tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post5437553153493776799..comments2024-03-19T10:45:06.077+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: A classification of the Right by 'Bonald' - plus Mystical Christian ReactionariesBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-1548518715707463502011-07-07T17:24:40.632+01:002011-07-07T17:24:40.632+01:00I like this rather straightforward article:
http:...I like this rather straightforward article:<br /><br />http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/tcs_daily/2006/01/the-metaphysics-of-conservatism.html<br /><br />This explains conservatism from a Platonist perspective; in our view, as in the Hindu view, there is only one world and there are known strategies of adapting to it.<br /><br />However, it is consistent and all-powerful, so we plan around it, instead of the other way around.<br /><br />Liberalism is the opposite notion, which is that humans with their power can create whatever world they want.<br /><br />Interestingly, many of the most powerful voices in Romantic literature -- Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, and William Blake -- argued against the liberal notion.Brett Stevenshttp://www.amerika.org/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-34608607865617444382011-07-04T20:43:27.069+01:002011-07-04T20:43:27.069+01:00Much as I agree with Bonald the Blogger, I am not ...Much as I agree with Bonald the Blogger, I am not keen on his use of the term “romantic” here, which is too apt to be muddled up with that which was first named in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and which in its essence is widespread today amongst our contemporaries. <br /><br />A category which is labelled “romantic conservatives” and which includes Chateaubriand (a Romantic) and Maistre (an anti-Romantic) does not strike me as well-named. (And Burke was no Romantic, nor is Jim Kalb.) There is a gulf between, on the one side, acknowledging the limits of rational but finite minds to grasp and reproduce all the details of a complex reality, an acknowledgement which shows a broad and healthy grasp of reality; and on the other side, the forsaking of reason for indulgence in expansive feeling and the taking of reality as a series of occasions for sensation --- the side of the Romantic, and the side to which contemporary liberal-progressive society falls. <br /><br />A borderless world --- and I mean in all senses: not only nationally, ethnically, and socially, but also morally, intellectually, artistically, and so on --- is pre-eminently a Romantic idea: a world of free movement and creativity, where everything is to be judged in keeping with one’s own individual standpoint, that is, wilfully and subjectively, where one is to “express oneself” accordingy, where truth and truthfulness can go hang, and where limits are scorned as arbitrary and restrictive of an individual’s creative and motive power. In the end, the Romantic makes a very poor conservative or reactionary; for, whatever outward form he may whimsically take on --- and it can be any form ---, he is always at heart a Revolutionary, even if not by intent.Deogolwulfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02197539477668018797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-29782771528624580502011-07-04T20:08:30.978+01:002011-07-04T20:08:30.978+01:00Does "Mystical Christian Reactionary" in...Does "Mystical Christian Reactionary" include direct intervention by God? That's my political program. I base this on Revelation 18-19, wherein God- and Christ-hating Babylon is thrown down by God's righteous judgment.The Continental Opnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-36623757892694673842011-07-04T14:25:17.730+01:002011-07-04T14:25:17.730+01:00Just a quick note, since I'm mentioned with a ...Just a quick note, since I'm mentioned with a question mark:<br /><br />It seems to me Bonald's classification assumes each group starts with present political reality, asks what's lacking, and then wants to add that thing in to put the situation right. So it's thoroughly political and doesn't rely on anything very distinct outside the political, social, and cultural order.<br /><br />bgc's view rejects that approach as insufficient on the grounds that the political depends on the transcendent. It follows that in our present situation, which results from a general rejection of the transcendent, the first necessity is to concern ourselves with what has been rejected. That of course means that we must concern ourselves with the transcendent on its own terms.<br /><br />I'm with bgc on that.James Kalbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17262354596266250867noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-79640690062802168362011-07-04T09:16:07.323+01:002011-07-04T09:16:07.323+01:00St. Augustine would be the paragon of this kind of...St. Augustine would be the paragon of this kind of Mystical Christian Reactionary, I presume. In 'Konservativismus. Geschichtlicher Gehalt und Untergang', Panajotis Kondylis traces a line of Augustinian Christian conservatism from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. St. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, tried to defend Christian conservatism against theological challenges of "pantheistic" or "protestant" varieties.<br />Conservatism as a political philosophy seems to be born after the French Revolution only because the conservatives take over the theological discussion and translate it into the Enlightenment language of philosophy, which has become dominant by now. <br />Mystical Christian Reactionary would be the proper European conservative, for whom the political order (Holy Roman Empire) was justified as the Katechon.<br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KatechonMatiasnoreply@blogger.com