What is Conservatism? If you were to gather twenty conservatives in a room and ask this question, you would very likely come away with twenty answers. The answers may overlap in places but also frustratingly contradict one another. Conservatism, when treated as an “ism,” has the irritating habit of shifting its form depending on whichever of its foes looms largest at the cultural moment. William F. Buckley’s oft-quoted remark—that a conservative is someone who stands athwart history yelling “Stop!”— has, for many, become the whole impression of the movement. This is no small problem, for if conservatives define themselves a man defines himself entirely by negation, one begins to wonder whether they he havehas anything positive left worth conserving.
Yet the tradition is not as empty as this caricature suggests. On the contrary, conservatism has a rich inheritance for those willing to look past its surface quarrels to enduring principles. A careful reader might consult Russell Kirk, Roger Scruton, Edmund Burke, Peter Viereck, among others. Each, in his own way, has undertaken the task of giving conservatism substance—some more successfully than others—demonstrating that it is not merely a recoil from change, but a positive vision.
To this company we may now add Yoram Hazony, whose Conservatism: A Rediscovery (2022) stands as perhaps the most contemporary effort to put such a vision into words. Written during a turbulent moment in American politics, the book appeared just before the Trump-Vance ticket secured its decisive victory—a triumph that many read as signaling a new political realignment. Whether one regards that outcome as a principled vindication of conservatism or merely a temporary check upon its opponents, it has undeniably opened the door to new possibilities. Hazony, for his part, hopes it will lead to a National Conservative revolution—or better yet, a rediscovery.
With impressive credentials, Hazony is well-suited to lead this charge. He holds a degree from Princeton and a PhD in political philosophy from Rutgers. He currently serves as chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation and president of the Herzl Institute. He is also a devout Modern Orthodox Jew with a deep commitment to traditional religion and family. Few figures are as well equipped as Hazony to articulate an intellectual project of retrieval.
Hazony is a skilled coalition builder and has garnered many admirers in recent years. His involvement with the National Conservatism conference circuit has proven tremulously successful. In Conservatism: A Rediscovery, Hazony furthers his vision, arguing for a redefined conservatism—one that rejects accumulated liberal influences and defends itself as a distinct and historical political tradition.
History
Hazony begins Conservatism: A Rediscovery with history. We first encounter proto-conservative figures like John Fortescue, Richard Hooker, Edward Coke, and John Selden—a lesser-known group of judges, politicians, and theologians of the early modern era who defended English common law during critical periods of upheaval. These impulses and ideas are connected to the later Scottish Enlightenment, a movement marked by its distinctive conservative temperament. Within this circle of refined gentlemen, thinkers such as David Hume and Adam Smith provided a compelling defense of common sense in opposition to prevailing rationalist ideologies. These combined ideas find key expressions in the works of familiar conservative heroes like Edmund Burke.
According to Hazony, the American founding should be seen as a continuation of this Anglo-American conservative tradition. Leaders like Washington, Hamilton, Adams, and Jay intentionally diverged from the radicalism of Paine and Jefferson, choosing instead to build upon the accumulated traditions of common law. This approach provided a coherent legal and constitutional framework, a national identity grounded in tradition rather than revolutionary dogma.
Waking from Dogmatic Slumber
Hazony then shifts from historical analysis to philosophy, where he builds a positive case for conservatism. The historical debate between Enlightenment Rationalism and Empiricism proves especially instructive for him. These two opposing philosophical traditions dominated the 16th to 18th centuries, and Hazony argues that this intellectual split serves as an effective case study for understanding the fundamental differences between conservatism and its rivals.
As Hazony describes it, the Rationalists—exemplified by figures like René Descartes—believed that true knowledge could be attained through reason, but only when reason is purified and operates in the abstract. This process involved stripping away all the particularities of human experience to uncover the underlying principles, much like deriving geometric proofs. In political matters, a Rationalist would seek to use a set of axioms to extrapolate a political system that any rational person, in any place or time, would recognize as universally true.
In contrast, Hazony highlights the more grounded, empirical tradition championed by thinkers like John Locke and David Hume. This tradition, according to Hazony, stood in direct opposition to the Rationalists. It favored an inductive approach that builds knowledge from particular, experiential observations rather than abstract speculation.
Paradigm Blindness
It is here that Hazony introduces a key term: “paradigm.” In simple language, a paradigm is simply the framework through which certain “facts” emerge as relevant or irrelevant in relation to a given goal. For example, the paradigm of “buying a car” would involve weighing relative factors like make, model, and price. Hazony describes a phenomenon called “paradigm blindness,” which occurs when a system of thought fails to account for crucial facts or information—like setting out to make a large purchase on a tight budget while deliberately ignoring the price tags. When this happens, disastrous consequences naturally follow.
Hazony understands the political offshoots of Enlightenment Rationalism as fundamentally paradigm blind as they ignore (by definition) the particular quirks of human nature in their calculations. Resulting ideologies—Marxism, Fascism, Socialism, Liberalism, and all the other “-isms”—are fundamentally based on abstract axioms that purposely construct systems apart from lived experience. This can happen subtly in ways we often do not notice. Consider, for instance, the core tenets of Liberalism as identified by Hazony:
- All men are naturally free and equal.
- Political obligation arises from the voluntary consent of the individual.
- Governments are established through collective consent, and their sole purpose is to protect the individual freedoms inherent to all people.
- These principles are universally true and can be discovered through individual reasoning alone.
As Hazony sees it, liberalism treats these principles as axiomatic, self-evident deductions of reason rather than as inherited traditions and culture-specific norms shaped over centuries. These principles, while often appealing to the general populace, function as dogmatic beliefs—accepted as self-evident despite their abstract nature. This does not mean that values like freedom, equality, and obligation are mistaken—far from it. Rather, it suggests that those who endeavor to construct political systems based solely on these ideals, abstracted from their historical and cultural contexts, risk overlooking the fundamental realities that give shape to societies in the first place. This raises the question: what, then, is the conservative paradigm?
In essence, a conservative endeavor to take seriously the facts of human life that can be observed and generalized from human experiences. Hierarchies, religious impulses, natural affections, and tribal loyalties—these, Hazony argues, are inseparable aspects of human nature and should be the very facts we consider in our political arrangements. The danger of liberalism (or any ‘“ism’”) lies in ignoringlies ignoring these deep-seated instincts resulting in political arrangements that clash with human nature itself, making them inherently unstable and prone to violence and collapse.
Conservatism Begins at Home
All of this explains why Hazony finds it necessary to break rank with many mainstream conservatives. Since around World War II, as Hazony recounts, the intellectual side of conservatism has triedconservatism tried to fuse together traditional moral values with libertarianism—a variant of liberalism. Hazony would have us ask: What exactly are these conservatives conserving?
For many, the answer is a form of classical liberalism as opposed to the more “radical” progressive liberalism. Yet Hazony contends that as long as conservatism remains tethered to axiomatic thinking of any kind, it too is doomed to unravel. The two models cannot coexist just as geocentrism cannot coexist with heliocentrism. This is why a rediscovery of true conservatism as a distinct political tradition proves essential.
The fourth and shortest section of this book further reinforces that conservatism is not merely a checklist of policies but a distinct way of life. This highlights another persistent problem within mainstream conservatism: the idea that one can be politically conservative while liberal in one’s private life. Hazony argues—and exemplifies—that true conservatism requires living in a way that prioritizes the tangible: nations, communities, families, and the people right in front of us. We begin with love; the political implications will unfold organically. Or, as he concludes powerfully: “Conservatism begins at home.”
Conservatism as Anti-Ideology
The conservative movement arguably needs a clear and cohesive articulation of its ideals. The fact Hazony took up this daunting task is certainly commendable in and of itself. He avoids the pitfall of becoming entangled in advocating specific policy models or rigid economic theories. His argument, after all, is that there is no universal political theory. Or, in his words,
Political conservatism is not, like liberalism or Marxism, a universal theory, which claims to prescribe the true politics for every nation, at every time and place in history. There can be politicalbe a political conservatism in Germany or Russia, in China or Arabia, and the conservatives of these nations may be very different in their views from those that we find in the English-speaking countries. And this is as it should be.
He continues,
For while there are certainly principles of human nature that are true of all men, and therefore natural laws that prescribe what is good for every human society, nevertheless, these principles and laws are the subject of unending controversy. This is because the great variety of human experience, and the weakness of the operations of the human mind that are used to generalize from this experience, are such as to produce endless variations in the ways we describe man’s nature and the laws that are conducive to his good.
In the end, Hazony’s philosophy proves more a methodology than a set of conclusions, a way of thinking that deliberately resists rigid answers. In this sense, conservatism is unlike all the other “-isms” for it could be defined as a political philosophy which is fundamentally anti-ideological.
However, this manifesto is far from flawless. Although it presents itself as a coherent vision of conservatism, it often undermines its own arguments through contradictions and careless reasoning, subtly eroding the very truths Hazony seeks to build upon.
Incredulity Toward Metanarratives
Hazony does have his finger on the pulse in many ways. Modern—perhaps more accurately, postmodern—individuals find a deep aversion to any claims of universal truth. There is a practical reason for this: impositions from on high rarely succeed. More specifically, however, people fear that subscribing to a single, essential idea implies there is only one correct way to live, offering a convenient justification for “enlightened” individuals to impose their will. It’s this fear of rote conformity that seems to particularly motivate Hazony. While this is understandable, it may stem from a misunderstanding of what the idea of “universal” truly entails.
Consider Aristotle, for instance, whose insights can help us moderns unravel the often-misunderstood concept of the “universal.” In his philosophy, Aristotle draws a more refined distinction between the “universal” and the “particulars.” Take, for example, a household dog with spotted fur. While we may also encounter a dog of a solid color, it remains unmistakably a dog—its “dogness” is universalis the universal. The essence, or substance, of a thing constitutes its fundamental identity, which all members of its kind share, even amid the infinite variations that may manifest. Indeed, to even speak of “endless variations” among particulars does not invalidate the universal, but rather presupposes it. Just as all the colors of the rainbow share one thing in common—they are colors—so too do particulars derive their meaning from the universal essence that defines them.
The Cardinal Virtue of Prudence
When the ancients referred to essences or universals, they did not suggest that everything must look identical to be deemed good—quite the opposite. Rather, they identified two distinct levels at which something may be considered “good.” The first pertains to the “goodness” that perfects the essence shared by all members of a particular nature. The second concerns the course of action that most prudently leads to the realization of this perfection. It is through this distinction that the purpose of practical reasoning becomes apparent.
Consider two plants placed on opposite sides of a window. One grows leftward toward the sunlight, while the other grows rightward toward the sunlight. Each plant exercises prudence in its context, not by acting independently of universal truth, but by aiming at it. Both are striving toward what is good for plants: sunlight. (Indeed, a plant would wither away if it wanted to define its own good).
When nations, cultures, or even individuals aim at that which is transcendently good and properly exercise prudence within their context, it is natural that they would look distinct from one another. “Even on the biological level” as one writer puts it, “life is not like a pool but like a tree… Good as it ripens becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good.”
At times, Hazony’s philosophy bears a striking resemblance to the creed of pragmatism. The pragmatist holds that practical actions function like directional terms—like “left” or “right”—always relative to the agent and the particular context. What is deemed good for one person may differ from what is good for another, depending on their circumstances. Pragmatists, therefore, take seriously the fact that people always reason within a specific frame of reference, rather than in the abstract view-from-nowhere.
Now, pragmatists conclude from this the general idea that “the truth is what works” (a notion echoed in the conservative adage, “Traditions are experiments that worked.”). This is all true, as far as it goes. But they are in danger of thinking that something is good if it works, but this is precisely backwards. “‘It is like congratulating yourself on reaching your destination,’” C. S. Lewis once quipped, ‘“and defining destination as “’the place you have reached.’’”
In their attempt to sidestep dogmatic squabbles, the pragmatists ironically fall into the trap of relying on unexamined axioms about what is valuable or desirable. Speak to any pragmatist, and you will soon realize they expect you to self-evidently hold the same ideals as themselves. Hence the familiar refrain: “Let’s just focus on what works!” Yet this overlooks the crucial question: “worked for the sake of…what?”
Blacksmiths, Farmers, and Officers
At this juncture, it is beneficial to revisit the concept of “tradition.” A “tradition” cannot be reduced to a mere collection of inherited customs or rituals—though these may certainly be part of it. A tradition, in its broader sense, represents a socially embodied practice that extends across time. Disciplines such as carpentry, accounting, or filmmaking qualify as traditions in this sense, as they encompass self-contained spheres in which a community organizes itself around a shared aim or purpose.
Each tradition is defined by its own unique set of “goods” and the standards required to attain them. Furthermore, certain goods may not be directly comparable across different contexts. To be a good astrophysicistastro physicist is to embody skillsskill sets unlike that of a lawyer. Yet, while traditions may appear distinct from one another, they are not isolated; they fit within a larger arrangement. For example, consider Aristotle’s treatise on ethics, where he observes that in times of war, the blacksmith forges weapons, the farmers gather supplies, and the scholars train military officers. These roles differ vastly in terms of their aims and functions, but they all aim toward a common Good: victory. This notion of “common good,” therefore, is not just the aggregate of disparate goods but it is the transcendent goal that renders distinct goods and contributions intelligible in the first place.
Politics is a sphere of its own. But even politics should aim at the same transcendent good as all other domains of human life. Politics itself ought to be subordinate to higher goods. An ideological ‘“-ism,’”, it could be said, takes a particular good—often a legitimate good within a specific sphere of life–and extrapolates it as the transcendent aim for all other spheres. Avoiding the error of making something an “-ism” lies not in ignoring the existence of higher aims altogether, but in not absolutizing a particular good and mistaking it for a transcendent end.
All of this explains why pragmatism is not a cardinal virtue; prudence is. The prudent are those who apply practical wisdom to achieve good ends in any situation, possessing the insight to relate particular goods to higher ends. The pragmatist avoids this distinction, presuming instead a world where everyone thinks and acts like they do. Ironically, it is the pragmatists who are more susceptible to ideology and passions of the mob, lacking a framework to differentiate between particular and transcendent goods.
It is admittedly difficult to distinguish between pragmatism and prudence in practice. To the outside observer, both can appear similar. They may vote for the same candidate. They may both be methodical and cautious. You may find both using heuristics like trial and error to address complex problems. A person may genuinely not know the most effective combination of roads to most effectively reach a far-off destination. But the prudent person reasons with a destination in mind, while the pragmatist embarks in their absence.
In my assessment, Hazony seems to waver between these two modes of thinking throughout his work. He does not sufficiently clarify that the continuity and improvement of tradition requires each generation to be measured against a transcendent standard. Without this transcendent criterion, the notion of progress within a tradition risks becoming arbitrary or misguided. Furthermore, he is inclined to evade discussions of universal truth, wary of its ideological connotations—yet it is precisely in this void that ideologies take root and thrive.
(Un)historical Empiricism
Hazony is certainly influenced by another, more foundational philosophical current—what he refers to as “Historic Empiricism.” I surmise that Hazony is drawn to empiricism for its rigorous acknowledgment of the limitations of human knowledge and its reliance on inductive reasoning, both of which exhibit a temperament marked by a healthy skepticism. Yet, it is important to note that empiricism is not merely a personality trait, but rather a distinct philosophical approach. Even so, Hazony is confident enough in this school of thought as a philosophy to establish it as a central pillar upholding his conservative method. Hazony considers himself an empiricist, yet he is not a very good one. For he completely ignores its rather grim implications. We need only look at the great figures of empiricism to recognize that the matter is far more complex than Hazony suggests.
Consider David Hume, for instance, whose skepticism casted doubt even on the most fundamental concepts, like cause and effect, since they cannot be directly observed but only inferred. Hume further contended that the self could never apprehend itself directly as a unified essence; what we call ‘the self’ is nothing more than a loose “bundle” of fleeting impressions. In matters of morality, he was equally reductive, dismissing moral language as mere expressions of pleasure and pain—little more than matters of taste. John Locke, though often seen as less radical, confronted dilemmas of his own, such as the persistence of personality identity through time. The empirical tradition is far more than the mere temperament of a skeptical gentleman; it is a philosophical lineage that engenders its own dilemmas, paradoxes, and unintended consequences—many of which its own proponents struggled to resolve.
All this would not be worth mentioning if Hazony used the term “Empiricism” loosely. It is clear that he primarily means to use the word to communicate a way of life or temperament which derives knowledge based on experience. It is in this sense that Hazony finds reasonable common ground with conservatism:
Conservatives do believe there are truths that hold good in all times and places, but given the extraordinary variety of human opinions on any given subject, they are skeptical about the capacity of the individual to attain universal political or moral truths simply by reasoning about them. Indeed, the only realistic prospect for advancement in politics and morals is by means of an empirical method, which requires a course of trial and error over centuries.
To use the word “empirical” in this colloquial sense is not wrong (as we would in the phrase “empirical sciences.”) It is easy to see why Hazony would explain the conservative paradigm with empirical language: for he sees both operating from facts generalized from accumulated life-experience, not abstractions. For Hazony, to prioritize reality is the hallmark of the conservative perspective.
Even in this sense, though, it is worth taking a step back. For one begins to see a bit of a paradox emerging: for this paradigm, he explains, is that we build on generalized facts. But he also concedes that the paradigm itself dictates which “facts” we take notice of in the first place. This is already at risk of being circular.
Later in his work, Hazony reinforces his commitment to empiricism with a rather stark assertion: “Enlightenment liberalism is a political paradigm based on the rationalist theory of knowledge, whereas conservatism is based on an empiricist theory of knowledge.” It is statements like this that signal he really wishes to be taken seriously as an empiricist, not just flippantly borrow its vocabulary.
Hazony even takes time to school Locke for contradicting his principles between his psychology and his political treaties. Yet, Hazony may have drawn the wrong conclusion. Perhaps the real lesson is that the early empiricists Hazony admires faced significant internal challenges, which made it hard for them to maintain consistency within their own framework—that they, too, suffered from a kind of paradigm blindness. Suffice to say, there is a reason why someone like Immanuel Kant–who still credits Hume with awakening from his “dogmatic slumber”–found the logical implications of pure empiricism deeply troubling and rushed to find a way out.
Tables are Real
This unwavering and, at times, uncritical allegiance to empiricism also highlights a significant instance where Hazony finds himself entangled in an unintended contradiction—one most apparent when examining the relationship between his psychological views and his political doctrine of nationalism.
Hazony is a steadfast advocate of nationalism, a position he lays out thoroughly in The Virtue of Nationalism. Though its title is surely provocative, the book’s central argument is rather measured. Hazony simply wishes to advance nationalism in its proper sense which is neither an arbitrary enforcement of borders nor an exclusionary ideology. Rather, it simply describes an organic collective—a community that arises naturally as individuals forge bonds of shared affection. These self-identified communities form naturally, held together by transcending commonalities such as language, customs, history, and geographic proximity.
Importantly, what binds a nation is not rigid homogeneity but a deeply ingrained sense of belonging, however that may manifest—for better or worse. These naturally forming bonds are an inescapable aspect of human life. They can be nurtured for good or exploited for evil, but the impulse itself cannot be eradicated. Hazony later points out a crucial implication for this in matters of political arrangements: nations are not merely loose assemblages of individuals, but distinct entities on their own right shaped by unique historical and cultural inheritances.
It is a hallmark of Liberalism, since its inception to prioritize the individual as the ultimate measure of all political life. This myopic focus risks overlooking the political significance of collective entities. It tends to regard families, tribes, and nations not as real and distinct wholes, but as mere collections of persons, bound together only by ephemeral agreements—social contracts, voluntary consent, and the like. Of course, liberals do not deny that such things as families and nations exist. But in their reckoning, they do not weigh as heavily as the individual himself in their political equations.
Hazony thus contends that liberalism overlooks a fundamental truth that the “common good” of a collective is not simply the aggregate of individual interests but often functions independently of them—a crucial blind spot in the liberal paradigm. In speaking to this reductionist perspective, Hazony asserts:
This is analogous to the claim that thereThere is no such thing as a table, only the atoms that make up the table…But in reality, there are not only atoms and molecules. There are also tables. And a real table is an object whose properties cannot by any means be derived from what we know about atoms that make up the table…it is precisely because I regard the table as a whole as having a real existence, and a discernible good toward which it can be moved, that I am able to engage in practical efforts to repair it.
Hazony uses this analogy to great effect in order to prove that a nation, like a table, is more than the sum of its parts. A nation, like the table, possesses a distinct identity, an intrinsic reality with ends and purposes of its own, independent of the individual elements that compose it. Whether by design or intuition, this illustration echoes a lineage of thought as ancient as Aristotle, reminiscent of the classical doctrine of the “four causes.” For Hazony’s purposes, he distinguishes two of the four: the material cause, which refers to the wood or other materials from which the table is made, and the final cause, which is the purpose or function of the table.
Yet herein lies a profound irony. The entire project of empiricism was predicated on the rejection of final causes. Empiricists deliberately confined themselves to observable phenomena—knowledge of material causes—precisely because they regarded talk of essences and corresponding ends as speculative fictions. Hume, for instance, dismissed such metaphysical knowledge of essences as the “absurdity of all the scholastic notions.” By invoking this illustration of a table, Hazony is in fact falling back on “scholastic notions” to the chagrin of his heroes. He either fails to recognize this contradiction or does not fully grasp the implications of the language he employs.
Natural Law
The confusion continues. For just as a table has an essence and a final cause corresponding to its nature, humans too possess a nature. But Hazony explains it this way, “By nature, I mean those qualities of things that can be relied upon in experience…. Thus it is natural for an apple to fall to the ground if we drop it;, it is natural for a horse to eat grass.” In this understanding, the phrase “laws of nature” is synonymous with “the way things are,” gleaned from generalized facts.
Hazony quickly follows up to say that “it is also in man’s nature to devise stratagems for altering the course of nature as he finds it.” He uses the example of breadmaking, a trial-and-error process learned over centuries to refine raw nature for our benefit. In like manner, the diverse facts of human nature, like its innate capacity for cruelty and virtue should be harnessed and cultivated properly for the good of society.
While Hazony is correct in suggesting that nature can be perfected or guided to a particular end, he misses the point. He falls victim to a linguistic shift typical of Enlightenment thought, where both Rationalists and Empiricists alike began to view the “laws of nature” as a description of how nature “is.” This shift led to a conception of social engineering where the goal of enlightened thinkers became to manipulate these natural laws, much as one would control the laws of physics to construct a machine, shaping society according to a predetermined design.
When the older “scholastic” thinkers spoke of “nature,” they were not simply referring to descriptions of how it functions, but as encompassing knowledge of its essence and its corresponding state of perfection to which it strives. In this sense, “natural laws” refer to practical principles reasonably inferred from what we understand about an essence and its ideal state. The Enlightenment, however, severed this connection. This explains the fanatical attempts of enlightenment thinkers to distill descriptive laws of human nature either through geometric reasoning or discovered by generalizing experience. Both approaches ultimately built on a profound, but subtle misunderstanding.
Empiricism, in fact, is probably the worst off. For the actual empiricist would sidestep the question of “oughtness” entirely by denying the possibility of knowing ideal essences in the first place. For the empiricist, “nature” is neither subject to improvement nor degradation; it simply “is.” Judging the morality of an action, in this view, is nothing more than describing how it appears or is perceived. However, the idea of deriving any substantial evaluations of how one ought to act from mere appearances is as absurd as claiming that the color blue is more virtuous than red.
Hazony, for his part, asserts the opposite with confidence. He remarks at one point that “A political theory based on such an empiricist account of truth recognizes that truth in the political and moral realm is real.” According to him, these truths are marked by their ability to “permit the cause of human health and prosperity to be effective within a nation, tribe or family, thereby allowing its numbers to grow strong and the community itself to propagate through generations.” Truth, in other words, is what works.
If pressed further, Hazony would ultimately anchor the standards of human flourishing in alignment with God’s law as revealed in Scripture and tradition. However, this feels more like a sleight of hand. For he praises the premises of empiricism in one moment, only to dismiss it completely in the next—as indeed he should.
Chronological Snobbery
Hazony makes some good points—he’s often correct, though usually by accident. You may notice that little was said about his specific political system or cultural analysis, and that’s intentional. There was not much to disagree with on those fronts. We only catch glimpses of his own opinions and policy preferences. Most conservatives of any stripe would find them largely compelling on the surface. All being said, if Hazony were to run for office, I would probably support him over many potential candidates. We are cobelligerents in many ways. The issue is not that his conclusions are unappealing; it’s that they are carelessly drawn. As such, they are at risk of ushering in unintended consequences.
At one level, even I, as someone ostensibly aligned with Hazony’s perspective, found myself frequently frustrated by his crude portrayals of the opposition. I would be surprised if a genuine open-mind liberal, seeking this resource out to see what the other side thinks, could navigate through the barrage of distracting remarks and distill any meaningful dialogue. Hazony’s rhetoric often lacks the precision required to avoid alienating a portion of his audience—he seems unaware of how the “other side” might interpret even the most casual remarks or the subtle connotations of his word choices.
However, it is his philosophical engagement and historical analysis which are particularly shortsighted, as the small sampling above seeks to illustrate. It is his assessment of the Western tradition writ large which seems especially muddled. One consequence of this is his tendency to mistake potential friends for enemies in his reading of history, unable to discern clearly due to his enlightenment biases. These biases even reveal themselves by way of passing remarks.
Consider what Hazony says in the introduction, in reference to Thomas Aquinas. He acknowledges that there are those today who “believe that conservatism should be based on something like Catholic natural law teaching, itself a form of philosophical rationalism.” He says again later, “I am not an adherent of the rationalist natural law teaching of Thomas Aquinas.”
This is not to suggest that Hazony should have included an entire section on Aquinas in a book designed to expound on the “anglo-american tradition.” The point is much simpler: Hazony hastily equates the scholasticism of Aquinas with Enlightenment rationalism, anachronistically reading history from the vantage point of the Enlightenment. It is perfectly legitimate to disagree with Aquinas, but make sure you are sparring with Aquinas, not Hobbes or Descartes disguised in Dominican robes. It’s ironic that someone who aims to emphasize the importance of intellectual history and continuity of tradition undermines his own message with this kind of chronological snobbery.
Read Old Books
Hazony insists on entering the conversation in the 15th-century. That is very admirable, and muchmany farther backbacks than many works on conservative history. But as such, assumptions are quickly eclipsed by Enlightenment jargon and misconceptions held only in check by his sentiments. It’s not just that Hazony’s book is modern in its publication date; it’s modern in its very outlook. His use of words and concepts is often disconnected from their original, historical context, leading to a cascade of misunderstandings.
Errors compound because Hazony wishes to explain conservatism primarily as a kind of heuristic for approximating truth. That is nearly correct, but the way he goes about this risks rendering matters of transcendent truth, tradition, prudence, and virtue not merely sidelined but utterly unintelligible. He absolutely does not intend this, but it is the inevitable result. Hazony’s conservatism may rightly start at home, but it is a home set upon a foundation of shifting sand.
Rather than truly rediscovering the tradition he seeks to protect, Hazony’s project appears to be an effort to reconstruct shattered fragments of the past, all while applauding those who helped fractured them. What exactly is he conserving? Hazony’s vision of conservatism is incoherent—it is prudent, except when it is not; empirical, except when it is not; historical, except when it is not. In the end, if you decide to read this book, it’s wise to heed C. S. Lewis’s advice: “Never allow yourself another new [book] until you have read an old one in between.” After all, this is one way we discover what is truly unchanging across time—–by getting outside our own time.
Hazony is very much correct in one point: Conservatism is indeed a strange “-ism.” For true political conservatism is not an end in and of itself—such as found in the principle, “tradition for tradition’s sake.” But neither is it merely a means or procedural technique like “trial-and-error.” True conservatism is a byproduct. It is something that happens naturally when political bodies, cultures, and individuals alike orient themselves and their natures to that which is eternally true. Build your life on conservatism, and it will fall out from beneath your feet. Build on that which is unchangingly good, true, and beautiful, and conservatism will follow.
Daniel Goodman is pursuing graduate work in Data Science at the University of Louisville. He has B.S. in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from Boyce College and currently lives in Louisville, Kentucky.