Conservatism Revision Guide Extra Knowledge
Human nature is: (Noel O’Sullivan)
Morally imperfect - inherently selfish creatures motivated by base desires and impulses -
linked to the ‘original sin’
Intellectually imperfect - reality is beyond their rational understanding and thus fail more
than they succeed
Psychologically imperfect - security drives and socially dependent, humans rely on
tradition and culture for an identity and grounding - consequently for early/ One Nation
thinkers rationalism should not be trusted
Emile Durkheim argues that individuals isolated from society suffer from anomie (isolation
and a sense of meaningless)
As the French aristocracy’s devotion to Hobbesian autocracy failed so violently Burke
argued that ‘a state without means of some change is without means of its
conservation.’
The New Right dissolves the One Nation notion of society and paternalism:
One Nation Conservatives are organic paternalists who seek to solve social instability and
disorder with benevolent welfarism.
Ayn Rand ‘man must be the beneficiary of his own moral actions’
Robert Nozick ‘the state’s claim to legitimacy indues its citizens to believe they have some
duty to obey its edict, pay its taxes and fight its battles’
and ‘the illegitimate use of a state [...] is based upon a pre-existing illegitimate power of the
state to enrich some persons at the expense of others’
In contrast to traditional thinkers Oakeshott does not identify the French Revolution or
American declaration of independence as the dangers of rationalism in the modern context,
instead he identifies flawed rationalism within fascist or communist regimes.
Human nature is: (Noel O’Sullivan)
Morally imperfect - inherently selfish creatures motivated by base desires and impulses -
linked to the ‘original sin’
Intellectually imperfect - reality is beyond their rational understanding and thus fail more
than they succeed
Psychologically imperfect - security drives and socially dependent, humans rely on
tradition and culture for an identity and grounding - consequently for early/ One Nation
thinkers rationalism should not be trusted
Emile Durkheim argues that individuals isolated from society suffer from anomie (isolation
and a sense of meaningless)
As the French aristocracy’s devotion to Hobbesian autocracy failed so violently Burke
argued that ‘a state without means of some change is without means of its
conservation.’
The New Right dissolves the One Nation notion of society and paternalism:
One Nation Conservatives are organic paternalists who seek to solve social instability and
disorder with benevolent welfarism.
Ayn Rand ‘man must be the beneficiary of his own moral actions’
Robert Nozick ‘the state’s claim to legitimacy indues its citizens to believe they have some
duty to obey its edict, pay its taxes and fight its battles’
and ‘the illegitimate use of a state [...] is based upon a pre-existing illegitimate power of the
state to enrich some persons at the expense of others’
In contrast to traditional thinkers Oakeshott does not identify the French Revolution or
American declaration of independence as the dangers of rationalism in the modern context,
instead he identifies flawed rationalism within fascist or communist regimes.
