Course on Russell Kirk: final post and overall reflection

Welcome to the final post of our course on Russell Kirk. The previous posts can be accessed via the links on our Russell Kirk page here. In this final post I shall reflect on some of the key points which Kirk raises for Catholic social teaching.

For me, three points which are important in assessing Kirk's work are:

1) His emphasis on prudence and virtue as being at the heart of politics.
2) His emphasis on the importance of the past.
3) His emphasis on imagination.

The placing of prudence at the heart of political life echoes ancient philosophical thought which Kirk accessed primarily through Stoicism. Not only is there a focus on the importance of individual flourishing as the key end of politics, but there is a resistance to systematic accounts of political science as opposed to a reliance on the wise judgment of the sage. Both can be seen as being in tension with a certain understanding of Catholic social teaching as providing a recipe book of principles for politics and of its downplaying the individual's good in favour of the common good. Although there may well be moments either in Kirk's own politics or in American conservatism in general where prudence becomes mere pragmatism and a concern for the individual turns to subjectivism and self interest, such distortions are not a necessary consequence of Kirk's views. On the other hand, such emphases can be a needed corrective to modern tendencies to reduce the messiness of political life to techniques and the supernatural end of the individual soul to the emptiness of the merely collective life.

Kirk's conservative emphasis on retaining the past can certainly be criticised in the light of Catholic emphasis on natural law. Apart from noting that Kirk always acknowledged the need for change in some circumstances, however, it is important to remember that he is working within a culture constructed for 1500 years under a Christian influence. Whatever evils may exist within that culture are unlikely to removed by a wholesale abandonment of its main beneficial elements. Again, at the very least, an emphasis on the wisdom of tradition is a corrective to a modern tendency to regard the past merely as quaint or even as something from which to escape.

Finally, there is Kirk's emphasis on imagination. For all his affectation of the paraphernalia of the past, this makes Kirk a surprisingly modern, indeed, post-modern figure. His suspicion of technological reasoning and reliance instead on imaginative storytelling is based fundamentally on the ancient philosophical principle that human affairs can only be correctly governed by a virtuous ruler with the insight of wisdom. But to that basic foundation he adds a delight in playfulness and individual creativity. (For all their differences, he reminds me here of GK Chesterton.)

If I had to sum up the reasons for reading Kirk, I'd simply offer the thought that, whatever general principles can be established in  social thought, those principles still have to be interpreted and applied through practical wisdom (prudentia). Getting to grips with the insights of  the Wizard of Mecosta, both as a practising Catholic and major figure in American political thinking, is an important contribution to developing our own prudentia.

'Knowing that his death was coming soon gave great comfort to the family. At one of the last gatherings with his daughters, Kirk reminded his children to read always four specific works to sustain the moral imagination: Hans Christian Anderson's tale "Little Fur Tree," Tolkien's "Leaf by Niggle," C.S. Lewis's allegorical tale "Pilgrim's Progress," and George MacDonald's fairy tale "The Golden Key". He blessed each of his girls, promised to look over them from heaven, and made them promise to care for Annette. Kirk died on Friday morning, April 29, 1994, the Feast of St Catherine of Sienna, doctor of the church and patroness of communication. That morning Kirk had worried about John Paul II, who had just fallen, and had prayed for him. He and Annette had had breakfast together. Knowing this was probably his final meal, Kirk had asked for chocolate chip cookies and custard pie. As he had drifted off after breakfast, Monica, the oldest daughter, sang lullabies to him, the ones he had sung to her as a little girl. Russell Amos Augustine Kirk thus passed into timelessness.'

From Bradley J. Birzer (2015) Russell Kirk: American Conservative, University Press of Kentucky, pp. 392-3.

[That's all, folks! Normal blogging on general matters of interest for Catholic social thought will continue in future weeks...]

Course on Russell Kirk: week 10

Welcome to the tenth post in our online course on Russell Kirk. Links to previous posts may be found on our Russell Kirk page here.

This week we consider Kirk's final principle of conservatism:

Tenth, the thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society. The conservative is not opposed to social improvement, although he doubts whether there is any such force as a mystical Progress, with a Roman P, at work in the world. When a society is progressing in some respects, usually it is declining in other respects...

Change is essential to the body social, the conservative reasons, just as it is essential to the human body. A body that has ceased to renew itself has begun to die. But if that body is to be vigorous, the change must occur in a regular manner, harmonizing with the form and nature of that body; otherwise change produces a monstrous growth, a cancer, which devours its host.

Reading:

Russell Kirk, 'The essence of conservatism' here

Russell Kirk: 'How dead is Edmund Burke?' here

Critical discussion:

Although it is easy to read Kirk (and Burke) as resistant to any change, as he makes clear above, Kirk at least is open to change and even progress. Unlike 'progressives', however, he is sceptical about the possibility of anything more than piecemeal improvements and is acutely aware of the dangers of destruction. Burke too is open to organic change n harmony with existing structures, and indeed is accused by Leo Strauss of being too willing to accept social change as a sign of God's will (see the passage from Strauss here).

In a scepticism about the benefits of change, Kirk is at one with a strong tendency in classical philosophy. For example, Plato in the Republic devotes two books (eight and nine) to the inevitable process of the decline of his perfect City, a decline that cannot be avoided but at best delayed. Both Plato and Kirk are primarily concerned with internal forces of change, but a strong tendency within modern thought (and echoed by Catholic social teaching) identifies modernity itself as an external factor which both disrupts the organic growth of society requires new responses:



87. The term “social doctrine” goes back to Pope Pius XI [139] and designates the doctrinal “corpus” concerning issues relevant to society which, from the Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum [140] of Pope Leo XIII, developed in the Church through the Magisterium of the Roman Pontiffs and the Bishops in communion with them[141]. The Church's concern for social matters certainly did not begin with that document, for the Church has never failed to show interest in society. Nonetheless, the Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum marks the beginning of a new path. Grafting itself onto a tradition hundreds of years old, it signals a new beginning and a singular development of the Church's teaching in the area of social matters[142].

In her continuous attention to men and women living in society, the Church has accumulated a rich doctrinal heritage. This has its roots in Sacred Scripture, especially the Gospels and the apostolic writings, and takes on shape and body beginning from the Fathers of the Church and the great Doctors of the Middle Ages, constituting a doctrine in which, even without explicit and direct Magisterial pronouncements, the Church gradually came to recognize her competence.

88. In the nineteenth century, events of an economic nature produced a dramatic social, political and cultural impact. Events connected with the Industrial Revolution profoundly changed centuries-old societal structures, raising serious problems of justice and posing the first great social question — the labour question — prompted by the conflict between capital and labour. In this context, the Church felt the need to become involved and intervene in a new way: the res novae (“new things”) brought about by these events represented a challenge to her teaching and motivated her special pastoral concern for masses of people. A new discernment of the situation was needed, a discernment capable of finding appropriate solutions to unfamiliar and unexplored problems.
[From the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church here]

Questions:

Does Kirk underestimate the 'newness' of the changes in modernity and of the responses required to deal with them?

Given Catholicism's reliance on a body of achieved doctrine, shouldn't Catholics have a conservative bias in trying to retain the truth in the face of unexpected challenges?


Further reading:

Cardinal Newman: 'An essay on the development of Christian doctrine' here


[Next post: 10 October 2016. (This will be the final post of the series and will take the form of an overall reflection on Kirk's work.)]

[Details of image: John Henry Newman by Millais. Full details here.]

Talk today at Chaplaincy in Edinburgh

Just a quick reminder that there is a further talk today in the series 'The Dominican Order and the Teaching of the Sciences':

Dr Peter Hunter OP will now speak on ‘Science before Galileo? Early Dominican physics' on Monday 3 October at 7pm in the Garden Room at St Albert’s, 24 George Square, Edinburgh (entrance via George Square Lane) 

Full details on main Albertus website here

[Our online series on Russell Kirk continues tomorrow 4 October]