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At a time when the label "conservative" is indiscriminately applied to fundamentalists, populists, libertarians, fascists, and the advocates of one or another orthodoxy, this volume offers a nuanced and historically informed presentation of what is distinctive about conservative social and political thought. It is an anthology with an argument, locating the origins of modern conservatism within the Enlightenment and distinguishing between conservatism and orthodoxy. Bringing together important specimens of European and American conservative social and political analysis from the mid-eighteenth century through our own day, Conservatism demonstrates that while the particular institutions that conservatives have sought to conserve have varied, there are characteristic features of conservative argument that recur over time and across national borders.
The book proceeds chronologically through the following sections: Enlightenment Conservatism (David Hume, Edmund Burke, and Justus Möser), The Critique of Revolution (Burke, Louis de Bonald, Joseph de Maistre, James Madison, and Rufus Choate), Authority (Matthew Arnold, James Fitzjames Stephen), Inequality (W. H. Mallock, Joseph A. Schumpeter), The Critique of Good Intentions (William Graham Sumner), War (T. E. Hulme), Democracy (Carl Schmitt, Schumpeter), The Limits of Rationalism (Winston Churchill, Michael Oakeshott, Friedrich Hayek, Edward Banfield), The Critique of Social and Cultural Emancipation (Irving Kristol, Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, Hermann Lübbe), and Between Social Science and Cultural Criticism (Arnold Gehlen, Philip Rieff). The book contains an afterword on recurrent tensions and dilemmas of conservative thought.
List of contents
Preface Ch. 1Enlightenment Conservatism "Of Justice," from An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) Culture and Anarchy (1869) Aristocracy and Evolution: A Study of the Rights, the Origin, and Social Functions of the Wealthier Classes (1898) "Sociological Fallacies" (1884) "Essays on War" (1916) "When Parliament Cannot be Sovereign" (1931) "Speech on Rebuilding the House of Commons" (1943) "Pornography, Obscenity, and the Case for Censorship" (1971) "On Culture, Nature, and Naturalness" (1958) Index
About the author
Jerry Z. Muller is Professor of History at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. His previous books,
Adam Smith in His Time and Ours: Designing the Decent Society and
The Other God That Failed: Hans Freyer and the Deradicalization of German Conservatism are available from Princeton in paperback.
Summary
Offers a historically informed presentation of what is distinctive about conservative social and political thought. This volume locates the origins of "modern"???' conservatism within the Enlightenment and distinguishes between conservatism and orthodoxy. It contains an afterword on recurrent tensions and dilemmas of conservative thought.
Additional text
"Mr. Miller has covered the bases well, giving a good accounting of the breadth and variety of the subject he anthologizes."---Stephen Goode, Washington Times
