[Originally posted on Positive Liberty on Dec 10th 2006 03:11 pm]
Larry Arnhart has a long post here responding to my critique of his book Darwinian Conservatism. My criticism, briefly put, is that while Arnhart makes a good case for a symbiosis of evolutionary theory and libertarianism, he can’t argue that traditional conservatism and evolution can coincide, and that his faith in “fusionism” between the two is wrongly placed.
He responds by defending fusionism, on the grounds that libertarians and conservatives--he persists in saying “libertarian conservatives” when there are no such things; libertarians are a variety of liberal--share a similar view of human nature: that we have a moral sense but that we are not perfect and cannot be made perfect. But the differences between libertarians and conservatives don’t lie so much in their view of human nature (although they do lie there also) but in their view of the state, and in their outlook toward the future. To put it simply, conservatives are stasists; libertarians are dynamists.
For the conservative, the state exists to maintain society as a whole in stability--to preserve the “situatedness” in which individuals find themselves. As Kirk claimed, for the conservative, “[t]o live within a just order is to live within a pattern that has beauty. The individual finds purpose within an order, and security--whether it is the order of the soul or the order of the community. Without order, indeed the life of man is poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” The Roots of American Order 474 (1994). That is very different from the libertarian view, which begins with the individual and asks whether or not a social institution is good or bad from the perspective of the individual. Kirk claimed that the first principle of conservatism was that”[t]hat order is made for man, and man is made for it, and that the second principle of conservatism was “adhere[nce] to custom, convention, and continuity.” Why? For the sake of society--not for the sake, ultimately, of individuals. “The continuity, the life-blood, of a society must not be interrupted.” For the libertarian, by contrast, the ideal society is one in which individuals are free to discover their own paths. As Den Uyl and Rasmussen put it, libertarianism “seeks not to guide individual conduct in moral activity, but rather to regulate conduct so that conditions might be obtained where moral action can take place.” The opposite is true of conservatism. This is why Robert Bork has argued for censorship; this is why Russell Kirk called for an established religion in America. (As these examples reveal, it is not true that conservatives abide by Acton’s statement that power corrupts; Bork and Kirk are* nothing if not theocrats.) The conservative “search[es] for stasis—a regulated, engineered world…[of] stability and control,” while the libertarian “embrace[s] dynamism—a world of constant creation, discovery…competition…evolution and learning.”
The attempt to fuse these two ideologies was doomed from the outset, and was made possible only by historical accident. Of course everyone will believe that morality and character are important for a free society. That’s a general enough statement that we can all agree to it. Of course we all recognize that social interactions are important for individual happiness. But the question is, do we regard individual flourishing as our political goal? Or do we regard the stability of society as our political goal? The former answer is a liberal answer--and there are two varieties of it: the modern liberal who seeks to help individuals flourish by redistributing wealth to them, and the libertarian, who seeks to help individuals flourish by freeing them from coercion. Conservatism, however, focuses on the stability of society as a whole. This is why conservatives are hostile to capitalism: because capitalism is a system of “creative destruction” and constant revolution that changes society radically and quickly. As Weaver put it, “capitalism cannot be conservative in the true sense as long as its reliance is upon industrialism, whose very nature is too unsettle any establishment and initiate the endless innovation of technological ‘progress.’” Fred Douglas Young, Richard M. Weaver: A Life of The Mind 47 (1995).
This is why I’ve rejected fusionism. Can evolution provide a foundation for conservatism? I think the answer is no. Arnhart is correct that evolution “can provide a scientific account of the moral and political nature of human beings that sustains the conservative commitments to private property, family life, traditional morality, and limited government.” These commitments are largely shared by libertarians. But conservativism’s more distinctive commitments lie elsewhere--commitments to a society of status, hierarchy, and order--and liberalism, including its libertarian variety, doesn’t share those commitments. Nor are those commitments compatible with evolutionary science for two reasons: first, evolution suggests that order is immanent and not permanent, and second, because the scientific method itself is incompatible with the dogmatic hierarchy conservatism treasures.
On the first point, conservatism envisions the good society as one in which every person knows his or her place, while libertarianism seeks a society in which people can choose their own places. Conservatism seeks, as Karl Popper said of Plato, to create the arrested state--the state in which there is no change. But evolution suggests that change is essential, and is the source of valuable social institutions.
Second, and in a related vein, the scientific method which is responsible for the science of evolution is not based on authority, dogma, or tradition. It demands evidence and relies solely on logic and demonstration for its proofs. It is therefore inherently individualistic. See generally J. Bronowski, Science And Human Values 62 (2d ed. 1965). This, to the conservative, is dangerous, because it is easy to turn that skeptical, rational analysis on social structures and mores, and that is something the conservative will not stand. Conservatives often scornfully quote from Bacon’s saying that science will aid in “the relief of man’s estate”--whereas for liberals, including libertarians, that is a rightly cherished goal. Conservatives often appeal to “higher” values, certain ineffable, emotionalistic qualities that are said to underlie a true social order; the libertarian--like the scientist--endangers this mystique by looking on things with skepticism and reason. Consider Kirk’s comments on John Locke, the father of libertarianism:
Locke’s emphasis upon private freedom endangers that spiritual continuity which we call human society…. Locke has nothing to say about the Christian view of society as a bond between God and man, and among the dead, the living, and those yet unborn. There is no warmth in Locke, and no sense of consecration…. Utility, not love, is the motive of Locke’s individualism.
Supra at 287. There are many similar examples (Weaver on tradition: “it expresses a spreading mystery too great for our knowledge to compass.” Young, supra, at 101). Conservatism is threatened by all science, but less obviously by such sciences as physics, where the connection to sociology and politics aren’t so clear. But the leading conservative intellectuals have still attacked science generally for just this reason. Conservatives who embrace sociobiology risk winning the battle and losing their war: although it will establish the importance of such things as private property and whatnot, it will do so on the basis of “utility, not love”; it will not establish “a bond between God and man,” or a “spiritual continuity.” It will reveal a gradually evolved faculty which is good or bad for individuals--and, by understanding it better, it will enable us to liberate ourselves from those institutions that are harmful to us--a libertarian goal. A scientific understanding of, say, marriage as the evolutionary consequence of human interactions with others and with their environment is certainly an interesting and valuable thing, but it makes marriage no longer a divine covenant, impervious to change; it makes marriage a matter of “utility.” Stripped of its mystique, people will start fiddling with marriage, to turn it to their own ends, instead of society’s.
Arnhart proves this point when he writes that evolution “can confirm the importance of religious belief as satisfying a natural desire for religious understanding. It can also confirm the social utility of religious communities in enforcing cooperative norms.” But note that he is not saying that evolution can prove the truth of religion, only its utility: it can prove that religion is a handy myth--a “noble lie.” And while there are many conservatives who do embrace just this notion, I have long doubted the effectiveness of religion-as-utility. Remember what they say about genies and bottles.
I think Larry Arnhart is doing great work. He is right that the institutions of freedom that are commonly, and wrongly, described as “conservative” can find a good substantial basis on evolutionary science. But he is wrong in defending the indefensible attempt at uniting conservatism and libertarianism. Libertarianism doubtless finds much support in Darwin. Conservatism--no.
*–Update: My sloppiness. I don’t think Bork can be readily described as a theocrat. Bork is, on the contrary, a moral relativist, who believes that morality is simply the will of the majority.
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