MacIntyre against Burke.
Alasdair MacIntyre seems to reserve a special contempt for the work of Edmund Burke. This is largely because MacIntyre wants to put as large a distance as possible between Burke’s idea of a tradition and his own, but it seems to go a little further than necessary, and the animus seems to grow over time, to the point where it’s quite funny. Here, for example, is a passage from the 1977 essay “Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science”:
“[Conservative theorists], from Burke onwards, have wanted to counterpose tradition and reason and tradition and revolution. Not reason, but prejudice; not revolution, but inherited precedent; these are Burke’s key oppositions.”
I should mention here that tradition for MacIntyre can be broadly considered as a kind of rational conversation, embodied in actions and institutions and carried forward through successive generations. In 1981’s After Virtue, the same point is made, but the attack is stronger:
“Traditions, when vital, embody continuities of conflict. Indeed when a tradition becomes Burkean, it is always dying or dead. . . . The individualism of modernity could of course find no use for the notion of tradition within its own conceptual scheme except as an adversary notion; it therefore all too willingly abandoned it to the Burkeans, who, faithful to Burke’s own allegiance, tried to combine adherence in politics to a conception of tradition which would vindicate the oligarchical revolution of property of 1688 and adherence in economics to the doctrine and institutions of the free market. The theoretical incoherence of this mismatch did not deprive it of ideological usefulness.” (222)
By the time we come upon Burke again in 1988’s Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, he has become “an agent of positive harm” (353). MacIntyre argues that Burke’s writing “provided simultaneously a defense of the established order which appealed only to values already acknowledged within the exchanges of benefits and satisfactions which partially constituted that order as well as an attack upon any appeal to theoretically grounded principles purporting to have an authority independent of that conferred from within” (217).
This last bit is actually a very serious charge. Its context is a comparison between the English and Scottish cultures of the 1700s. Burke’s a-rational traditionalism simultaneously sums up the desires of the more Whiggish aristocracy and the other emerging moneyed classes and, if taken seriously, makes it impossible to protest on the grounds of any transcendent value. The Calvinist Scots, on the other hand, could make such protests easily: God’s commands transcended the authority of the state, so they only had to open their Bibles. MacIntyre makes the charge sting even more by noting that Burke, as an Irishman, had to create himself as a member of the English landed class in order to defend the English system.
This summer I read through much of Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution, and I found it hard to believe that Burke wasn’t aware of his own rhetorical excesses. He must have known that he was creating a history of England more than he was recounting one. But perhaps Englishmen of his time could convince themselves that their history was not filled with strife, violence, and power grabs but rather with prudent statesmanship.
At any rate, if MacIntyre is correct about Burkean conservatives, then we should expect to see them having difficulty with justice claims that are not somehow rooted in the status quo. And at the risk of dredging up painful history, this is exactly what we see in the early responses of various traditionalist conservatives to the Civil Rights movement. I do believe that many of these conservatives (Buckley, Kirk) sincerely regretted the positions they took in the fifties. The point is not to vilify, but to remind those of us who keep a foot in the traditionalist camp to consider our blind spots.
I find MacIntyre’s traditionalism to be much more compelling than that of the various modern Burkeans. For someone like Russell Kirk, there is at the outset a list of The Permanent Things that we must find ways to uphold or defend. There seems to be a gap between the defense of these ideals and the exploration of them. For MacIntyre, the process of creating the list is also a process of defending it and exploring it. To put it differently, MacIntyre believes that a conception of the Good is necessary for rational behavior, but that we can’t specify that conception by participating in rational processes. It seems circular, doesn’t it? It’s not actually that bad: if we are reasoning well, we gain a little bit each time through the loop. And when an Aristotle or an Aquinas comes along, the rest of us get to take a leap.
I’d love to hear the thoughts of anyone who has read more Kirk, Burke, or MacIntyre than I have. Seriously: blast away.
Filed under: conservatism, philosophy
Will-
This post is essentially my introduction to MacIntyre. Based on your descriptions, his arguments sound extraordinarily pertinent to much that I write about. Can you recommend some of MacIntyre’s work to me?
OK, I’ll bite. Like Mark, my knowledge of MacIntyre is nonexistent, but from your (admittedly brief) description, I feel that he mischaracterizes Burke’s broader defense of tradition. Would Burkean conservatives really choose a knee-jerk defense of traditionalism over an ongoing exploration of our enduring institutions? As I see it, Burke didn’t argue that questioning the status quo was always bad; simply that our inquiries – however well-intentioned – frequently miss the imperceptible benefits of tradition.
Mark,
If you have time for just one essay, the one I cited at the beginning anticipates some of the key themes of After Virtue. If you have time for a book, After Virtue is the one.
It was this essay by Edward T. Oakes that first turned me on to MacIntyre.
Will,
I wish I could answer your question fully, but I’m working on it myself. I think MacIntyre is arguing that many Burkeans mischaracterize Burke’s broader defense of traditions, and that it really is a-rational.
I can say that in the Reflections Burke certainly does more than simply suggest that tradition has its advantages. He argues that any challenge to a society’s institutions should be grounded in claims that are internal to the current organization of society, which limits the range of legitimate justice claims. He fairly well dismisses any radical criticism of the organization of the state as an unwarranted metaphysical intrusion. He defends the restoration of the English monarchy in terms of continuity with the past rather than as any kind of real break.
So, for example, the Burkean conservatives could fully admit the practical claims of the Civil Rights movement only after these claims became part of the status quo, after the movement achieved its major successes. Before that, they were limited to arguments of prudence within the context of segregation.
MacIntyre’s essay on epistemology and history of science has some good stuff on this. He compares Burke to chemist/philosopher Michael Polanyi. For Polanyi, science is a sort of unitary community that moves forward in time. MacIntyre argues that Polanyi’s evolutionary approach to philosophy of science cannot really explain scientific revolutions as they are happening. The same goes for Burke’s evolutionary conservatism. (MacIntyre, by the way, seems to want a modified version of Thomas Kuhn’s approach to philosophy of science.)
I wonder if there might be a similarity between MacIntyre’s critique of Burke and Kirk’s critique of libertarianism. Both McIntyre and Kirk seem to push the argument that some standard extrinsic to society is necessary to keep it vital, in contrast to the nominalist liberal tradition (for Burke, a re-fashioned status quo; for libertarians, the free-market ideal of “freedom”).
So… is Kirk an ally of MacIntyre?
I have to dash off, but here are two quick thoughts:
1.) At the risk of vastly-oversimplifying a complex era, I think the Civil Rights movement’s claims were embedded in the language of American democracy. Maybe this was a tactical decision on the part of the movement’s leadership – a way to shame us into abolishing Jim Crow, as it were – but I think racial progress can be thought of as an organic outgrowth of America’s egalitarian political tradition. In some respects, these constraints did foreclose radical social change – see, for example, the marginalization of Malcolm X – but I think that’s probably a good thing.
2.) I think it’s possible to embrace Burkean conservatism while recognizing its fundamental limitations. Perhaps some problems call for radical social change. I don’t think Burke’s insights require you to generalize his approach to every possible circumstance.
I’ll have to revisit the rest of your comments later, but I look forward to reading up on MacIntyre.
The best starting point for understanding MacIntyre is After Virtue, which is undoubtedly his masterpiece. For understanding his views on tradition I would recommend skipping (at least initially) Whose Justice? Which Rationality? and going straight to the book he wrote after that one, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry.
Dphenreckson,
“Is Kirk an ally of MacIntyre?”
Insofar as both of them stand against liberalism broadly construed, I would have to say yes on a practical level. And surely Kirk is closer to MacIntyre than Burke. But there’s some gaping differences in theory. I think MacIntyre’s framework is larger; Kirk’s traditionalism is really a “Western Tradition”-alism.
And I’m sure the two would have a rollicking argument about Marx.
Will,
To your two points:
1.) I oversimplified it first, so you’re surely OK. But, to the point, the South had rejected the egalitarian tradition. MacIntyre’s argument is that the purely Burkean framework doesn’t give us a way to conceptualize this sort of conflict between traditions. And another funny point made against MacIntyre by Jeffrey Stout (as I understand it) is that MacIntyre consistently underestimates the degree to which egalitarian liberalism is a real and valid tradition.
2.) You’re right here. For all this complaining, I still like Burke’s description of political prudence. (Wish I had a copy of the Reflections at hand…)
This is a bit of a digression, but here’s something that jumped out at me from the Oakes essay:
“Liberalism is often successful in preempting the debate . . . so that [objections to it] appear to have become debates within liberalism. . . . So-called conservatism and so-called radicalism in these contemporary guises are in general mere stalking-horses for liberalism: the contemporary debates within modern political systems are almost exclusively between conservative liberals, liberal liberals, and radical liberals. There is little place in such political systems for the criticism of the system itself, that is, for putting liberalism in question.”
So do conservatives tacitly accept a liberal political framework? From what passes for discourse on the Right these days, I never can tell. And if conservatism is fundamentally opposed to the premises of a liberal society, what’s MacIntyre’s alternative? Oakes’ essay suggests he doesn’t offer much beyond his critique of liberal political thought.
[...] at Noon Jump to Comments William Brafford points me to this excellent essay on Alasdair MacIntyre’s political philosophy. MacIntyre, a former [...]
“what’s MacIntyre’s alternative?”
That’s basically my operative question when I’m reading his books. At the end of After Virtue, he argues that we’re facing new dark ages, and that there isn’t really an alternative to liberalism other than a new Benedictinism: consciously countercultural subcommunities. Rod Dreher is pretty into this side of MacIntyre’s work.
Some folks suggest that MacIntyre’s philosophical project can only be completed by theologians.
Now is also a good time to admit that I haven’t yet gotten to “Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry” . . . maybe someone who has read it can pitch in.
I like MacIntyre as a philosopher, though, because he has helped me make sense of my own life, not because he’s given me a blueprint for societal reform. (That sentence is entirely too sincere for blog comments. Apologies!)
Three Rival Versions tries to sketch a philosophical alternative, and its … different than the norm.
The social/political/cultural alternative is in Dependent Rational Animals, which is a quite interesting read.
[...] think this brings us back to Brafford’s excellent discussion of Alasdair MacIntyre. Many conservatives implicitly accept the premises of modern liberalism. [...]