Russell Kirk and the Critics by Gerald J.

Russello

Gerald J. Russello

Russell Kirk and the Critics

Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind: From critics, the conviction grows that Kirk’s book
Burke to Santayana (1953) was an unequivo- certainly warrants its status as a classic of
cal challenge to Lionel Trilling’s confident conservative thought.
1950 assertion that liberalism was so domi- Some critics focused on Kirk’s alleged
nant as to be the sole intellectual tradition in ignorance of the class struggle. In United
America. The book unearthed a series of Nations World, Norman Thomas found
thinkers who embodied a tradition opposed Kirk’s idea of a “democracy of elevation”
to radicalism in all its forms—not least, wanting, because Kirk did not appreciate
Kirk implied, the soft radicalism of Ameri- “socialism, the welfare state, and the in-
can liberalism. The book received unex- come tax.”2 In the Western Political Quar-
pectedly favorable reviews in Time and The terly, Gordon Lewis, reading Kirk “like a
New York Times Book Review, transforming socialist,” complained that Kirk failed to
the publication of a thick book by an ob- accept the evidence of “a growing rigidity in
scure author into an intellectual event. class membership” and the emergence of
Confronted with such an unexampled an American proletariat. 3 (Lewis also
challenge, prominent representatives of the thought Kirk did not sufficiently credit re-
American liberal order responded with criti- cent sociological work demonstrating that
cal counter-attacks. The New Republic pub- rationality is shaped “to a significant degree
lished a review titled “The Blur of Medioc- by the sexual foundations of experience.”)
rity” by Francis Biddle, who had been At- Conversely, other reviewers criticized Kirk
torney General under Roosevelt and a judge precisely for his interest in class struggle:
at Nuremberg. Presidential candidate Biddle understood Kirk to be endorsing a
Norman Thomas, critic and poet John “pre-modern” from of hierarchy opposed
Crowe Ransom, and Professor Clinton to democratic equality.
Rossiter all cast a critical eye on portions of A young Peter Gay writing in Political
Kirk’s argument.1 This extensive press, both Science Quarterly expressed shock over
positive and negative, helped launch Kirk Kirk’s statement that the right to property
as a conservative standard-bearer. could be more important than the right to
Strikingly, most of the critical objections life.4 Gay was referring to a quotation from
raised in contemporary reviews of The Con- Paul Elmer More that did not entirely re-
servative Mind seem far more time-bound
than does Kirk’s book itself. In reviewing Gerald J. Russello is a New York City lawyer who is
the charges of these temporally parochial completing a book on the thought of Russell Kirk.

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Russell Kirk and the Critics by Gerald J. Russello

flect Kirk’s own view. Kirk used the quota- Burke.11 To include Eliot, Wheeler argued,
tion to illustrate More’s wide-ranging cri- would transform The Conservative Mind
tique of modernity, which he generally sup- from an exposition of conservative prin-
ported. But Kirk himself did not endorse ciples into an “analysis of the Thomistic
any unrestricted “right to property,” and he tradition in Anglo-American conserva-
parted company with such conservatives as tism.” Kirk later did add Eliot, calling him a
Richard Weaver who contended that prop- “principal conservative thinker” of the twen-
erty was a “metaphysical right.”5 Even if it tieth century and placing him as a bookend
were, Gay completely avoided the deeper to Burke. 12 But instead of creating a
argument that More and Kirk were advanc- Thomistic defense of conservatism, Kirk
ing: that there may be principles more im- focused on the importance of the poet to
portant than the preservation of life. culture. A poet is able to reconstruct order
Some critics sought to undermine the through the use of imagination: “From the
work by questioning Kirk’s choice of con- beginnings of European literature until this
servative thinkers. Bernard Crick in the century,” Kirk would write, “the enduring
Review of Politics opined that “Kirk has themes of serious poetry have been those of
gathered together under the name of mod- order and permanence,” especially in times
ern conservatism as weird a collection of of disorder.13
unlikelies as ever went to sea in a sieve.”6 The belated inclusion of Eliot served an-
And Harvey Wheeler in Shenandoah asked other purpose as well. Eliot’s essay “Tradi-
of Kirk’s account “whether more than that tion and the Individual Talent” allowed
one tradition cannot be justly identified Kirk to resolve the difficult problem of the
with the Anglo-American conservative relationship between individual freedom
mind.” Wheeler took particular exception and the claims the larger society. Frank
to the “highly selected segment of the Meyer, for example, thought that however
Burkean tradition” Kirk emphasized, and much Kirk professed to favor individual
he wondered at the omission of Hamilton, freedom rather than oppression, he in fact
Bolingbroke, and Walter Lippman.7 It desired a form of “status society.” Thus,
would take Kirk another decade to explain Kirk’s thought, “stripped of its pretensions,
why Bolingbroke, though admirable, was is, sad to say, but another guise for the
no conservative, going beyond his collectivist spirit of the age.”14 In The Con-
unpersuasive exclusion of Bolingbroke in servative Mind, by opining with Burke that
The Conservative Mind on the grounds of “the individual is foolish but the species is
non-theism.8 Wheeler, however, did not wise,” Kirk lent some credence to this charge.
identify his own criteria for who should be But as he developed his conservative vision,
considered a conservative.9 His “argument” Kirk clearly moved away from this view. He
amounted to a preference for one set of came instead to adopt Eliot’s understand-
figures over another. ing that a tradition is only living when it is
Wheeler referred specifically to the omis- used and adopted by individuals acting
sion of Eliot as evidence of the “incompat- within a culture.
ibility of Kirk’s conservatism with the doc- Moreover, an appreciation for the indi-
trines of...Eliot in particular.”10 Wheeler vidual is implicit in the text of The Conser-
thought that adding Eliot’s “eternal vative Mind itself. The book is, after all, a
Thomism” would contradict the “value- study of particular individuals rather than
free relativism of the anthropologist” that an account of abstract ideas. Kirk made this
was “fundamental” to both Kirk and emphasis more explicit in his later histori-

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 Russell Kirk and the Critics by Gerald J. Russello

cal writings, adopting John Lukacs’ “par- Catch-22: If he acknowledged the conser-
ticipatory history,” which mingles objectiv- vative acceptance of change, he would be-
ity and subjectivity in the creation of his- come a mere temporizer; if, instead, he
torical knowledge by placing the individual’s repaired to eternal principles he would be a
depiction of reality at the center of the his- mere reactionary. Karl Mannheim provided
torical imagination. Kirk came to believe the most detailed account of this dilemma
that “historical consciousness necessarily is of conservatism in his essay “Conservative
entwined with the mystery of personal con- Thought,” which appeared in the same year
sciousness, and involves not only history, as The Conservative Mind.19
but also psychology and philosophy.”15 In The reviews also expressed a sometimes
his study of Eliot, he would write that “our thinly-disguised disdain for the conserva-
present private condition and knowledge tive temperament. Lewis called this Kirk’s
depend upon what we were yesterday, a “impassioned nostalgia for a dead society
year ago, a decade gone; if we reject the and a clever contempt for all the schools of
lessons of our personal political thought” at-
past, we cannot subsist for tempting to deal with
another hour.”16 Because current problems. Con-
of the necessity of indi- servatism is a sort of
vidual action, history be- mental defect, hostile to
comes infused with a the modern world and
moral purpose that is ab- holding on to lost cer-
sent if the historical pro- tainties without any ba-
cess is external to its par- sis for doing so. The Con-
ticipants. servative Mind for
John Crowe Ransom Wheeler “soothes [the]
identified a more central pent-up injury, forlorn-
issue for Kirk to resolve: ness and frustration” of
“the badge the conserva- those conservatives who
tive wears must have two are left behind by mod-
faces. One is resistance to ern life.20 In America, this
the new event; this is the fighting face.... The claim was most forcefully advanced by Ri-
other is acceptance after the event, permit- chard Hofstadter, who thought conserva-
ting the expectation that when once the new tism reflected a “paranoid style.”
ways are shaken down and become old ways
they too will be loved.”17 Lewis found this In Karl Mannheim’s account of the con-
pattern of resistance to, and subsequent servative dilemma, conservatism arose as a
acceptance of, change to be the “weakness reaction to the modern world, and that
of logic characteristic of all conservative reaction is expressed as a class struggle.
thought: it erects a philosophy which must Mannheim argued that while “traditional-
oppose fundamental change and then, when ism” is a permanent psychological trait,
change has been affected by the operation conservatism is a definable social phenom-
of social-cultural factors, it proceeds to in- enon that emerges only when societies are
corporate its compelled accommodation to confronted by massive change. Specifically,
the new facts as an example of the remark- “traditionalism can only become conserva-
able wisdom of willing concession.”18 Here tism in a society in which change occurs
the reviewers were trying to place Kirk in a through the medium of class conflict—in a

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Russell Kirk and the Critics by Gerald J. Russello

class society. This is the sociological back- no longer be taken for granted, either be-
ground of modern conservatism.”21 cause those institutions are under ideologi-
In his 1957 article “Conservatism as an cal attack or because of social, political and
Ideology,” a young Samuel Huntington took cultural developments that tend to under-
Mannheim one step further and divided mine their authority or their functioning.”27
conservatism into three categories: the situ- Those “autonomous” conservatives who
ational, the aristocratic, and the autono- believe in enduring truths, Muller contends,
mous. He concluded that only situational are only fooling their readers, or perhaps
conservatism could have any lasting power. themselves. Consequently, “historical utili-
Such a conservatism is “that system of ideas tarianism” becomes for Muller the corner-
employed to justify any established social stone of conservative thought: conserva-
order...against any fundamental challenge tives preserve what works, and generate the
to its nature or being.”22 An aristocratic reasons for preservation later. Because Kirk’s
conservative was a mere reactionary; a con- emphasis on an evocative and imaginative
servative holding to “autonomous” truths construction of conservatism does not fit
against present circumstances really was no within the Mannheim typology, Muller does
conservative at all. In Huntington’s read- not include any of Kirk’s work in his anthol-
ing, Kirk was an “autonomous” conserva- ogy.
tive who sought to turn back the clock in the Kirk was no “situational” conservative,
name of “a strained, sentimental, nostalgic, nor any mere defender of the achievements
antiquarian longing for a society which is of liberalism. The Conservative Mind was
past. [Kirk] and his associates are out of (in the words of historian George Nash) an
tune and out of step in modern America.”23 “all-out assault” on almost every existing
A true conservatism, for Huntington, liberal policy or position.28 Were Kirk a
“appears only when the challengers situational conservative, he would not have
to...established institutions reject the fun- assumed liberalism could not be salvaged,
damentals” of those institutions.24 Once that as he did from the 1950s. In an early essay,
challenge passes, conservatism too disap- “The Dissolution of Liberalism,” he con-
pears. In Huntington’s view, the funda- cluded that liberalism was moribund from
mental American social order is a liberal the beginning, “for lack of a higher imagi-
one. Conservatism emerges occasionally as nation.”29 Because it lacked any real narra-
a shield to protect the liberal, because liber- tive power, liberalism could not hold the
alism cannot generate sufficient loyalty to popular imagination; liberalism soon
guarantee its own survival. “In preserving “ceased to signify anything, even among its
the achievements of American liberalism, most sincere partisans, [other] than a vague
American liberals have no recourse but to good will.”30 Kirk held this opinion in the
turn to conservatism.”25 Ralph Gilbert Ross Eisenhower years, even before the cultural
made the same point, claiming that “[w]hen revolutions of the 1960s and the rise of the
conservatives ask what, basically, they want New Left. And unlike Lionel Trilling, Kirk
to conserve, one of the first things they did not see socialism or a degraded mass
should think of is the liberal tradition.”26 culture as the only alternatives.31
Explicitly drawing upon Mannheim, Kirk’s essay, “The Books of Conserva-
Jerry Muller has stated in a recent edited tism,” speaks to the question of criteria for
anthology that “conservatism as an articu- judging historical change and is his answer
lated intellectual position only arises when to Mannheim and Muller. Kirk distinguishes
the legitimacy of existing institutions can conservatism from reaction in that “the

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 Russell Kirk and the Critics by Gerald J. Russello

conservative hopes to reconcile what is most ments and methods” to defend order and
important in old customs with the change not rely on what worked for Burke or other
that any society must experience if it is to earlier conservatives.36 In light of Kirk’s
endure.... [While] the reactionary desires a clearly stated position, the reviewers’ specu-
return to conditions of an earlier period.” lations about Kirk’s “medievalism” or his
In other words, the reactionary is himself idolatry of the eighteenth-century appear
an ideologue. The reviewers of The Conser- deeply mistaken. The typical caricature of
vative Mind could not see a way for conser- Kirk as an ersatz eighteenth-century coun-
vatives to avoid the charge of hypocrisy, try squire is belied by his own expressed
first opposing change but then acquiescing distaste for a century he described as “an
to it. But to demand an unconditional re- age of gilded selfishness and frivolous intel-
turn to a former “golden age” is itself a lectuality—an age almost without a heart.”37
species of ideology, one which Kirk rejected. Indeed, Burke was a conservative hero to
The past can never be known fully, as he Kirk precisely because he was “essentially a
knew from Lukacs; nor, as the liberal re- modern man, and his concern was with our
formers thought, can a perfect future be modern complexities” in a way that (for
predicted. The criterion for conservative example) Bolingbroke was not.38
reform is what can be preserved under the
circumstances, not what change has been
accepted. In contrast to the Mannheim/Huntington
Huntington’s view notwithstanding, Kirk model, which viewed conservatives as a
was not really an “autonomous” conserva- necessary but temporary evil, Richard
tive either. While the relationship between Hofstadter believed the new conservatives
Kirk and natural law thinking is complex of the 1950s were actively dangerous to the
and changed over time, he did not believe social order. In his 1965 book, The Paranoid
that the natural law was necessarily instan- Style in American Politics, he famously de-
tiated in particular social arrangements that scribed conservatives, the main exponents
had to be preserved, come what may.32 The of the “paranoid style,” as afflicted with
natural law’s primary function is to guide debilitating status anxiety. Hofstadter’s
individuals in accord with right reason, Kirk study was only the best known of a number
thought; it is only secondarily a blueprint of analyses in the 1960s that sought to trace
for positive law. “Natural law is not a harsh conservatism to an “authoritarian person-
code that we thrust upon other people: ality,” interpreting it as a kind of mental
rather it is an ethical knowledge” employed illness.39 Both old-line WASP families and
to restrain will and appetite on the indi- new immigrants were insecure in postwar
vidual level.33 America, leading them to lash out at others
Kirk considered figures like Abraham and credit conspiracies directed against their
Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson to be con- way of life. What Hofstadter called the “ul-
servatives, and he did not advocate a return tra-conservatives” were animated by “a
to an aristocratic form of government—at rather profound if largely unconscious ha-
least not in America, which had never known tred of our society and its ways;” they were
such a social form.34 Lincoln he praised characterized by a “restlessness, suspicion
quite explicitly: “For the first time, we see a and fear.”40
man from the common clay as defender of This understanding of the conservative
order.”35 Present-day conservatives, he temperament continues today: consider, for
thought, needed to devise “other instru- example, the media caricature of evangeli-

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Russell Kirk and the Critics by Gerald J. Russello

cal Christians as poor and easily led. Rogers these disparate groups except for the con-
Smith of Yale, in an important article argu- tributors’ dislike of them.
ing for an appreciation of America’s “mul-
tiple traditions,” nevertheless describes the Neither a Mannheim-inspired under-
conservative traditions as promoting standing of conservatism as the defense of
“[r]acial, nativist, and religious tensions...as liberalism nor a Hofstadter-based claim that
the Buchanan and Duke campaigns, the conservatism is nothing more than a social
Christian Coalition, the Los Angeles riots, pathology does justice to the task Kirk set
the English-only agitation [and] renewed for himself in The Conservative Mind. So
patterns of racial segregation” illustrate. He what was it that Kirk was attempting? David
judges the conservative traditions “so ir- Frum, in a recent assessment of Kirk, pro-
reparably different and dangerous that they vides a clue. He writes that “Russell Kirk
do not merit equal status in the political inspired the conservative movement by
community.”41 pulling together a series of only partially
But Kirk was not a representative of any related ideas and events into a coherent
paranoid style. In “Conservatives and narrative.... Kirk did not record the past; he
Fantastics,” he directly criticized the radical created it.”45 Earlier, in 1989, J. David
elements of the nascent conservative move- Hoeveler, Jr. described conservatism as “that
ment, such as the John Birch Society. The quality of imagination and insight, of his-
“freaks, charlatans, profiteers and foolish torical memory, of awe, of sympathy, that
enthusiasts,” while at times borrowing (or makes the empirical data of life something
being given) the conservative label, must be more—a habitable world, an inner envi-
distinguished from conservatism proper.42 ronment that is personal and familiar.”46
And far from suffering status anxiety, Kirk The Conservative Mind was Kirk’s first large-
seemed supremely confident as a conserva- scale attempt to use imagination in the ser-
tive spokesman, living happily far away from vice of historical memory.
urban centers in his ancestral home in rural Consequently, The Conservative Mind
Michigan. Kirk’s humble and contented was not the linear, deductive treatise on
way of life was a direct contradiction to the conservatism that some were expecting. It
Hofstadter thesis that “conservatism has was, as Kirk later said, an “historical analy-
much to do with the selfish possession of sis of a mode of regarding the civil social
wealth and power and little to do with moral order.”47 The Conservative Mind created, as
purpose, much less Christian love.”43 Nash noted, a “genealogy” from which con-
Moreover, Kirk contended, there was servatives could draw. In faulting Kirk for
little genuine evidence for the “authoritar- creating a tradition that was not really there,
ian personality” thesis. The contributors to the critics radically misunderstand his
collections such as The New American Right achievement. The dichotomy between a
(which included Hofstadter, David Riesman “true” and a “false” conservatism that the
and Nathan Glazer, among others) at- reviewers focused on indulges precisely the
tempted to fit everyone with whom they liberal abstraction that The Conservative
disagreed, from “old American families, Mind avoids.
Irish, Germans, Catholics, Protestants [and] Bernard Crick thought that Kirk was in
Jews” into their search for the “New Ameri- an intellectual quandary because, “[h]aving
can Right.” While “ingenious,” these de- no significant conservative tradition, Ameri-
scriptions for Kirk were “thoroughly un- cans are put to the unconservative task of
convincing.”44 There was nothing to unite inventing one.”48 But invention need not be

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 Russell Kirk and the Critics by Gerald J. Russello

antithetical to conservatism. From his stud- idly describes a coming “Age of Sentiments,”
ies of Burke, Disraeli, Eliot, and others, Kirk dominated by the Image, which will dis-
believed that tradition always partakes of place the modern “Age of Discussion,” char-
invention. Facts have no life of their own: it acterized by a love of rational argument and
is imagination that makes tradition out of the tyranny of the Fact.53 The Age of Discus-
history. The narrative of conservatism that sion “broke the cake of custom in
he composed was itself an embodiment of Christendom...engulfed Burke’s prejudice
the imagination that became the touch- and prescription [and] subverted men’s
stone of his conservatism. ancient reluctance to abandon the ways of
The imagination is not primarily ratio- their ancestors.”54 In the new age
nal, but embraces the feelings and affec- [t]he immense majority of human beings will
tions; it is something outside the individual, feel with the projected images they behold
but which (in Burke’s words) the individual upon the television screen; and in those view-
“owns” and “ratifies;” it is not based upon ers that screen will rouse sentiments rather
calculation; and it is something in addition than reflections. Waves of emotion will sweep
back and forth, so long as the Age of Senti-
to the physical realities of our “shivering
ments endures. And whether those emotions
nature.” While its core remains the same, it are low or high must depend upon the folk
must be “expressed afresh from age to age,” who determine the tone and temper of televi-
primarily through literature and art, but sion programming.55
also through political statesmanship.49 The
imagination, moreover, is always present; That is, the emotions will depend on the
the only question for Kirk is whether the quality of imagination that stirs them. But
imagination will be respected and employed, while Kirk was no unqualified admirer of
or ignored. the Age of Sentiments, he did not despair
Kirk thought that a return to the imagi- about its arrival: “[f]or the most part, the
nation was a crucial step in the recreation of Age of Discussion was an age of shams and
cultural order. “Whether to throw away posturings.”56 Like its fruit, liberalism, Dis-
yesterday’s nonsense to embrace tomor- cussion lacked “vitality.” Mired in abstrac-
row’s nonsense, or whether we find our way tions and endless argument over first prin-
out of superficiality into real meaning, must ciples, or indeed, whether there were any
depend in part upon the images which we such principles, rejecting authority and tra-
discover or shape.”50 Kirk identified several dition, it failed to move hearts. The conser-
authors as inspiring this strand of moder- vative imagination, however, could be fit-
nity-critique: Max Picard, Gustave Thibon, ted to survive where liberalism could not.
and Charles Baudouin.51 The now unknown What conservatives needed was a “deliber-
Baudouin, for example, in The Myth of Mo- ate revival of the concept of traditional wis-
dernity, demolished the false objectivity of dom,” which would survive the end of the
the modern world: “To believe what we see Age of Discussion.57
is a view of reality is a naiveté of which only Such an alternative vision has some claim
‘modern man’ is capable. In short, although to being called “postmodern.” The contro-
they repudiate the superstition of the word, versy over postmodernism—its definitions,
our contemporaries accept without flinch- future, and merits—would at first blush
ing the superstition of the fact, which is no seem to have little to do with traditionalist
less deceptive.”52 conservatism. Postmodern figures have dis-
In a pair of prescient essays, written not tinguished themselves in their devotion to
long after The Conservative Mind, Kirk viv- obscure and abstract reasoning and leftist

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Russell Kirk and the Critics by Gerald J. Russello

political causes. Nevertheless, as early as of a generation ago, but rather consonant

1982, Kirk suggested that “the Post-Mod- with the convictions of scientists today.
ern imagination stands ready to be cap- Fundamentalism is hopelessly outdated.
tured. And the seemingly novel ideas and Modernism has ceased to be modern. We
sentiments and modes may turn out, after are ready for some sort of Postmodern-
all, to be received truths and institutions, ism.”62
well known to surviving conservatives.”58 Some conservative writers have already
Though himself implacably hostile to begun to follow this lead.63 Vigen Guroian
postmodernism, E. Christian Kopff has per- has drawn out the connections between
ceptively described Kirk’s postmodern af- Kirk and what Guroian calls the
finities. “Kirk presented America with an “postmodern” Eliot.64 David Walsh, in his
attitude, a style, a persona.” He quotes Kirk Guarded by Mystery: Meaning in a
as asking, “What are you and I? ... In large Postmodern Age attempts to ground
part we are what we imagine ourselves to postmodern thought in a new understand-
be. William Butler Yeats advises us to clap ing of the transcendent, which, Walsh ar-
masks to our faces and play our appropriate gues had been lost—but not rejected—by
part: the image becomes reality.”59 Even the modernity.65 And Peter Augustine Lawler,
carefully constructed image of Kirk as an in his recent book Postmodernism Rightly
eighteenth-century gentlemen, living a life Understood, sets out a conservative
of letters in a rural “Victorian villa, fur- postmodern tradition that he argues is fully
nished with furniture salvaged from old in accord with the larger Western philo-
hotels and churches,” is evocative of the sophical tradition. Lawler describes
postmodern propensity for self-creation.60 postmodernism “rightly understood” as a
The connections between post-modern- rejection of “modern rationalism or science,
ism and conservatism in fact run deep.61 and to some extent rationalism simply, for
One of the earliest uses of the term is attrib- their futile attempt to eradicate the mystery
uted to Bernard Iddings Bell, the Episcopal of being, particularly human being.”66
canon whom Kirk admired. In his 1926
book, Postmodernism, Bell was already pre- Even if Kirk would not fully adopt any of
dicting the collapse of modernity. Moder- the current versions of postmodernism,
nity was born in the destruction of belief in conservatism and the conservative imagi-
the infallibility of the Bible through the new nation have contributions to make to the
scripture scholarship. The book of nature postmodern age. Eugene Genovese has
became the new holy writ. Now, the indi- characterized modernity as presenting a
vidual intellect could perceive the infallible unique “difficulty to conservatism,” because
laws of nature and divine the form and “[t]houghtful conservatives know that they
structure of the universe, and eventually, plunge into difficulty whenever they be-
the principles of society and moral con- come aware of themselves as conservative.”
duct. But science operates only within the In order to defend what they thought was
frame of the measurable; it cannot answer worth conserving, conservatives believed
“why” anything is. Bell called for a return to that they had to engage liberalism on its
religion, in a “postmodern” form, grounded own terms, in a “dialectical” mode that
in the Incarnation and receptive to miracles. presupposes a “collective of propositions, a
“The time would seem to be at hand for a logic” that is foreign to the rhetorical, di-
new school of religious aspirants, one in dactic, and imaginative modes more ame-
accord not with the prejudices of scientists nable to conservative expression.67 This ca-

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 Russell Kirk and the Critics by Gerald J. Russello

pitulation to liberalism, has, according to alternative language he created for conceiv-

James Kalb, failed to produce any signifi- ing the conservative program remains the
cant defense of conservative thought. In- most viable in the post-liberal age.
stead, conservatism cannot even present its Mystery lay at the heart of Kirk’s under-
positions in a persuasive way because con- standing of the conservative temperament.
servatives “cannot even talk...in language There is the mystery of free will, of indi-
very different from that of triumphant lib- vidual choice, of divine Providence, and of
eralism.”68 the creation and sustaining of tradition.
In retrospect, the weakest part of Kirk’s Modernity denigrated mystery in the name
book is the most quoted: Kirk’s famous of a scientific or politically revolutionary
“canons” of conservatism. Such a catalogue meta-narrative, but “modernity has not
played right into the hands of Huntington discovered convincing answers to the ques-
and others, who thought they exemplified a tions that these myths raise; rather, moder-
conservative abstraction at odds with the nity has endeavored to shrug away the pro-
historical texture of the remainder of Kirk’s found lessons that lie implicit in these
account. Lewis concentrated on this precise myths.”71 The postmodernists, on the other
point: “any attempt to build philosophic hand, while recognizing mystery, too often
foundations for [the conservative] attitude use it only as an opportunity for an endless
is invariably evidence that the attitude no play of meaningless word games. Conser-
longer claims the instinctive allegiance” of vatives, in contrast, keep a healthy respect
the culture; “far too much of genuine for the irreducible core of human experi-
conservatism...is a matter of feeling and ence that must be expressed in ways other
instinct and emotion to be satisfactorily than through reason: “Tenebrae are woven
reducible to the forms of logical assertion into human nature, whatever the meliorists
and proof.”69 Although Kirk never re- say.”72 Through his imaginative recreation
nounced the canons, they continued to in The Conservative Mind of a tradition that
change; by his last books, there were ten, could find a home in a postliberal era, Kirk
but in newer editions of The Conservative helped illumine the shadows surrounding
Mind, Kirk admonished that “if one seeks the mysteries of life.
by definition more than this, the sooner
1. Charles Brown, Russell Kirk: A Bibliography (Clarke
[one] turns to individual thinkers, the surer Memorial Library, 1981).
ground [one] is on.”70 Rather than continue
2. Norman Thomas, Book Review, United Nations
to push these abstract canons, Kirk stressed World (August 1953): 34-35.
other themes implicit in The Conservative
3. Gordon K. Lewis, “The Metaphysics of Conserva-
Mind, such as the imagination, which is not tism,” Western Political Quarterly (1953): 728, 735.
mentioned among the canons.
4. Peter Gay, Book Review, The Political Science Quar-
Now that liberalism has died in all but terly 68:4 (December 1953): 586, 587.
the most recalcitrant corners, the project 5.. Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (paper-
begun with The Conservative Mind more back ed., University of Chicago, 1984), 131.
fully comes into focus. Postmodernism has 6. Bernard Crick, “The Strange Quest for an Ameri-
reintroduced sentiment, contingency, lo- can Conservatism,” The Review of Politics (1953): 359,
cality and imagination into social discourse, 371-372. See also Huntington, 471-472, cited below.
which are the areas that occupied much of 7. Harvey Wheeler, “Russell Kirk and the New Con-
Kirk’s work. In The Conservative Mind, Kirk servatism,” Shenandoah (1953): 20, 23.
attempted to create a conservative mood 8. Kirk, “Rhetoricians and Politicians,” The Kenyon
rather than an ideological program, and the Review 26:4 (Autumn 1964): 764; Kirk, “Bolingbroke,

THE INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW—Spring/Summer 2003 11

Russell Kirk and the Critics by Gerald J. Russello

Burke, and the Statesman,” The Kenyon Review 28:3 Law,” (Heritage Lecture No. 469, 1993), 3. See also
(Summer 1966): 426 Russell Kirk, “Natural Law,” Notre Dame Law Review
9. Wheeler, 25. 69 (1994): 1046.

10. Wheeler, 24. 34. CM, 417.

11. Wheeler, 29. 35. Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order (Open
Court, 1978), 450.
12. Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind (7th ed.,
Regnery, 1986), 491. Hereafter CM. 36. CM, 425.

13. CM, 496. 37. Russell Kirk, Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: Essays
of a Social Critic (Sherwood Sugden, 1991), 184. First
14. Frank S. Meyer, “Collectivism Rebaptized,” in In published in 1956. Hereafter BDA.
Defense of Freedom and Related Essays (Liberty Fund
1996), 13. 38. Russell Kirk, Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsid-
ered (Wilmington: rev. ed. Intercollegiate Studies
15. John Lukacs, Historical Consciousness: The Re- Institute, 1997), 8. First published in 1967.
membered Past (Transaction Books 1994), xiii.
39. Nash, 125-126.
16. Kirk, Eliot and His Age: T. S. Eliot’s Moral Imagi-
nation in the Twentieth Century (Sherwood Sugden, 40. Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in Ameri-
1988), 82. First published in 1971. can Politics and Other Essays (Knopf, 1965), 44-45.

17. John Crowe Ransom, “Empirics in Politics,” The 41. Rogers M. Smith, “Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal
Kenyon Review 15 (1953): 648, 650. and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America,”
American Political Science Review (September 1993):
18. Lewis, 730. 549, 563.
19. Karl Mannheim, “Conservative Thought,” in From 42. Russell Kirk, Confessions of a Bohemian Tory
Karl Mannheim (Oxford University Press, 1971). (Fleet, 1963), 285.
20. Wheeler, 33. 43. Mark C. Henrie, “On Russell Kirk, Happy at
21. Samuel P. Huntington, “Conservatism as an Ide- Home,” New Oxford Review (July-August 1994), 22,
ology,” American Political Science Review 51 (1957): 23.
454, 459. 44. Russell Kirk, Book Review, Annals of the American
22. Huntington, 454-55. Academy of Political and Social Science (May 1956):
184-185.
23. Huntington, 455.
45. David Frum, “The Legacy of Russell Kirk,” The
24. Huntington, 458.
New Criterion 13:8 (December 1994): 15.
25. Huntington, 473.
46. J. David Hoeveler, Jr., “American Intellectual
26. Ralph Gilbert Ross, “The Campaign Against Lib- Conservatism: Is There a Usable Past?” The Intellec-
eralism, Cont’d,” Partisan Review 20: (September- tual History Newsletter 11 (June 1989): 4, 16.
October 1953): 568, 574.
47. CM, iv.
27. Jerry Z. Muller, ed. Conservatism: An Anthology of
48. Crick, 365.
Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the
Present (Princeton University Press, 1997), 422. 49. RT, 71.
28. George Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Move- 50. Kirk, “The Rediscovery of Mystery,” Imprimis 6:1
ment in America (Basic Books, 1979), 65. (January 1977), 1, 3.
29. Russell Kirk, Enemies of the Permanent Things 51. Russell Kirk, “Obdurate Adversaries of Moder-
(Sherwood Sugden, 1988), 33. First published in nity,” Modern Age 30:1 (Summer/Fall 1976), 204.
1969. Hereafter EPT. 52. Charles Baudouin, The Myth of Modernity (Allen
30. EPT, 40. & Unwin, 1950), 82.
31 CM, 476. 53. “The Age of Discussion,” BDA, 43; “The Age of
Sentiments,” The Wise Men Know What Wicked Things
32. For a discussion of Kirk’s views, see Peter Stanlis,
are Written on the Sky (Regnery, 1987), 111.
“Russell Kirk and the Roots of American Order,”
(unpublished manuscript), 5. 54. CM, 295-296.
33. Russell Kirk, “The Case for and Against Natural 55. RT, 134. Original emphases.

12 THE INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW—Spring/Summer 2003

 Russell Kirk and the Critics by Gerald J. Russello

56. RT, 136. (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999).

57. CM, 296. 64. Vigen Guroian, “Moral Imagination, Humane
58. Kirk, “Conservatism: A Succinct Description,” Letters, and the Renewal of Society,” Heritage Lec-
National Review 34:17 (September 3, 1982): 1080-84, ture (April 29, 1999), 4.
1104. 65. David Walsh, Guarded by Mystery: Meaning in a
59. E. Christian Kopff, The Devil Knows Latin: Why Postmodern Age (The Catholic University of America
America Needs the Classical Tradition (Intercollegiate Press, 1999).
Studies Institute, 1999), 183. 66. Peter Augustine Lawler, Postmodernism Rightly
60. Gregory Wolfe, “The Catholic as Conservative,” Understood (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 109.
Crisis 11:9 (October 1993), 25, 27. 67. Eugene Genovese, The Southern Tradition: The
61. The traditionalist Burke scholar Francis Canavan, Achievement and Limitations of an American Conser-
S.J., for example, identified Roberto Unger’s Knowl- vatism (Harvard University Press, 1995), 20.
edge and Politics, an early postmodern critique of 68. James Kalb, “The Tyranny of Liberalism,” Mod-
liberalism, and Thomas A. Spragens’ The Irony of ern Age 42:3 (Summer 2000), 241, 245.
Liberal Reason as together comprising “the definitive 69. Lewis, 729.
critique of liberal rationalism.” “The Irony of Liberal
Reason,” The Review of Politics 44:4 (Oct. 1982): 615- 70. CM, 10.
617. 71. Kirk, “The Salutary Myth of the Otherworldly
62. Bernard Iddings Bell, Postmodernism and Other Journey,” The World & I (October 1994): 425-437.
Essays (Morehouse Publishing Company, 1926), 53- The quote is found on page 426.
54. 72. Kirk, “A Cautionary Note on the Ghostly Tale” in
63. See, for example, Glenn Hughes, ed., The Politics Watchers at the Strait Gate (Arkham House, 1984),
of the Soul: Eric Voegelin on Religious Experience xii.

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