Core value - tradition

Society, state, HN

Tradition

• Values, practices and institutions that have endured time and passed from one generation to the next

• Includes traditional institutions - monarchy church, political instutitions and traditional values - marriage, family

Role of religious beliefs in supporting tradition

• As the world was created by God, traditional customs and practices are God-given

  • Tampering with the world = challenging the will of God

Burke - God and tradition

• Society is shaped by ‘the law of our Creator’ / ‘natural law’

  • Tampering with the world = challenging the will of God

Changing traditions post-18th century

• Old traditions replaced with new ones (man-made)

  • New traditions cannot be dubbed as God-given

• Therefore, religious argument begins to weaken

Modern fundamentalists

• Retain their religious objection to change

• View that God’s wishes were revealed to humankind in the literal truth of religious texts

Burke and Chesterton - role of ancestors in traditionDar

Burke

• Society is a partnership between ‘those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born’

Chesterton

• ‘Democracy of the dead’

‘Democracy of the dead’ - significance and meaning

• Tradition is the accumulated wisdom of the past

• It therefore gives our ancestors life throgh maintaining their legacy and influence

Darwinian justification for tradition

• Social darwinism

• Traditions and customs ahve only survived as they work and are valuable

Tradition as a sense of individual and societal identity

Established customs e.g. judiciary wearing robes and wigs, letterboxes being red

• Provide familiarity and reassurance due to strong historical basis

  • Historical basis creates a generation of social cohesion

    • Collective sense of self

Impact of change

• Journey into the unknown

  • Creation of sense of uncertainty and insecurity

Quotes: Burke

“The individual is foolish but the species is wise”

“A partnership… between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born”

Quotes: John Major

“Both the family and our nation are central to the security of the individual”

“The essential purpose of Conservatism is to conserve what is good and tried and reform when it is essential to do so”

Quotes: Oakeshott

“Just as a plants new leaves are connected to, dependent on and explained by the plant’s roots and branches, so a society’s present direction stems from its past development”

Quotes: Chesterton

“Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead”