Conservatism as the Highest Form of Modernism
February 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment
by Dr. Robert P. Kraynak
Arguments for Conservatism: A Political Philosophy by Roger Scruton.
Conservatives always need to be on the look-out for new arguments to defend their positions, despite their conviction that there is “nothing new under the sun.” They may wish to live unreflectively by following the customs of their ancestors, but circumstances require that they also be vigilant culture warriors and defiantly critical intellectuals simply to preserve what is best in the past. That is because conservatism arises in response to modernity—as a defense of tradition against the modern spirit of revolution and its insatiable desire to remake society according to utopian ideologies and even to transform human nature through social engineering. A conservative thinker is driven by a kind of reluctant necessity to oppose these trends and often feels like a lonely knight from an ancient chivalric order battling against overwhelming historical forces. Yet, strangely, this means that a conservative thinker is more a modernist than a naive traditionalist, and it may even imply that conservatism is the highest form of modernism in the sense of being the most thoughtful and self-conscious way of living in the modern world.
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