More on the Differences Between Conservatives and Liberals, Via Kekes

Brian Tamanaha

In a post last week, exploring the philosophical differences between conservatives and liberals, I quoted extensively from Roger Scruton and John Kekes, two leading conservative thinkers. The differences, I argued, did not appear to be that great, at least in terms of underlying views of human society and values. Kekes, who has published a number of books on conservatism, often takes positions that many liberals would find congenial, objectionable mainly in degree or in line drawing.

Kekes' most recent post on Right Reason, the third in a series of posts aimed at articulating the core conservative position, leads me to wonder whether the real differences are not in underlying philosophies but in attitudes. Consider this passage from his post:

A safe generalization about conservatives is that they are skeptical about progress. They are not so foolish as to deny that science, technology, education, and so forth have changed human lives for the better. But they have also changed them for the worse. The stock of human possibilities has been enlarged, yet with more possibilities come more evils. Conservatives doubt that more possibilities are bound to make lives on the whole better because they believe that permanent conditions render uncertain any significant improvement of the human condition. One of these permanent conditions is the prevalence of evil. In religious, ideological, racial, and ethnic conflicts, in unjust wars, terrorist attacks, and violent crime innocent people are murdered, tortured, and mutilated. All over the world cruelty, greed, prejudice, and fanaticism ruin the lives of countless victims. Outrage provokes outrage. Millions nurture seething hatred of real or imagined enemies. The forces of barbarism continually break through the superficial layer of order and threaten the security of a substantial segment of humanity. This is how it is now and how it has been throughout history.

Okay, so the world sucks. On that I think conservatives and liberals could agree.

But two differences between liberals and conservatives come to mind in reaction to the the above passage. Many a liberal would respond to the latter half--the stuff about unjust wars and torture--by thinking: "Yep, and we (the US of A) do a lot of that bad stuff too, alas." In constrast, many a conservative reading that passage would think about how screwed up and evil everyone else is, but without reflecting upon our own conduct.

The second difference is that a liberal would hope that things could be better, and would try in some way, however small and seemingly futile, to do something to make that happen. A conservative would think how screwed up and evil everyone else is. Here's Kekes' next passage:

The responsibility for all this evil lies with human beings. It would be shortsighted, however, to stop here because the prevalence of evil reflects not just a human propensity but also a contingency that influences what propensities human beings have and develop. The human propensity for evil is itself a manifestation of this deeper and more pervasive contingency which operates through genetic inheritance, environmental factors, the confluence of events that places people at certain places at certain times, the fortunate and unfortunate accidents that happen, and the historical period, society, and family into which people are born. These and other factors influence human affairs independently of human intentions. It would be unreasonable to conclude from this that contingency is a force for evil, since contingency could be a force for the good as well. The conservative view is that whether the balance of good and evil propensities and their realization by people tilts one way or another is a contingent matter over which human beings and the political frameworks they maintain have insufficient control. The right political frameworks will help, of course; just as the wrong ones will make matters worse. But not even the best political framework can bring contingency within human control because the efforts to control it are subject to the very contingency they aim to control. This is the fundamental reason why conservatives are skeptical about the possibility of a steady and overall improvement of the human condition.

Is Kekes--and those conservatives who agree--right that there has been little sustained improvement in the human condition and little reason to hope for more (so don't try for big positive changes)? A thousand years ago, chances are that Kekes would have been a serf who tilled the soil day in and day out, with no options, a short burdensome life, wives and children who died, etc. Of course, Kekes acknowledges there has been improvement in material conditions. Rather his contention is that there has been little or no change in the quality of our lives, at least in the sense of being surrounded by contingency and evil. But still...?

Kekes main point is to reject "ideologies" of all kind (in favor of preservation of the status quo and prudence). Ideologies have led us astray, increasing evil because they induce us to attempt the hopeless and often counter-productive task of making society better. Liberals, he suggests, are suckers for ideologies, seduced by some vision to try to make a better world.

But I keep thinking that the good old Founding Fathers were pursuing Enlightenment inspired ideologies (and many conservatives reject the Enlightenment), and the Civil Rights movement, and so on.
Posted 9:27 AM by Brian Tamanaha [link]