The relationship between conservatism and critical theory might be caricatured as antagonistic. Indeed, in the fraught political environment of our current moment, the tendency towards emphasising this caricature appears strong. The rationale for this network is rather to think of these two families of thought as “sweet enemies” that, while deriving from fundamentally different impulses, can creatively engage with one another, producing new and important things to say about our current predicament.
From the “critical” perspective, it has always been claimed that the purpose of critical theory is to liberate us. Foucault considered this task to involve a discovery of the true meaning of freedom: “to separate out from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing or thinking what we are, do or think”. If this is the case, then there ought to be no limitations on critical theory’s canvas; the palette of critique must include as wide a range of colours as possible. This requires going beyond the range of thinkers traditionally associated with critical theory, or re-engaging with their work in different ways. An obvious way of doing this, but one hitherto scantly deployed, is to engage productively with conservative thought. In other words, if we live under circumstances in which the hegemonic norms that make us “what we are, do or think” are liberal ones, and if one’s goal is to discover new ways of “being, doing or thinking”, then creative engagement with conservative critics of liberalism will take on new significance.
From the conservative point of view – as Roger Scruton once claimed – Marxism is a suitable political tradition with which conservative thinkers can engage. This is because, to use his words, “it derives from a theory of human nature that one might actually believe”. Unlike liberalism, which isolates the individual human being from culture, history and society, Marxism and its derivatives understand the self as embedded within them. They also understand that power and authority matter: that it is politics and control of institutions, not law or regulation (let alone the immutable rights of the autonomous individual) that determine the course of events. And alienation, a Marxist idea with a Hegelian pedigree, and an important theme in the work of the Frankfurt School thinkers, is of course a preoccupation among conservative thinkers as well, though often framed in different ways. Conservatives and the critical tradition, rooted as it is in Marxism, therefore have much in common, even though their conclusions are frequently diametrically opposed. Conservatism is across the world currently undergoing a reformulation – even a renaissance – in its disassociation from free market liberalism and globalism. At this moment, then, drawing on alternative ways of understanding the relationship between the self and society within the context of conservative thought would appear to be more important than ever.
The rationale for this research project is therefore that critical theorists and conservative thinkers can engage productively with one another in formulating critique, if by that term we return to Kant’s original conception of that term as meaning simply a reflection on the “subjective conditions of thinking”. This does not mean that conclusions must be identical or that imagined alternatives are shared. It means that the idea of critique itself can be liberated by putting radically different perspectives into dialogue, and that, through this exercise, new and important discoveries will be made.
Current Project
“Tyranny and Political Reason” reading group
Project Lead: David McGrogan