In reference to Will’s particularity-and-truth thread, Helen offers some reflections on Burke that lend themselves so well to speaking theologically that, well, here we go. My familiarity with Burke nowadays is a lot narrower, if deeper, than it was a decade ago, but I can’t really recall anything I’ve come across that considers Burke in openly theological terms. What would it mean, for instance, to take Burke’s "sacred veil" at its word? Helen:
To accept Burke’s “sacred veil” is to conclude that a legend which breeds pride in one’s country is morally preferable to a factual story which breeds shame or humility.
We all know the factual story about shame and humility to be gleaned from the Testaments; to read the sacredness of Burke’s veil in reference to an always-already given story about the abiding guilt and humility of Man is to open up all manner of intriguing questions about both the relationship between the hidden and the holy and that between the concealing and revealing (or ‘performative’) aspects of clothing and adornment. I don’t know if reading Burke in this way would do more to reveal something new about the Western crisis in trying to do moral philosophy with one (theological) hand tied behind the back or something old, and/or if, as a third option, it might bump us back into the pomocon-Rorty stalemate (A: "You’re in denial." B: "You’re kooky.") But I for one have never hooked up the general question with Burke in this way before, and after all, that’s what blogs are for.
PS to answer Helen’s titular question with a question, wouldn’t this read suggest that some arbitary loyalties are more defensible than others? Then, which? Bonus: what does a Calvinist read of Burke tell us about the connection between sublimity, obscurity, and arbitrary — that is, inherited — loyalty?
UPDATE: Alan Jacobs tips me off to the following excerpt from his book on original sin ( Original Sin ):
[ . . . ] Burke would write a slashing open letter to the Duke of Bedford that would indicate quite clearly what he thought of those aristocrats who failed to be what they ought to be; but in general he sees the oak-like continuity of the old aristocratic families as the strongest bulwarks against the ravages of sin in public life. It is not clear how, on any biblical or Christian account, this should be the case.
So the conservatives of the post-World-War-II period who invoke the explanatory power of original sin and the guiding authority of Edmund Burke formed a link that may not hold. And therefore it’s worth noting that during the period we have been discussing — the period, roughly, from Rebecca West’s first visit to Yugoslavia in 1936 to the publication of Witness in 1952 — the American thinker most widely known for renewing a commitment to the depths of human sinfulness and the dangers of an “easy conscience” was Reinhold Niebuhr.
