Lehrman American Studies Center

Introduction

The aim of this seminar is to develop a historical understanding of the evolution of ideas and conflicts within “conservative” circles of political thought with an eye towards critically evaluating their present relevance to contemporary politics and social analysis. We will engage in the close reading of numerous texts meant to survey a variety of strains of conservative thought. Our seminar styled classroom will revolve around discussion of these materials. A diversity of opinions will be apparent in our readings and welcomed from our students. We will deal mostly with 20th century works, though a few earlier readings will be necessary to properly situate some debates.

Questions that will be of constant interest over the semester include: What does the term “conservative” mean? What are the defining conflicts and questions out of which different schools of thought were born and delineated? What is the relation of various conservative critiques to modernity and post-modernity? How are paleo-conservatives, neo-conservatives, libertarians, agrarians, and other “conservative” constituents differentiated and in what sense are they allied? What are the peculiar features of the United States experience that have shaped American conservatism? What visions of the good, of humanity, of agency, of science, of progress, and of reality underlie various conservative critiques?

Format

This is an upper level seminar, which means classroom discussion is of primary importance. It is essential that each student come prepared to each class having carefully read the texts assigned for that day and ready to participate in a thoughtful exegesis and evaluation of them.

Grading

30% - Class Participation

15% - 1st Reading Presentation

15% - 2nd Reading Presentation

40% - Final Paper, 12-15 pages

Absence policy

Attendance is crucial, both because this is a small class which benefits from the contributions of all its members and because much of the learning derives from the seminar discussion itself. Nonetheless it is understood that periodically a student may have to miss class for legitimate reasons. The standing policy is this: if you miss a class you need to email me a 300 word reading response within a week’s time. This is not punitive, but rather a way to aid you in engaging the readings when you don’t have the benefit of the seminar discussion. In the response you should demonstrate a grasp of key themes in the readings and offer some brief reflections or criticisms of your own.

Required texts and administrative details

Almost all the readings will be posted on Blackboard under course documents.

(Nota Bene – for anyone using this syllabus to teach their own course, I can provide electronic copies of most of the readings. Just contact me at wee@duke.edu .)

However, there are two books all students will need to buy for the second half of the course:

• The Southern Tradition by Eugene Genovese

and

• After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre.

Both are widely available new or used through internet sellers for less than the school bookstore charges, and since we won't need them until the second half of the semester students are welcome to buy them on their own.

Blackboard readings are accessable at http://courses.duke.edu. Please browse through them this first weekend and come to the next class with preferences as to which you would most like to present. As a general rule each person should aim to do one presentation before fall break and one after.

Classroom and Assignment Details

We will meet over two dozen times throughout the semester, which allows each student to be responsible for delivering two reading presentations. These presentations should be more than simple summaries. In addition to identifying key points and theses in the readings, these presentations should offer some preliminary evaluative reactions and suggest areas for further discussion. These might include speculations as to why a reading is relevant, important, or controversial, suggestions as to what further implications follow from an author’s claims, examinations of internal contradictions or tensions within a text, putting a reading in dialogue with other readings or ideas we have encountered earlier in the semester, or offering some unanticipated challenges to what an author says. These presentations should last no more than ten minutes. Afterwards I’ll generally offer some further introductory comments intended to be useful for situating or clarifying the reading. Then the floor will be open for class discussion, at which point I’ll assume a role closer to that of a moderator. Students can follow up on issues raised by the presenter or interject with new questions of their own. One note about “class participation,” though. This is not meant to reward verbal diarrhea. Think before you speak. Part of the ultimate pedagogical aim of a seminar like this is to develop the art of intelligent conversation. We can be mindful of this as we negotiate the readings together.

A final note about these readings: in many ways the “teachers” of this course are the authors of our readings, not me. This is another reason it is imperative for everyone to do the readings carefully. In our discussions it will often be valuable to highlight particular passages to ground our responses and to “stick close to the text,” as they say. However, our readings constantly refer to big ideas and big questions and often presume certain philosophical frameworks in the background. Particularly because of the diversity of students (years, majors, coursework) in a seminar like this it will behoove us to periodically step back to identify and reflect on these larger questions – What does it mean to be free? What is democracy? Does the intellect direct the will, or the will the intellect? Does history have an inevitable direction? When is violence justified? What is just? How do we know? and so on… In this sense simple questions may often be both profound and useful, so don’t hesitate to raise them when the readings lead us there. It is valuable to be on the same page conceptually and to realize what is at stake in debates that may otherwise seem parochial.

The other main assignment is a final paper of 12-15 pages. The topic will be of your own choosing. If you are an upperclassmen experienced in writing term papers you are welcome to delve right in, but if you are newer to this you may want to ask me if your topic sounds promising and manageable. As you all know, writing well is not easy. I ask that you turn in a draft of your paper the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, November 28. I will grade that paper carefully and return it by the following Wednesday, which will allow you a week to revise and improve it (the draft grade will not “count”). The final paper is due by 5pm on Thursday, December 13. In special cases (e.g. if you have two exams scheduled on that day) I can allow a day or two extension, but you must arrange this well in advance.
As for office hours, I will generally be available immediately following each class. Otherwise appointments may be set up through email.

Final Thoughts about Politics and the Classroom

This course will be a scholarly inquiry into certain schools of thought generally associated with the political right. It is not intended as a proselytization on behalf conservative ideology, whatever that is. In one of our readings Leo Strauss makes an important point:

“What is meant by the remark that the great books should be studied ‘with the proper care’? At present I mention only one difficulty which is obvious to everyone among you: the greatest minds do not all tell us the same things regarding the most important themes; the community of the greatest minds is rent by discord and even by various kinds of discord. Whatever further consequences this may entail, it certainly entails the consequence that liberal education cannot be simply indoctrination.”

Indeed it will be impossible for anyone to agree with all the various “conservative” authors we are reading because they do not agree with each other. This seminar is intended to develop critical thinking, skills of argument, and insightful reading. Of course we can’t ultimately be detached from the questions we will be engaging in the way that, say, Jane Goodall is detached from the apes she studies, because answers to our questions have immediate implications for our own lives and society in ways that many scientific curiosities do not. So we’ll have to strike an intelligent balance between civil reflection and passionate debate. We will walk through many different arguments in our readings, and it will often be useful for people to advance views they don’t necessarily believe in order to help us explore other side of an argument and thus understand it better. This is all to say people are encourage to express their thoughts, even controversial ones, in seminar because this will help us learn, and in disagreeing with one another we should keep in mind our common search for the truth of things and the virtues of conversation that enable that search to be most successful.

Course Schedule

Week 1, Class 1

• Introduction; Course Syllabus; Why Teach this Course?

Week 1, Class 2

• Contemporary Conservative Perspectives – “Traditionalist Conservatives”

1. “Understanding Traditionalists Conservatives” By Mark C. Henrie
2. “Ten Conservative Principles” in The Politics of Prudence by Russell Kirk
3. “Why I Became A Conservative” by Roger Scruton

Week 2, Class 1

• Contemporary Conservative Perspectives – “Strauss and Straussians”

1. The Closing of the American Mind (selections) by Allan Bloom
2. “What is Liberal Education?” by Leo Strauss
3. “John Rawls versus the Tradition of Political Philosophy” by Allan Bloom
4. Harvard Address on “Western Civ” by Allan Bloom
5. A Student’s Guide to Political Philosophy by Harvey Mansfield

Week 2, Class 2

• A Contemporary Conservative Perspectives – “Libertarians"

1. "The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom," in Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman
2. Anarchy, State, and Utopia (selections) by Robert Nozick
3. “Pilgrims Egress: confessions of a conservative Forrest Gump” by Michael Munger

Week 3, Class 1

• A Humean Introduction to Conservatism

1. “What is Conservative Social and Political Thought?” by Jerry Muller
2. “Of Justice” “Of the Origin of Government and Contract” by David Hume
3. “On Being Conservative” in Rationalism in Politics by Michael Oakeshott

Week 3, Class 2

• Revolution, Continuity, and the Politics of Prudence

1. Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke (p.96-15 to p.157-26)

Week 4, Class 1

• Questions at the American Founding

1. Federalists 10, Federalists 49 (excerpt) by Madison
2. Patrick Henry’s Oration Against the Constitution at the Virginia Convention
3. Letters to Smith, Adams, Madison and others by Thomas Jefferson

Week 4, Class 2

• The Promise, Virtues, and Dangers of the Early American Republic

1. Democracy in America (selections) by Alexis de Tocqueville

Week 5, Class 1

• The Triumph of the Union and the Industrial Transformation of America

1. Gettysburg Address, First and Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln
2. “The American Founding as the Best Regime” by Harry Jaffa
3. The Great Transformation (selections) by Karl Polanyi
4. Optional - The Education of Henry Adams (selections) by Henry Adams

Week 5, Class 2

• Libertarians, Economics, and a Free Society

1. “The Use of Knowledge in Society” by Friedrich Hayek
2. The Road to Serfdom (selections) by Friedrich Hayek
3. “When Parliament Cannot be Sovereign” By Carl Schmidt

Week 6, Class 1

• The Libertarian Critique Extended

1. “Why I Am Not a Conservative”
2. “The Errors of Constructivism”
3. “The Creative Powers of Free Civilization”
4. “Coercion and the State”
5. “Law, Commands, and Order”
6. “The Decline of Socialism and Rise of the Welfare State”

• (most essays collected in The Constitution of Liberty by Friedrich Hayek)

Week 6, Class 2

• Communism and the “Struggle for the Life of the World”

1. “Iron Curtain Speech” (abbreviated) by Winston Churchill
2. “Introduction in the Form of a Letter to My Children” and “Flight” in Witness by Whittaker Chambers
3. The Gulag Archipelago. (selections) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Week 7, Class 1

• Communism and the Destruction of the Human

1. The Gulag Archipelago. (selections) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
2. “A World Split Apart” - Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Address- June 8, 1978
3. "Pensees: Notes for the Reactionary of Tomorrow" December 31, 1985 issue of National Review by Joseph Sobran (selections)
4. Optional- “The Power of the Powerless” by Vaclav Havel

Week 7, Class 2

• The Agrarian Critique of the Modern Project

1. Introduction to I’ll Take My Stand by Twelve Southerners
2. “Remembering Who We Are: A Political Credo,” “The Agrarian Tradition: An Affirmation” in Remembering Who We Are: Observations of a Southern Conservative by M.E. Bradford

Week 8, Class 1

• The Legacy of Southern Conservatism

1. The Southern Tradition: The Achievement and Limitations of an American Conservatism by Eugene Genovese

Week 8, Class 2

• Literary Critiques of Enlightened Modernity

1. “What is a Traditional Society?” and “The Man of Letters in the Modern World” in Essays of Four Decades by Allen Tate
2. “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot
3. "Tradition and the Individual Talent” by T.S. Eliot

Week 9, Class 1

• Literature, Language, Imagination and Politics

1. "Politics and the English Language," by George Orwell
2. “Preface,” “The Meaning of a Literary Idea” in The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling
3. Why Shakespeare is for All Time”’ by Theodore Dalrymple
4. Ulysses’ speech in Troilus and Cressida, Act I Scene III by William Shakespeare

Week 9, Class 2

• Conservatism vs Libertarianism, The Fusionist Debate

1. “The Twisted Tree of Liberty” by Meyer
2. “Freedom or Virtue?” by Bozell
3. “Uneasy Cousins” by Nisbet
4. “Conservatism and Libertarianism” by Weaver

Week 10, Class 1

• Conservatism vs Libertarianism, The Fusionist Debate continued

1. “The Fusionist as Libertarian Manqué” by Rothbard
2. “A Dispassionate Assessment of Libertarians” by Kirk
3. ”Freedom and Virtue: Allies or Antagonists“ by Bandow
4. “Love versus Freedom” by Wilhelmsen
5. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (selections) by Schumpeter

Week 10, Class 2

• Neo-Conservatives and the Political Challenges of a Cosmopolitan America

1. "The Adversary Culture of Intellectuals”
2. “The Cultural Revolution and the Capitalist Future”
3. “Urban Civilization and Its Discontents” in Neo-Conservatism by Irving Kristol

Week 11, Class 1

• Neo-Conservative Optimism

1. “The Coming ‘Conservative Century’”
2. “The New Face of American Politics”
3. “America’s ‘Exceptional’ Conservatism” in Neo-Conservatism by Irving Kristol
4. Introduction to Neo-Conservatism by Mark Gerson
5. “When Virtue Looses All Her Loveliness” by Irving Kristol
6. “To Empower People: The Role of Mediating Structures in Public Policy” by Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus

Week 11, Class 2

• Problems Solved? Liberal Democracy as the End of History

1. “The End of History?” in The National Interest, by Francis Fukuyama
2. "Francis Fukuyama as Teacher of Evil," in Modern Age by Peter Augustine Lawler
3. “Conservative Postmodernism, Postmodern Conservatism” by Peter Augustine Lawler

Week 12, Class 1

• Problems Not Solved, Understanding and Responding to 9-11

1. “The Clash of Civilizations?” in Foreign Affairs by Samuel Huntington
2. “The Political Problem of Islam” by Roger Scruton
3. “Principles and Prudence” and “The Neoconservative Legacy” in America at the Crossroads by Francis Fukuyama

Week 12, Class 2

• The Poverty of Liberal Morality, Limits of Social Science, Rival Accounts of Moral History

1. After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre, Chapters 1-8 (p. 1-108)

Week 13, Class 1

• Virtues, Traditions, First Principles, and the Communities They Embody

1. After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre, Chapters 14-18 (p. 180-263)

Week 13, Class 2

• Rationality and the Clash of Traditions

1. Whose Justice, Which Rationality by Alasdair MacIntyre, Chapters 1, 17-20 (p.1-11, 326-403)

Week 14, Class 1

• Education, Sociology, and Culture

1. “Toward a Theory of Culture” by Philip Rieff
2. “The Friviolty of Evil” by Theodore Dalrymple
3. "The Man Who Predicted the Race Riots” by Theodore Dalrymple
4. “Culture Matters” section, chapters 27-34, in It Takes a Family by Rick Santorum
5. Optional - “Our Killing Schools” by C. Bradley Thompson; available on ISI’s online lecture library.

Week 14, Class 2

• Universality and Particularity in Tension – A Permanent Political Predicament?

1. “The Question of Political Forms”
2. “The Nation and the Work of Democracy”
3. “The Empire of Law”
4. “The Empire of Morality”
5. “The Human Political Condition and the Unity of the Human Race”

• from A World Beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation State by Pierre Manent