Is reverence a conservative virtue?
Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 3:01 pm
I mailed the following letter with enclosures to Professor Woodruff yesterday. Now I'm going to browse the text for evidence showing that (1) reverence is a conservative virtue, and that (2) Saul Alinsky (Obama and Hillary Clinton's political mentor) was a barbarian.
Your thoughts?
December 12, 2014
Paul B. Woodruff
Department of Classics and Philosophy
FAC 406
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712-1738
Dear Professor Woodruff:
Please pardon the intrusion, but I am writing to praise Reverence - Renewing a Forgotten Virtue. In 2006 I cited it in a letter to the editor criticizing a thoughtless editorial in my local newspaper.
I recently reread Reverence because of a shocking discovery, to wit, that the great Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain, was a close friend of the radical political activist, Saul Alinsky. I learned of their relationship from a superficial and boring book, The Philosopher and the Provocateur, (Notre Dame, 1994). In the Bernard Doering’s introduction, he cites Alinsky’s choice of irreverence as a substantive democratic value.
Whereas Alinsky stated:
“I never treated anyone with reverence. And that goes for top business magnates and top figures in the church. Some people call my irreverence rudeness and they think it’s a deliberate technique. That isn’t so. I believe irreverence should be a part of the democratic faith because in a free society everyone should be questioning and challenging”,
in Reverence you wrote on p. 39:
“No one owns reverence. It is not cruel or repressive in itself. It does not put down mockery or protect pompous fools. And most important, it cherishes freedom of inquiry. Reverence sets a higher value on truth than on any human product that is supposed to have captured the truth.”
And, to `Is irreverence ever a virtue?’ you answered “No”. p.78
Second, I disagree with your “thesis that reverence cannot be a conservative virtue” p. 208 I think that you misunderstand the necessary dynamic role of change within intelligent conservatism. I submit that reverence is a conserving virtue relative to society.
I submit that reverence is implicit, substantive, and foundational in intelligent conservatism, especially in the conservative thought of Russell Kirk. In “Why I am a Conservative” in The Essential Russell Kirk (ISI Books, 2007), Kirk wrote:
“The other principal type of New England intellect is that which I call the mind of Hawthorne. It is suspicious of change, skeptical of Progress, convinced of the terrible power of sin, in favor of human nature (flawed though it is) in its present state rather than some radical revision of human character upon a Utopian design; it is reverent toward the past, mindful of the universe as a realm of mystery, and cognizant that proliferating variety is the mark of a healthful society, while uniformity is decadence.
From the beginning, I was in Hawthorne’s camp. The modern “liberal” world, as I have come to understand it, is making its way straight toward what C. S. Lewis calls “the abolition of man” --toward a society devoid of reverence, variety, and the higher imagination; toward a society in which “everybody belongs to everybody else,” in which there exists collectivism without community, equality without love.
The intelligent conservative does not set his face against reform. Prudent social change is the means for renewing society’s vitality, much as the human body is perpetually renewing itself, and yet retains its identity. Without judicious change, we perish.
But change itself cannot be the end of existence: without permanence, we perish. Burke’s standard of statesmanship was the union in one man of a disposition to preserve and an ability to reform. In some ages, the task of reformation looms gigantic; in other times, the task of conservation takes precedence.” pages 43-44
I hope that you will reconsider and modify your thesis.
Sincerely,
Thomas J. Bieter
Enclosures
_________________
“Any healthy society requires an enduring contest between its permanence and its progression. We cannot live without continuity, and we cannot live without prudent change.”
http://www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/bookman
http://www.amazon.com/Philosopher-Provo ... rovocateur Note my review of the book.
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=11334
http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Russell ... ted+essays
Your thoughts?
December 12, 2014
Paul B. Woodruff
Department of Classics and Philosophy
FAC 406
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712-1738
Dear Professor Woodruff:
Please pardon the intrusion, but I am writing to praise Reverence - Renewing a Forgotten Virtue. In 2006 I cited it in a letter to the editor criticizing a thoughtless editorial in my local newspaper.
I recently reread Reverence because of a shocking discovery, to wit, that the great Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain, was a close friend of the radical political activist, Saul Alinsky. I learned of their relationship from a superficial and boring book, The Philosopher and the Provocateur, (Notre Dame, 1994). In the Bernard Doering’s introduction, he cites Alinsky’s choice of irreverence as a substantive democratic value.
Whereas Alinsky stated:
“I never treated anyone with reverence. And that goes for top business magnates and top figures in the church. Some people call my irreverence rudeness and they think it’s a deliberate technique. That isn’t so. I believe irreverence should be a part of the democratic faith because in a free society everyone should be questioning and challenging”,
in Reverence you wrote on p. 39:
“No one owns reverence. It is not cruel or repressive in itself. It does not put down mockery or protect pompous fools. And most important, it cherishes freedom of inquiry. Reverence sets a higher value on truth than on any human product that is supposed to have captured the truth.”
And, to `Is irreverence ever a virtue?’ you answered “No”. p.78
Second, I disagree with your “thesis that reverence cannot be a conservative virtue” p. 208 I think that you misunderstand the necessary dynamic role of change within intelligent conservatism. I submit that reverence is a conserving virtue relative to society.
I submit that reverence is implicit, substantive, and foundational in intelligent conservatism, especially in the conservative thought of Russell Kirk. In “Why I am a Conservative” in The Essential Russell Kirk (ISI Books, 2007), Kirk wrote:
“The other principal type of New England intellect is that which I call the mind of Hawthorne. It is suspicious of change, skeptical of Progress, convinced of the terrible power of sin, in favor of human nature (flawed though it is) in its present state rather than some radical revision of human character upon a Utopian design; it is reverent toward the past, mindful of the universe as a realm of mystery, and cognizant that proliferating variety is the mark of a healthful society, while uniformity is decadence.
From the beginning, I was in Hawthorne’s camp. The modern “liberal” world, as I have come to understand it, is making its way straight toward what C. S. Lewis calls “the abolition of man” --toward a society devoid of reverence, variety, and the higher imagination; toward a society in which “everybody belongs to everybody else,” in which there exists collectivism without community, equality without love.
The intelligent conservative does not set his face against reform. Prudent social change is the means for renewing society’s vitality, much as the human body is perpetually renewing itself, and yet retains its identity. Without judicious change, we perish.
But change itself cannot be the end of existence: without permanence, we perish. Burke’s standard of statesmanship was the union in one man of a disposition to preserve and an ability to reform. In some ages, the task of reformation looms gigantic; in other times, the task of conservation takes precedence.” pages 43-44
I hope that you will reconsider and modify your thesis.
Sincerely,
Thomas J. Bieter
Enclosures
_________________
“Any healthy society requires an enduring contest between its permanence and its progression. We cannot live without continuity, and we cannot live without prudent change.”
http://www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/bookman
http://www.amazon.com/Philosopher-Provo ... rovocateur Note my review of the book.
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=11334
http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Russell ... ted+essays
