The Range and Originality of Conservative Reflection

A consideration of the contents of this
issue of Modern Age brings to mind the
rich variety of theme and profundity of insight
available to thinkers who espouse a
conservative perspective. We present an account
of a Jewish mystic who found the
luminescence of faith in the darkness of the
Holocaust during World War II and an
examination of the place of diplomacy in the
conservative thought and practice of an American,
an Englishman, and a Frenchman during
the Victorian era. One essay investigates the
surprising influence of Czechoslovakia on a
Scottish poet, while another provides a timely
admonition for conservatives against investing
too heavily in a philosophical fad, especially,
perhaps, if it is French. And then
there is our continuing examination of the
very practical problem of the energy crisis.

As the subjects of these essays indicate, this
issue also has an international flavor, which is
enhanced by the provenance of the authors,
who hail from England, Belgium, and Albania,
as well as all across the United States. To
seek out conservative thought in other nations
is in keeping with Russell Kirk’s goals
for Modern Age and continues the practice of
the first two issues of this year. Recall the
translations of the interview with René Girard
in the Spring issue and of Pierre Manent’s
Lenten reflection in the Winter issue. We are
pleased to note that the latter has recently
been published by Editions Parole et Silence
in a volume that includes the participation of
Manent’s partner in the dialogue, What is
Truth? Lenten Lectures of 2007 at Notre Dame
de Paris, in Dialogue with Michel Fédou on the
theme, Truth of Faith and Truth of Reason. We
are extremely pleased that the first English
translation of this important dialogue has
appeared in Modern Age and hope to provide
similar documentation for our readers in
coming issues.

Merely reading the essays presented in this
issue will convince anyone that the authors
are remarkably diverse in their outlook, their
style, and their preoccupations; it is not difficult
to imagine a quite lively debate if they
were all brought together to discuss any one
of their topics. Nevertheless, each of these
essays contributes to a conservative understanding
of our world because each of them
constructs an argument within a framework
of traditional norms amenable to right reason.
Conservatives are thus capable both of
their own original thought and of bringing
critical judgment to bear on the innovations
of others, because they do not simply discard
the past and presume to build a utopian
vision out of nothing. In order to make
progress in any reasonable sense of the term,
it is necessary to know where the past has
brought us, and hence what choices are
tenable, not to say desirable, within the
manifold constraints of our temporal existence.
Only someone with a sense of the past
can possibly know what is genuinely new in
the present.

Of course, it is the timeless that is always
new. Meins Coetsier’s essay on Etty Hillesum
provides a rejoinder to the virulence of
contemporary atheism not by meeting its
arguments in their own terms, but by opening
up a realm of experience that atheists
simply ignore. The letters and diaries of this
Dutch Jewish mystic and victim of Auschwitz
provide a window into what may reasonably
be described as a hell on earth, which paradoxically
made available a vision of heaven.
Grounding his analysis in Eric Voegelin’s
concept of symbolization, Coetsier makes
an indirect case for the thoroughly conservative
realization that human experience,
particularly as the individual’s insight converges
with traditional symbols that embody
generations of wisdom, always takes
precedence over the naked reason of the
deracinated ideologue.

The struggles of David Clinton’s representative
figures were less searingly intense
than the agon endured by Etty Hillesum, but
each of them was, nonetheless, engulfed in
the urgent trials of his time. Not everyone
would think to consider John C. Calhoun,
François Guizot, and Sir Robert Peel in the
same essay, but Professor Clinton shows that
all three men valued diplomacy because of its
contribution to conservatism in the most
fundamental sense: that is, diplomacy helps
to conserve social institutions and social order
by the avoidance of war, which almost
inevitably brings destructive political and
cultural developments, apart from what happens
on the battlefield. Professor Clinton thus
demonstrates how conservative thought encourages
originality by considering each man
and each situation afresh and on its own terms.
Once again, it is the avoidance of Procrustean
ideological templates that furnishes the dynamism
of the conservative’s vision.

In “‘Between the Tiger’s Paws’: Scotland,
Czechoslovakia, and the Poetry of Edwin
Muir,” Richard Cross offers an account of a
Scottish poet who discovered his identity as
a writer while working as a correspondent
and translator in a middle-European country.
The essay implicitly asks that we consider
the complexities of cultural relationships at a
time when both multiculturalism and its belligerent
“monocultural” antagonists urge upon
us equally simplistic solutions. It is worth
observing that Muir, whom Cross identifies as
an anti-communist and a socialist along the
lines of William Morris, is readily assimilated
to a conservative vision. Liberals, on the
other hand, worry endlessly over whether it
is quite decent to enjoy the poetry of Pound,
Yeats, or Eliot. Perhaps nothing dampens
open-minded tolerance so much as the strident
demand that it be rigorously observed.

Fatos Tarifa, who brings to his task a
remarkable international background, surveys
what might be called an episode in
philosophical fashion. Readers with long
memories will recall when, in the 1970s,
Bernard-Henri Lévy seemed the answer to
an American conservative’s prayer: an au
courant French intellectual who refuted anti-
Americanism. Tarifa calls into question the
credentials, both philosophical and conservative,
of the nouveau philosophie in a fashion
that may well prove controversial as well as
cautionary. Some will find equally controversial
P. E. Hodgson’s sober—and sobering—
apologia for nuclear power in the second
of a series of four articles on the energy
crisis. Both of these articles ask conservatives
to reflect deeply and in the long-term on
crucial issues: one a matter of intellectual
clarity, the other of practical utility.

The poems in this issue also cover a range
of feeling and interest. Those by Phoebe
Spinrad and William Bedford Clark are both,
in their different ways, very moving. William
Baer’s “Ballad Rode Into Town” is
something of a departure for poetry in Modern
Age. The object of Baer’s deft satire will be
recognized with satisfaction by many readers,
but I ask that you also notice what a remarkable
feat of style the poem is: by personifying
“Ballad” in a poem that takes the form of a
ballad, Baer has made not just the sound, but
the structure, an echo of the sense.

Our reviews are varied in topic and approach.
Anne Gardner considers Virgil
Nemoianu’s account of a very different side
of Romanticism, Scott Crider finds virtue in
a modern rhetorician, and Bruce Frohnen
considers a book on Jamestown. There are
also reviews of a number of books on figures
of particular resonance for conservatism:
Alexis de Tocqueville, Robert Frost, and
William Shakespeare; but I call particular
attention to Michael Federici’s review-essay
on a number of recent books on Russell Kirk,
the founder of this journal.

— R.V. Young