‘The History of European Conservative Thought’: The Genealogy of an Idea
A review of ‘The History of European Conservative Thought’, by Francesco Giubilei; Regnery Gateway, 2019.
Conservatism started with the French Revolution. In 1789, the Estates-General, comprising the nobles, clergy and commoners, convened to address the financial crisis. Each held one vote, meaning two could outvote the other. This angered The Third Estate, for commoners made up 98 percent of the population. Its call for ‘votes per head’ was refused. It broke away, forming the National Assembly and demanding reform. But reform was not forthcoming. The price of bread kept rising. The people began to starve. In July, they stormed the Bastille.
Over in England, Edmund Burke, a Whig, watched on with interest. He had supported the American Revolution. He was also a fierce critic of George III. But he was troubled by the zeal of the revolutionaries, of where their fervour might take them. When a young correspondent wrote to him, asking what he thought of the events, Burke was unambiguous. His response was his masterpiece, Reflections on the Revolution in France. In it, he set out an unsystematic but coherent philosophy, mounting the case that the ‘geometric’ (ie. abstract), purportedly rational, grounds of the revolution ignored the complexities of human nature and society and was doomed to end in bloodshed. He was right.
When a young correspondent wrote to him, asking what he thought of the events, Burke was unambiguous.
Burke, by stressing the organic nature of society, the fallibility of human beings, and the importance of tradition, became ‘the father of conservatism’ — though the term was not coined till 1818, when Joseph-René du Chateaubriand used the word conservative to describe ‘respectable people’. And in Francesco Giubilei’s The History of European Conservative Thought traces the history this tradition from Burke onwards, sketching its most interesting European and American thinkers.
After Burke, he explores the ideas of Benjamin Disraeli, founder of ‘one-nation conservatism’, G.K. Chesterton, the prolific man of letters and Christian apologist, and a dozen others before ending with Sir Roger Scruton, who died in 2019. From there, he crosses the Channel to study the Savoyard philosopher Joseph de Maistre, whose Considerations sur la France, whose defence of throne-and-altar conservatism is a masterpiece of logic. (Charles Baudelaire said de Maistre ‘taught [him] how to think’.) In Austria, we encounter Count Klemens von Metternich; in Spain, Juan Donoso Cortés and George Santayana. Giubilei includes Americans on the feeble reasoning that the United States is the ‘heir’ of Great Britain. One suspects he merely wanted to write about John Adams, William F. Buckley, Jr. and others.
In Austria, we encounter Count Klemens von Metternich; in Spain, Juan Donoso Cortés.
It is to Giubilei’s credit that he does not elide those times in history when conservatism has had interesting bedfellows. It has found ways of coexisting with (and fighting against) just about everything and everyone: communism and fascism and liberalism and anarchism and libertarianism, monarchism and republicanism, free enterprise and interventionism and corporatism. This would seem to give weight to the notion, often contested, that conservatism is not an ideology but an attitude. This debate continues. The American thinker Robert Nisbet said it was an ideology. Oakeshott called it a ‘disposition’. In Italian thought, it is a kind of heuristic, a way of applying lasting truths to modern problems. James Orr, Associate Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, charts a middle course, suggesting the characterisation of conservatism as a disposition is partly true but overstated.
For this reviewer, what is most appealing about this book is its study of continental conservatism. Only in the English-speaking countries, as Roger Scruton noted, are there political parties that call themselves ‘conservative’. But there is a rich tradition of thinkers, from José Ortega y Gasset to Eric Voegelin to the Catholic traditionalists who have contributed mightily to political philosophy in general and conservatism in particular. His exploration unavoidably involves surveying the events and upheavals of what British historians call ‘the long 18th century’: the time starting with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when William and Mary took the throne of England following the exile of James II, to 1815, when the curtain fell on the Napoleonic Wars. This is one of history’s most interesting epochs, when industrialisation and the rise of the intellectual touched off seismic change across the continent.
His exploration unavoidably involves surveying the events and upheavals of what British historians call ‘the long 18th century’.
I am sorry to say that this book, which is an ambitious undertaking and thoroughly interesting, is poorly written and/or translated. Perhaps this due to a too-literal rendering of the Italian original. Words that do not exist in English crop up from time to time. There are errors, too: Burke was Irish-born, perhaps ‘Anglo-Irish’, but not English. One might argue that he was English, I suppose; but if that is so, one should not call him ‘Irish’ several pages later. The 18th century also refers to the 1700s, not the 1800s. Such errors are so avoidable they are puzzling to encounter. But there we are. But this does not take away from Giubilei his skill of knowing how deep and how wide to go. He leans on elucidatory quotations from other writers to distil complex ideas or summarise the beliefs of this or that thinker. He freely quotes the thinkers he mentions, letting them illuminate their arguments in their own words. (For Burke, for instance: ‘A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation’.) Up to a point the book resembles a reference guide, like a micro-encyclopedia, made up of brief biographical sketches and philosophical summaries to which we may turn as and when we need them.
If you like political philosophy, 18th century European history or the history of ideas, you will find The History of European Conservative Thought invaluable. It is written not for the specialist but the intelligent general reader, and makes links between the thinkers it concerns without attempting a grand synthesis. It traces, if you like, a genealogy of an idea, a family history. If you are after in-depth engagement with specific thinkers, then this is not the book for you; but you will discover thinkers with whom you wish to engage by reading it. What his book underlines is the lasting relevance and resilience of a very basic, very human idea — that good things are hard to build and easy to destroy—and how eloquently and creatively that point has been made through time.
