conservative thinkers and their ideologies

thomas hobbes - order

• In ‘Leviathan’, Hobbes argued that the state of nature made life “nasty, brutish and short” and so  a ‘leviathan’ (dominant state) is needed to keep order in society

  • The Leviathan is imposed on people from above (follows traditional conservatism ideas of hierarchy and authority)

• Hobbes argued that sacrificing liberty for social order is desirable

thomas hobbes - human nature

• Hobbes had a pessimistic view of human nature

• He believed that if humans were left in the state of nature, they would be violent towards one another and not respect private property

• Q: Without law and order, there would be “a war of all against all”

• Instead, Hobbes believe that order must be imposed on a society to stop the danger of human imperfection

edmund burke - counter-enlightenment thought

• Burke rejected enlightenment liberalism and disagreed with the view that humans are rational creatures - he believed in human imperfection

• As a result, he disagreed with building society around human rationality, as enlightenment liberals believed

• Burke’s rejection of liberal nationality was influenced by witnessing the French revolution

  • He disagreed with the idea that people could destroy society and create a brand new, fairer system

  • Systems in society should be preserved instead

edmund burke - change

• Burke believed that society was shaped by “the law of our Creator” - thus if humans tamper with tradition, they are challenging the will of God and are thus more likely to make human affairs worse than better

• Burke however, is also associated with the traditional conservative view of ‘change to conserve’

• Burke urged British Tories to accept change in order to conserve society after witnessing the French Revolution

  • Q: “A state without the means of some change is without the means of its own conservation”

  • Q: Burke argues that we should be “cautious when venturing upon pulling down an edifice which has answered, to any tolerable degree, the common purpose of society”

• He saw threats to conservatism from Enlightenment Liberalism and Socialism

• Burke also believed in gradual change, rather than revolutionary change

  • Changes should consider the impact on the present and future, but also listen to the mistakes and lessons of the past

edmund burke - tradition & empiricism

• Burke believed that we should follow traditions and practices that have been passed down for generations

• His idea of the social contract involves paying attention to “the dead” - learning lessons from history rather than choosing radical untested ideas

• Q: He believed that we should have a social contract between “those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born”

michael oakeshott - tradition

• Q: Oakeshott wrote that to be conservative is to “prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried” and to prefer “the actual to the possible”

michael oakeshott - human imperfection

• Oakeshott believed that humans are intellectually imperfect - political ideas are so broad and complex that we as humans are unable to grasp them

  • Q: “In political activity men sail a boundless and bottomless sea”

michael oakeshott - pragmatism

• Oakeshott believed that conservatism should be pragmatic

• Instead of being highly ideological, conservatives should make practical decisions

• Oakeshott believed that the state should be maintained but not overhauled or changed in a revolutionary way

ayn rand - objectivism

• Rand supported the philosophical idea of objectivism, which argues that we can gain objective knowledge through the use of knowledge and reason

• Objectivists believe that knowledge exists outside of consciousness, and so can be discovered and perceived

• Objectivism also argues that pursuing individual happiness if the purpose of life

• She supported ideas of human rationality, and that we should trust individuals to make decisions for themselves

• Rand opposed conservative paternalism

ayn rand - rationalism

• Rand believed that because humans are rational and self-interested beings, we have a duty to put our interests before other people’s and that altruism is immoral

• Rand was rational egoist, because she believed that acting in one’s own interest was rational

• Rand was also an ethical egoist, because she believed that we are morally obliged to act in our own interest

ayn rand - freedom

• Rand supported a laissez-faire economic system and believed this was the only way for individuals to be truly free

robert nozick - libertarianism

• Q: Nozick opposed taxes calling them “legalised theft” - and therefore economic redistribution and social justice is theft of individual private property

  • As a result, Nozick objected to the welfare state

• Nozick supported free-market capitalism and believed that the way goods are distributed in the free market is just

• Nozick disagreed with any policy that meant individuals in societies were used as a means to an end, rather than an end in themselves

robert nozick - justice

• Nozick disagreed with state interventions in order to redistribute resources in a more just way

• He believed that if the state had control over justice, resources would be given to groups that are important to win elections, such as the elderly

robert nozick - self-ownership

• Individual sovereignty is an important part of Nozick’s political philosophy

• He considered the right of the individual for ownership over their own person to be a vital part of being human

• Nozick believed that if the state had control over individuals, individuals will be reduced to having work for a common goal rather than individual self-determination

• Instead, he believed that individuals should own their bodies and abilities