On Liberalism and Conservatism

I think that I, and most, when we think of the Founding, we think mostly of the political aspect and as such, it provides a relatively narrow pov of how and why they built what they did. Then when we include the metaphysical aspect, or even the adherence to reality and truth... The terms of liberal or conservative in these senses really muddy the water.

Consider the metaphysical, the Receptivist and the Constructivist (I googled the terms…) Calling the former conservative and the latter liberal ends up mixing the political implications; for one can hold the former and be politically liberal and vice versa.

And in consideration of the aspect of adherence to truth... I highly doubt that conservative or liberal labels even apply. I can think of no person who would call themselves other than conservative.

Which then the conversation then becomes “I am a liberal conservative liberal” or “I am conservative conservative conservative”...

And to be honest, we could drop the adherence to truth aspect as it is largely unhelpful both as a label - because of how broad it is - and as a tool of discourse because it would make those whom one would call liberal, automatically the villain of the conversation.

So then we are left with two, and even then, the terms are still too loaded. Both metaphysically and in the ordering of government. I don’t believe we should use the terms in the metaphysical sense as it again doesn’t actually capture the distinction being drawn, although it does do it better than truth. I was familiar with the concepts, not exactly what they were called…

One is what I’ve been calling Recognition of being aka Receptivist: we live in a created order - moral, physical, metaphysical - that we did not make, and our duty is to recognize it, receive it, and conform ourselves and our institutions to that higher order as best we can.

The other is Creation of being aka Constructivist: reality, moral norms, or even human nature itself is treated as something plastic that we can and should actively shape, will, or reconstruct according to our own lights.

I could see how liberal and conservative could fit these categories but again, too many categories are being pressed into those terms, nor do they capture the essence of them.

As to the definition within the political sphere... It largely holds as it refers to the consolidation of power, liberal meaning the limited nature, conservative meaning in the consolidated nature... Yet this too is also inaccurate as the actual question is how individuals should relate in a collective.

Therefore the better method would be to define it by Individualism and Collectivism. The former being the respect and recognition of the right of the individual to create his own life because each man is created in the image of God and he is thus meant to live according to the judgment of his own reasoning mind. He is endowed with rights and responsibilities that are not negated by the group when conflict arises. The necessary limitations being the transgression of another individual’s rights.

The latter emphasizes that when a conflict arises between what you believe and what the other members of the group believe, the needs of the group must often come first. The group is said to have fundamentality over the individual, and it is said to have rights over the individual. (Paraphrasing @CodyLibolt for these two definitions)

So liberal and conservative are still a better fit, yet I’d still say that they don’t really belong…

If we are conservative, we need to define what we are conserving, hence the oft fought argument between conservatives, classical liberals, and post-liberals.

Conservatism is therefore unclear... Both from a metaphorical and political view point, it is often, and accurately so, accused of being the rawl to the Liberal ratchet. This too was a Burkean flaw. One can see it in his resistance to change being more of push against haste instead of error.

Liberalism is in that sense, the revolutionary aspect, the removal or changing of things, often taken to the radical extreme of France.

Classical Liberalism is fine for it captures the Founding governmental structure quite well, but it lacks the metaphysical level, per se…

Burke is a conservative in the classic sense, that is to say not of the metaphysical or political, but of the preservation of a thing or things. Quite often for the sake of the thing itself, for it was believed to have carried the wisdoms and truths of the ages before simply due to its age and endurance. This being his core presupposition in the nature and purpose of government.

Post-Liberals are in an aspect quite Burkean in their distrust of abstract individualism and his respect for tradition, but they often move beyond Burke by making the political community itself the active guardian of the common good.

See, America was Receptivist in its metaphysics and Individualist in its governmental structure, designed to control the effects of faction rather than to perfect souls or impose a single moral vision. That combination produced something distinctive. Thus it was both conservative and liberal in the classical sense, and in so doing, rendered a newer political ideology chiefly known as Americanism. That particular combination produced something distinctive. It was not simply European liberalism (which often lacked the same metaphysical grounding) nor European conservatism (which tended to be more Collectivist in structure).

I think this is the term needing to be brought back as it captures both aspects of the Founding. Primarily because of its distinction of the metaphysical level from the structural level. It lets us describe the Founding without forcing it into the overloaded European terms: liberal/conservative. Both of which often operated as a collectivist, regardless of Receptivist or Constructivist metaphysics; often stretching the terms across the metaphysical and structural levels at the same time. Americanism, by contrast, keeps the two levels more clearly distinguished, and it provides a clearer, less muddy concept to conserve.

Burke fits interestingly here, though not quite in the way many assume. He is not commonly understood as a Constructivist, for he plainly believed in a higher moral order, natural law, and truths that transcend any particular society. Rather, he is best understood as a Traditionalist, a form of synthesis between Receptivism and institutional inheritance. The distinction is important because it reveals both the strength and limitation of his thought.

For Burke, inherited institutions, customs, and traditions are the primary repositories of political wisdom. They are not merely historical accidents but the accumulated experience of generations attempting to live in accordance with a higher order. In this respect, Burke adopts a receptive posture toward reality. Yet his reception of the higher order is largely mediated through tradition itself.

This can be seen in his defense of the American cause. Burke’s argument rested heavily upon the colonists’ appeal to prescriptive rights rooted in the English constitutional tradition. The American Founders, however, justified their claims on different grounds: that rights are pre-political, derived from the nature of man and the laws of God, and therefore remain valid whether or not any particular institution recognizes them.

Here their divergence becomes apparent. The Founders begin with rights and judge institutions accordingly. Burke begins with institutions and infers rights through them. Both affirm a higher order, but they disagree about how that order is known and applied in political life.

This is the chief limitation of Burke’s framework. Because inherited institutions become the primary means by which political truths are understood, those institutions acquire a presumption of legitimacy that can make them difficult to judge by an external standard. Rights remain theoretically prior to institutions, but in practice institutions increasingly mediate the recognition and exercise of those rights.

The result is a tension within Burke’s own thought. He wishes to defend a higher order above society, yet his epistemology places such weight upon inherited constructions that the constructions themselves begin to function as the practical standard of legitimacy. This does not make Burke a Constructivist in the modern sense, nor does it mean he opposed change. Indeed, he opposed primarily radical and abstract change, preferring precedent. But it does mean that his framework is better suited to explaining why societies should be cautious in reform than why they are justified in overturning longstanding institutions that have become unjust.

And yet this is where the American Founders part company with Burke. By grounding rights directly in the higher order rather than in inherited institutions, they possessed a standard external to the institutions themselves. Institutions could therefore be measured, corrected, reformed, or even abolished when they violated the rights they were meant to secure. Burke’s framework, by contrast, tends to blur the distinction between the standard and the thing being measured by it. In that sense, his traditionalism tempers revolutionary excess, but it also weakens the force of his critique against unjust traditions and inherited political arrangements.

This limitation becomes especially apparent in later political movements influenced by Burke. Once the inherited institutions themselves lose their connection to the higher order, Burke’s framework offers fewer resources for distinguishing between what is merely inherited and what is genuinely just. The result is often an increasing reliance upon institutions, traditions, or political authority as arbiters of the good, a tendency that can be observed in varying degrees among many post-liberal and integralist schools of thought.

See, if we’re going to keep using “conservative”, it behoves us to be clearer about what exactly we’re trying to conserve - the Receptionist posture toward reality, or just the existing arrangements. Most modern and European models assume that a Receptivist metaphysic necessarily requires an institution-centered or common-good-centered political order. Aka, Collectivist. The Founding rejected that inference. The Founders believed that because reality, human nature, and moral law are objective, rights are objective as well, and therefore government must be limited by them.

Thoughts?

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D00M42 posts about politics and philosophy on X at https://x.com/D00M42 and writes D00M42 . D00M42 prefers to stay pseudonymous.