The Irony of Modern Conservatism

Bibliographic Data

ID6297701
AuthorsRein Staal, R A Staal (corresponding author)
Year1987
Volume8
Issue4
Pages343-353
Publication date1987-10-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Political Science Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0192-5121 • E-ISSN: 1460-373X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/019251218700800405
OpenAlexW1963568212
LanguageEN
References cited16

Under scrutiny, modern conservatism often dissolves into a form of liberalism. This paradox appears, instructively, even in conservative thought at its best, in the political teachings of Michael Oakeshott and Leo Strauss. Both thinkers advance the claim that modern man faces a choice between Hobbesian liberalism and some form of mass democracy or totalitarianism. In this sense, both Oakeshott's traditionalism and Strauss's classicism are paradoxical or ironical. Conservatism is thus limited to preventing the decomposition of early, liberal modernity into later, radical modernity. Yet the success of the early modern project has produced a deracinated political culture in need of the qualities downplayed by modern conservatism: authority, community, a sense of place and of duty. The irony of modern conservatism suggests a reexamination of the conservative vocation in our times

Aesthetics · Conservatism · Duty · Epistemology · Irony · Legitimacy · Liberalism · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Scrutiny · Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, History, and Historiography · Political Theory and Influence · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

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