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.]