosen to marry might join the church as cathedral canons. They might as unmarried men have concubines, i.e., they might have a long term relationship with a woman of lower social status who would bear them illegitimate children. But these children had no claim on the family estate.

Similarly, a certain number of daughters could not marry. A family had to think strategically. They could give all the daughters a smaller dowry, which meant that they would marry downwards into a lower social caste. Or the family wealth could be concentrated into one or two larger dowries, allowing some daughters to marry upward and gain prestige and powerful social connections for the family.

In general, a higher percentage of daughters than sons were able to marry. What I believe this demonstrates is that marriage was not so much organised around "women as chattel" but around maintaining the lineage and noble prestige of the family. Both sexes were expected to play their role in achieving this aim.

Harmony & affection

Among the nobility marriages were arranged, often through an intermediary, who might be an older relative (of either sex) or a powerful connection. Older bachelors with no living parents might sometimes take on the role of arranging a marriage themselves.

The fact that marriages were arranged does not mean that they were always without affection or even that the parties concerned did not have some influence in the process. The  Christian ideal of marriage as a loving, personal, faithful spousal union gained increasing acceptance in society, albeit more gradually in the noble class:

Medieval German marriage sermons had long emphasized that the goal of marriage was "loyalty, peace and harmony," which could be achieved only through the efforts of both spouses. For example, a sermon of 1449 describes emotional harmony (concordia animorum) as a major goal of marrige and gives a list of commandments on how to achieve love in marriage. (p.149)

Some noble marriages most certainly achieved a genuine marital love:

The Danish princess Dorothea wrote in 1535 to her husband Duke Albrecht of Brandenburg, "I cannot conceal from you how every night, and especially when I have just received your letters, all I dream is that I am lying with my husband, dearest to my heart, and share all joy and pastime with you." The funeral sermon preached for Dorothea in 1547 said, "There was such mutual love between the spouses that one can truly use the old saying, "Though their bodies are two, their hearts are one". (p.151)

There were also unhappy marriages. One historian has estimated that about 10 percent of noble marriages broke down. Interestingly, 69 percent of legal applications made for judicial separation in the ecclesiastical court at Constance were initiated by women (p.166), a number that has changed little from today.

Noblemen of that era had the option of taking a concubine. They could install a woman from a lower social class in a house outside the castle and visit her and his illegitimate children. It was considered socially acceptable among the nobility as long as protocol was not violated: it was improper for the concubine to be treated better than the wife. Interestingly, it was thought a deep violation of the social code if the concubine exercised the type of sway over the nobleman that was thought to be the proper preserve of his wife. Over time, and under the influence of Christian morality, laws were passed against concubinage, but the nobility were powerful enough to resist these measures.

What caused marriages to break down? Interestingly, there are historians who believe that the shift toward companionate ideals of marriage might have played some role:

Stone regards the increase in marital breakdown in the course of the sixteenth century as the product of middle-class and Puritan values - rising expectations of affection and companionship in marriage, coupled with increasing public disapproval of the mistresses and illegitimate children who had previously provided a relief, at least for men, in arranged marriages.

Finally, there is the issue of choice of marriage partners. The extent to which young people had a say in marriage partner seems to have varied. Judith Hurwich cites examples where young nobles had no choice at all, but were expected to follow the wishes of the family. However, increasingly young people were able to exercise at least some choice. By the late 1400s, the children of the urban elite were actively participating in their own marriage negotiations. According to Judith Hurwich, they wanted the potential for affection to exist and could veto parental choices when this was absent (pp. 105-106).

Judith Hurwich summarises recent research on the customs of the English aristocracy as follows:

even before 1550, there was some room for personal affection and free choice of partners, and daughters as well as sons had the power to veto partners they disliked. Many sixteenth-century English peers in their testaments cautioned executors against forcing their daughters into marriages to which the women objected. (pp. 106-107).

Conclusion 

You could not read Judith Hurwich's history and come away thinking that noble marriage was organised around the concept of women as chattel. Rather, both sexes shared the aim of maintaining a noble lineage, and it is clear that marital practices were organised to a considerable degree to achieve this outcome. Nor was the ideal of concord and affection in marriage absent. Much of Judith Hurwich's history is focused on how these two distinct aims were managed and reconciled.