Core value - organic society

State, society, HN

Relationship between inviduals and society

• Individuals are inseparable from society

  • Can’t and don’t exist outside of society due to psychological imperfection

    • Need for security means they need to be part of a social group (aka society) that can nurture them

Reluctance for freedom to mean negative freedoms

• Negative freedom causes ‘anomie’ (individuals are left alone and suffer, coined by Durkheim)

• Freedom involves accepting social obligations and ties by individuals who recognise their value - ‘doing one’s duty’

Freedom as a parent-child analogy

• Parents instructing their children about their behaviour = providing guidance for the child’s benefit

• The child then conforming to these wishes = them acting freely out of recognition of their obligations

Features of a society in which individuals know their rights yet do not acknowledge their duties

• Rootless

• Atomistic

Importance of duty and obligation in a society

• They are bonds that hold society together

Organic society

• Society is sustained by a set of relationships

  • Damage to these relationships threatens the future of society

• Humans are shaped by natural factors such as necessity, not human ingenuity

  • Humans cannot be arranged at will like a machine

  • The family was not invented by a social theorist or political thinker!

    • It was the product of care, love and responsbility (all natural social impulses)

      • Children don’t agree to a contract upon joining

• Humans are more than just a collection of our individual parts

Connection between tradition and organic society

• Tradition was naturally created and is not artificial

  • It plays an important role in maintaining relationships in society

    • Which without, society would fall apart

New Right rejection of ‘organic society’

• Influence of classical liberalism (of which individualisation is an important part)

Disraeli’s 2 nations - showing the need for social reform

• Feared 2 nations developing - rich and poor

• Increased social inequality among the poor would be the seeds of a revolution as the poor would not accept their misery

• Reform would be in the best interests of th erich as wealth comes with a responsibility towards the poor

Noblesse oblige

• Aristocracal obligation to be honourable and generous

Consequences of Disraeli’s concept of two nations

• Emergence of One Nation conservatism

Quotes: Thatcher (NR)

“There is no such thing as society, only individuals and their families”

Quotes: Disraeli (ON)

• The Palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy

Quotes: Burke

Society is like a tree as it grows from the accumulated wisdom of past generations. We should be “cautious when venturing upon pulling down an edifice which has answered, to any tolerable degree, the common purpose of society”