by 2snakes | 2026-01-25 19:21:34+00:00
"What are we to infer from Oakeshott's favoured 'cook' metaphor?First, that conservatism is about doing, and about understandingwhat one is doing, not about thinking in the sense of planningwhat to do.12 Second, that conservatism is unreflective to the extent that it does not deal with packages of coherent ideas abouthuman beings and their societies, but is a method of recognizingreality through experiencing it, intellectually unintelligible for nonparticipants. Third, and consequently, that it is non-transmittable,unless this be done by direct instruction in its practices. Fourth,and not least, that it is futile to conceptualize about human conduct, political or otherwise, in manners typical of Western politicalthought. Philosophy is simply 'experience without reservation orpresupposition'.13 The world of the conservative—the world ofpractice—is unsystematic and contingent, though there is withinexperience an inner, self-contained, coherent world." (Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory)

"To conclude: the law of conservative structure, and the key toidentifying the common components of its variants, consists offour central features. Two of those are substantive core concepts,though not always identified as such: (1) a resistance to change,however unavoidable, unless it is perceived as organic and natural;(2) an attempt to subordinate change to the belief that the lawsand forces guiding human behaviour have extra-human origins andtherefore cannot and ought not to be subject to human wills andwhims. Unlike other major ideologies, conservatism then intriguingly produces two underlying morphological attributes, instead of "additional substantive identifying features. One of these attributesis (3) the fashioning of relatively stable (though never inherentlypermanent) conservative beliefs and values out of reactions toprogressive ideational cores. This allows all substantive conceptsin the employ of conservatism, other than the two enumeratedabove, to become contingent. They are subjected to a complexswivel mirror-image technique, superimposed on a retrospectivediachronie justification of the current beliefs held by conservatives. In each instance, the consistent aim is to provide a securestructure of political beliefs and concepts that protects the firstcore concept of conservatism, and does so by utilizing its secondcore component. Finally (4) the process is abetted by substantiveflexibility in the deployment of decontested concepts, so as tomaximize under varying conditions the protection of that conception of change. Such flexibility of meaning permits a considerablefirmness of conservatism's fundamental structure when confrontedwith very different concrete historical and spatial circumstances.What may superficially appear to be intellectual lightweightedness or be mistaken as opportunism is rather the performance ofa crucial stabilizing function by means of the adroit manoeuvringof political concepts in positions adjacent to the ideational core.The morphological unity of conservatism is preserved by an identical grammar of response, but expressed through differentiatedlanguages of response." (Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory)