The conservative paradigm, part 2
The conservative paradigm, part 2
Reflections on Chapter 3, Parts 6-11, of Hazony's Conservatism: A Rediscovery
The second half of Hazony’s Chapter 3, “The Conservative Paradigm,” is surely the meatiest part of the book. Hazony continues to lay out the premises of a conservative political theory. These principles, and Hazony’s commentary on them, are worthy of sustained reflection—far more than my two Substack posts (part 1 here). But I’ll venture a few more comments
Traditional institutions vs. the “hermeneutics of suspicion”
Hazony regards language, religion, law, and forms of government and economic activity as “traditional institutions”—the means by which a nation flourishes in the present and propagates itself into the future (p.142). The challenge is to uphold these institutions while introducing necessary repairs over time, because no institution is perfect.
Contrast Hazony’s approach with the “hermeneutics of suspicion” of Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, and the postmodernists. Their worldviews regard traditional institutions not as sources of flourishing but as systems of oppression and power. The task of the postmodernist is to “deconstruct” these institutions, to reconfigure power relationships, to put something or someone else in charge. Yet to what end? To no end. Even to have an “end”—a vision of the good, of truth—is suspicious. It is yet more systemic “oppression,” itself worthy of “deconstruction.”
The postmodernist worldview, which passes today under the label “critical theory,” is a universal solvent. It dissolves everything, destroying even itself.
This has implications for our political discourse. Hazony contrasts critical reasoning with constructive reasoning (pp.152-153). The former is a “revolutionary form of reasoning” that positions itself outside of, even in opposition to, a nation and its inherited institutions, “without a prior commitment to their preservation.”
But “[i]n conservative societies, arguments proceed differently.” Constructive reasoning is the method of committed insiders. It grows out of the bonds of mutual loyalty and asks how “to strengthen the loyalty group and improve conditions for its members.” Arguments are no less vehement, but they are “framed in terms of inherited principles,” building upon past achievements and introducing needful repairs.
Freedom vs. constraint
Political and moral obligation arises not from the consent of the individual but as a consequence of the individual’s membership in loyalty groups like family, tribe, and nation (p.154). This is the fifth premise of Hazony’s conservative political theory, but it is the most paradigm-shifting of them all. His central point is that all of us “are under certain obligations, whether we consent to them or not” (p.155).
Unchosen obligations shape our individual and collective lives. Family supplies the elemental example: “It is the existence of a relation of parent and child, not anyone’s consent to it, that is the source of” familial obligations (p.156, emphasis added). We feel the same weightiness of obligation to our communities, our faith traditions, and our nation.
Even marriage has this flavor. While it is freely chosen at the outset, the obligations that marriage imposes on husband and wife endure in a permanent (or semi-permanent) covenantal bond—an open-ended relationship of mutual love and support whose demands do not fluctuate based on fleeting notions of “consent.”
To reframe the source of political obligation is also to reframe the nature of freedom itself. There is no freedom without constraint, Hazony reminds us. “Constraint is, in fact, the key to everything productive or good” (p.163). Freedom, properly conceived, is not every man doing what is right in his own eyes. That kind of “freedom” is anarchy, slavery, and death. Rather, everything we call freedom “emerges through a well-structured constraint.” It is “learned by imitation, maintained through honor and self-discipline, and handed down … from one generation to the next” (p.164).
W(h)ither covenant?
Which brings me again to the concept of covenant. I’ve suggested that covenant may hold the key to Hazony’s thinking about a “conservative paradigm.” But even here in Chapter 3, in his finest elaboration of the paradigm, he eschews the concept entirely. (The book’s index has no entry for “covenant.”)
This is a serious deficiency in Hazony’s thought, particularly given its self-conscious roots in the Bible. Greater engagement with the biblical notion of covenant would bear much fruit for a conservative political theory.
The Sinai covenant has a special contribution to make here. As Os Guinness lays out in his book The Magna Carta of Humanity, the revelation at Sinai was revolutionary—then and now. The Sinai covenant is neither a top-down imposition of power and rules, nor a bottom-up expression of individual consent and self-interest. It is something else entirely: a collective commitment to individual responsibility, first to God, then to family and to one another.
This goes beyond “theories” and “paradigms.” As Rabbi Sacks has put it, covenant “is the decision to make love—not power, wealth, or force majeure—the generative principle of life.” And as Os Guinness elaborates, in the biblical understanding, covenant “replace[s] self-interest, power, and dominance with liberty, love, and loyalty” in an enduring, inter-generational relationship of mutual dependence.
I wish Hazony’s paradigm had engaged more deeply with biblical-covenantal thought.