So the fall semester is finally in sufficient order that I can return to blogging. I don’t imagine that I was particularly missed. But I’ll proceed on the assumption that at least some readers liked to alternate their reflections on the very serious matters we usually discuss with one of my effusions.
The subject for today is an old chestnut, thrust again into the fire by Mark Lilla: the place of conservatism in the American university. Not, that is, the role of conservative politics. But rather the place of conservative ideas as objects of academic study. Like Peter Berkowitz a few months ago, Lilla laments the absence of the classics of conservatism from syllabi on political theory. We must, he suggests (meaning “we scholars”), start “taking the right seriously”.
Well, who you calling “we”? Before the newshole closes entirely, I want to make it known that I take the right so seriously that I’m teaching a whole seminar on conservative political thought. So far, reaction from students and faculty has been exclusively positive and encouraging.
Of course, I’m not a very important person, just a lowly ABD. But I see very little evidence of the hostility to the study of conservatism that Lilla and Berkowitz detect in faculty lounges from Berkeley to, well, Cambridge. Is it possible that conservative thought isn’t often taught because few try to do it in a serious, unpolemical way? I guess I’ll find out.
But here’s the game I’d like to play. You tell me what you think should go on the syllabus. After I’ve received some responses, I may reveal what I’ve decided–and perhaps try to defend some of my choices. This isn’t a reality show: conservatives shouldn’t be too concerned with immediate popular sentiment, and I’m pretty happy with the reading list I’ve put together. However, I’m sincerely interested to know what books others think are unjustly (or justly) neglected.
Also, since Peter has outed me as a former punk, I hereby announce that until further notice, I’m going to follow the example of my old comrade Spencer Ackerman and title all my posts with lyrics from hardcore songs. Extra points for anyone who can identify the source. Don’t cheat and use Google. Believe me, I’ll know.
[An addendum: Daniel McCarthy offers his own list here.]
September 17th, 2009 | 3:51 pm
Sam,
Some titles for study:
1. Liebnitz and the Gift of Science, by Roger Berkowitz (Bard College).
2. Vol. 5, CW Eric Voegelin, Modernity Without Restraint, 3 vols.:
a. The Political Religions
b. The New Science of Politics
c. Science, Politics, and Gnosticism
3. The Philosophy of Edith Stein, by Antonio
Calcago.
4. Gnostic Wars, by Stefan Rossbach
September 18th, 2009 | 12:25 am
among other readings, on my syllabus would be found (in no particular order):
1. Burke-Kirk tag team (Reflections/Conservative Mind)
2. Oakeshott (Rationalism in Politics, etc.)
3. Strauss, Natural Right & History + “WIPP?”
4. something on classical liberalism as a species of conservatism (?): e.g. Friedman, “The Relationship Between Economic and Political Freedom,” Hayek, Road to Serfdom
5. something from Twelve Southerners, I’ll Take My Stand
6. Neoconservatism: I. Kristol, “The Neoconservative Persuasion,” GWB, Second Inaugural
7. Tocqueville
8. “Conservative existentialism”: Delsol, Icarus Fallen
September 18th, 2009 | 12:50 am
1. Making Men Moral by Robert George
2. After Virtue by Alasdair McIntyre (not conservative per se, but I think his critique leans that way)
3. Technology and Justice by George Grant
September 18th, 2009 | 9:01 am
NOT LISTED IN ORDER OF GREATNESS
1. Tocqueville on the Puritans with Marilynne Robinson/Tocqueville generally
2. Walker Percy
3. Flannery O’Connor
4. Chesterton
5. Scruton
6. Carey McWilliams
7. Delsol/Manent/Beneton
8. Leon Kass, esp. on GENESIS
9. William Alexander Percy, Tom Wolfe, Admiral Stockdale and other American Stoics
10. Wendell Berry/Willa Cather and stuff like that
September 18th, 2009 | 12:39 pm
On thing that’s striking in all these suggestion is how contemporary and ideologically ambiguous they mostly are (Sarah’s list is an exception). No one even thinks students should read Burke and de Maistre? Come on, no guts, no glory.
September 18th, 2009 | 12:47 pm
Great lists, especially Sara and Peter. One might also consider Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard and Lichenstein addresses, John Courtney Murray, Bruckberger,and Orestes Brownson. Also, if you’re going to include contemporary writers like Delsol and Manent then Peter has a few essays that would work well too.
September 18th, 2009 | 1:23 pm
Ivan is right that one should explicitly address religiously inspired conservatism (e.g. Neuhaus and Wolterstorff on the public square, Niebuhr, some encyclicals perhaps).
September 18th, 2009 | 1:26 pm
So more
Ratzinger and RAT CHOICE personal logos theory
Solzhenitsyn
Brownson
Kirk
our Jim Ceaser on the various kinds of conservatives
The films of John Ford and Whit Stillman
Murray–esp THE PROBLEM OF GOD
“Dr. Pat” Deneen
Mark Henrie
Harvey Mansfield on manliness and constitutionalism
C.S. Lewis and Gil Meilaender
James Schall
Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia–both both right and wrong on the Const.
Lincoln–while avoiding the quasi-messianic spin
Mary Nichols on Plato and Aristotle–the best intro to classic thought in my opinion
The first 130 or so pages of Bloom, THE CLOSING, as long as you make clear it’s an exaggeration.
BURKE (of course)
AND SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T “WORK FOR ME”–MacIntrye
September 18th, 2009 | 11:49 pm
Some great lists…
It strikes me that a pretty neat course could be developed combining conservative thought and practical politics. Some of these lists mention political rhetoric among the most important artifacts for students to read to understand conservative thought. What other statements, speeches, opinions, or statutes might be included on this front?
For example, I recently discovered and incorporated into an American Government textbook chapter the contrasting executive orders of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton on federalism (Reagan’s Executive Order 12612 and Clinton’s Executive Order 13083).
Secondly, how might these lists differ based on the level of the course? What would you assign upper division students, and what would you assign graduate students? How might this depend on the type of school (liberal arts v. state university)?
And thanks, Sam, for making me feel completely helpless without my faithful crutch of google… I ignored your edict and googled it anyway. It is remarkable that you not just tolerated but embraced this musical genre.
September 19th, 2009 | 9:07 am
Great lists and ideas for developing courses of study, but let me say something about Sam’s challenge. I cheated so I won’t play. Instead I’ll play the role of investigative journalist.
If I googled properly, then I guess this lyric comes from a late 80s/early 90s Boston band (whose name I will not state in accordance with Sam’s instructions). They probably played shows at places like the Rat in Kenmore Square. They were probably similar to bands like Gang Green, but not entirely because Allmusic classifies them (perhaps falsely) as “straight edge” putting them more in the Minor Threat category.
With a name like theirs (which is a reference to hockey amongst other entendres) they are more than likely sports fans, and probably belong to the genre of hard core that Henry Rollins calls “f**k yeah!” punk.
It’s a typically unedifying story with regard to how I know any of this, but know it I do (though my investigation is premised upon my googling correctly). Unlike Sam, I was never in a punk band or a member of the punk scene–so I lack authenticity. Like Jocelyn, I too am amazed at Sam’s toleration of, if not love for this musical genre. It shows real character, and probably makes a more interesting story than mine.
So I am curious (to reference an earlier post and a naughty movie) what “HOLIER THAN THOU” band (pace Lawler) were you in?
BTW, I remember the name of this “old tyme hardcore” band from back in the day.
September 19th, 2009 | 12:21 pm
Okay, so Jocelyn and John have Googled correctly. The answer is a Boston-based, straight-edge, sports themed band from the late ’80s–one named, in fact, Slapshot. To tell the truth, Slapshot were never one my favorites, being moronic even by hardcore standards. But the various entendres in the lyrics to this song were too tempting to resist. Someday I promise to give an account of my punk career. But not today–and I can assure you that no one who was not in New Jersey hardcore scene c. 1998 has heard of my band (or the New York punk c. 1995 if its a question of my earlier group).
As for the lists, all great suggestions. What I find interesting is how cultural, existential, and American they tend to be–not much politics, not much Europe. In this course, I’m attempting something much simpler: a survey of the classics and major trends in conservative thought. Although I’m still playing with ideas, I thought the syllabus might look something like this:
1. Rights and Revolution:
Burke, Rousseau, Declaration of the Rights of Man.
2. Counterrevolution
de Maistre, Bonald
3. Romanticism and Nostalgia
Novalis, Coleridge, Hegel
4. Capitalism and Industry
Disraeli, Carlyle, Fitzhugh
5. Culture and Elitism
Arnold
6. Political Theology
Cortes, Pius IX, Schmitt
7. The Old Right
Southern Agrarians, Nock, Ortega y Gasset
8. New Traditionalists and Old Liberals
Oakeshott, Hayek, Kirk
9. Neo-Conservatism
Kristol, Bell, Moynihan, Fukuyama
10. Religion and Public Life
Murray, Neuhaus, Niebuhr
11. Paleo-Conservatism
Nisbet, Bradford, maybe one of the American Conservative types.
In short, not so much the thought of people who are conservatives, but expressions of conservative visions of social/political order. Roughly chronological. What do you think of that? Probably I’ll also add some of the thematic texts, e.g. Scruton’s The Meaning of Conservatism, as supplementary reading.
September 19th, 2009 | 4:07 pm
Great topic! I am also teaching a seminar on conservatism, and hope to post a bit more about it shortly. The text for the class is Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945.
Although Kirk is often, and very rightly, included in such classes, I think The Roots of American Order deserves more attention than it might receive…at the very least, students should be exposed to the argument (which I don’t buy) that the American founding was “Burkean.”
September 19th, 2009 | 5:02 pm
Looks interesting…. I’d take it!
September 19th, 2009 | 7:28 pm
Expressions of conservative visions of social/political order is a good way to order the course. It looks excellent.
Nonetheless, it appears your topics have a chronological order, though not perfectly so. In starting out with the French revolution and reaction, does this ordering give credence to some sort of historicism? Also, your course readings move from European to American writers, though once again not perfectly.
If these two points are granted, wouldn’t Tocqueville fit in somewhere too?
September 20th, 2009 | 2:45 am
And regarding your shift from Europe to America and its relation to Tocqueville, perhaps Lawler’s suggestion of Solzhenitsyn is appropriate insofar as he offers an alternative to the mixed bag of American and Russian futures presented by Toqueville and Hegel and Heidegger. But then this becomes a game of who has the last laugh, and the modern philosopher Hobbes already tells us that no one will leave the party first for fear of being laughed at by those who remain. So conservatism is either part of liberalism’s party insofar as it yells stop to 1789′s momentum, or it must fear liberalism’s laughter and is somehow ashamed. So any class on conservatism must ask what the principles of conservatism are. What principles withstand liberalism’s ridicule?
And then if you are concerned with visions of order, then surely Voegelin becomes important here. He presents not merely a vision of order but provides an inquiry into the history of order as the order of history. This sounds like a riddle, but it is an attempt–vis a vis the texts available (sanskrit, hebrew, greek, roman)–to provide a historico-phenomenological account of the experience of order coming into the luminosity of consciousness, and the various modes into which that ordered consciousness comes into being.
But then one must question this question of the importance an order in history itself, and this brings us back to Strauss. Why must one be concerned with various modes of opacity and lucidity–compaction and differentiation–as they appear in history. I must live my life, and there are fundamental questions which can’t be ignored regardless of the times one lives in. For instance–does my restlessness indicate an incapacity to be a philosopher as one who is in need of nothing though being self-sufficient, or is it an indication that philosophy as self understood is inadequate to the desires and demands of self-sufficiency that can only rest in thee (God)?
Either way, with Voegelin and Strauss we have moved beyond conservatism in terms of reactions to the events of 1789. So let me suggest Strauss’ review of Schmitt’s “Concept of the Political” as at least an attempt to get out of this conundrum. He calls Schmitt–of all people–a liberal, and in so doing he opens thought to alternatives that cannot be simply called conservative or liberal. This may be the most truly conservative position, apart from Solzhenitsyn’s suggestion of the “howl” of existentialism beneath modern culture or Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins.
All of this is just thoughts. Sam’s class still looks exellent–sorry for my rant.
September 20th, 2009 | 5:12 am
I am not a good writer–there are “nots” and “its” missing in the above, which makes what I have to say nonsensical.
September 20th, 2009 | 5:55 am
So what would the punk say. He would have been lazy, but he surely would have smelled bullshit. And at this point our punk friend is looking for someone to recognize him. Our friend is probably smart enough that whatever recognition he receives is part of a making what makes one real some sort of flesh beating the s**t out of an another. Somehow, it all points to violence, but I like the fact that I can take the conversation to a point that thinks about alternatives of life.
September 20th, 2009 | 3:46 pm
John, I very much appreciate your explication of Voegelin’s project which is rather dramatically revealed in his essay “in Search of the Ground,” where in response to Leibniz famous query responds, “…there is no answer, because the ground from which things are what they are, and are at all, is a transcendent divine Ground; there is no answer except in the symbolisms of theology or of a myth or of a metaphysics of transcendent divine Being or something like that…”
All of which points to the oft overlooked importance of Schelling (and his philosophies of myth and revelation) and his ability to rise above the “din of parochial confusions” and to bring philosophy back to its primary task which is the quest for reality “within and beyond its phenomenon” as it presents itself symbolically within the order of human history.
And, while I have no knowledge of Strauss I do agree with you that Voegelin “moved beyond conservatism in terms of reactions to 1789,” in his desire to place “common sense” as the intrinsic foundation of a classical philosophy devoid of ideology, a classical philosophy of sufficient strength to overcome the gnostic ideological doctrines so popular in Europe during his lifetime.
September 20th, 2009 | 3:58 pm
I suggest Jim Kalb’s new book The Tyranny of Liberalism, or an excerpt from it.
Conservative “best of” lists tend to be too theory-oriented. Policy is the true battleground, and you’ll attract more controversy in the study of present-day proposals.
The writings of Allan Carlson on family policy and feminism would make a good addition, since he often combines theoretical critiques with concrete policy recommendations. His recent essay in praise of anti-pornography and anti-contraception crusader Anthony Comstock would certainly challenge your students.
On foreign policy and its relationship to a culture of self-government, Andrew Bacevich’s _The Limits of Power_ could be a good source.
September 21st, 2009 | 9:27 am
Kevin: I haven’t read Kalb. But it looks like the kind of pop philosophy that students could read on their own, if they’re interested in that sort of thing. My goal in this, or most any course, is to emphasise material that I think is difficult of access, whether for theoretical or historical reasons. That’s where students and I can help each in other understand through reading and discussion.
A course in conservative public policy ideas would, I think, be excellent–it’s a subject lot of people are thinking about following Irving Kristol’s death. But I’m really not qualified to teach that material with the rigor it deserves.
John, you’re right that the plan has a Europe to American (Tocquevillian?) trajectory. And it certainly would be interesting to go back to Europe towards the end. But there probably won’t be time, alas.
September 22nd, 2009 | 5:12 am
Kalb’s work strikes me as only two or three notches below Tocqueville in gravity, and two or three notches above someone like, say, David Horowitz. His attempt to analyze egalitarian liberalism is certainly more theoretical, and more radical, than the average radio host polemic.
If your course lacks intellectual conservative works critical of contemporary multiculturalism, feminism, and sexual radicalism, I think you’re doing a disservice both to your students and to conservatism.
It’s a minefield, I know, but these are where students are most likely to uncritically affirm leftist orthodoxies and despise conservatism.
September 22nd, 2009 | 10:13 am
Fun and useful stuff, all. Next up, I would hope, reading lists on courses on contemporary liberal thought, which necessarily must include Recommendations For Manageably Editing Rawls’ Corpus So As To Not Drive One’s Student’s Insane.
And, we eagerly await Goldman’s list of the most conservative punk songs, with PG-rated lyric samples included, of course!
September 24th, 2009 | 2:52 am
Since you mentioned Novalis, I would suggest Hölderlin, as well. Here are some others that I cannot categorize: Shestov’s Athens & Jerusalem, and H. L. Mencken’s writings in general.
December 15th, 2009 | 3:20 pm
[...] that the semester is almost over, a brief follow up to the discussion about the place of conservatism in the university……reading this piece about Donald Livingston and the Abbeville Institute got [...]
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact