CAN CONSERVATIVES THINK? So there’s this small inter-blog discussion of whether conservative philosophy is shut out of universities and whether that’s a bad thing. A Volokh Conspirator has a good roundup of the relevant links; my comments can be found in the box here. A lot of good points have been made. I will grind two small axes: a) Fascinating as thought experiments are, they are no substitute for literature; more philosophy courses should look at responses to Rorty and fewer at responses to Rawls. And rigorous thinking need not follow the stylistic dictates of the analytics. Eve locuta, causa finita est.

b) Somebody, somewhere in this discussion, mentioned the allergy conservatives often have to postmodern philosophy. I just read a terrific essay applying Derrida to the tradition-bound, conservative debating society I described in Thursday’s posts, and making the case for a conservatism that is open to the avenir and Derridean in all kinds of ways. So I agree, this allergy is lame.

Oh and why do people call Plato “conservative”? He’s great, but he’s less conservative than Shakespeare. (More on that comparison later.)

Other than that, I just wanted to post a rambly list of my own: courses I’d love to take, which would draw significantly on authors who could justifiably be considered “conservative.” (The quote marks are because “conservative” is a far more flexible/promiscuous term than “liberal” or certainly than “left.” Note that due to the ironies of history, there are lots of thinkers who could justifiably be called both liberal and conservative. I’m down with that since I think that fits me, too.) I should note that I was able to study a lot of justifiably-called-conservative authors in school, thus providing a small data point against the claim that they’re excluded from the university. Generally the professors who taught the courses in which I read those guys thought they had many worthy insights, thus providing a small data point in favor of the claim that a monolithically left-wing professoriat leads to a narrower scope of debate. So, on to the list:

critiques of the Enlightenment. I could do this all day. I was very, very bored in my required Intro to Modern Philosophy course, because I’d read a LOT of Nietzsche beforehand and kept irritatedly muttering that he’d basically blown up the entire framework the modern guys were using. Would be much fun to do defenses of and attacks on the rationalist project… to what extent did the rationalist project boil down to Marx on the one hand and Rand on the other (what happens when you follow the premises of modern/liberal thought to their conclusions? Does the Enlightenment project dissolve when you try to play out its conclusions?)… you could ring all kinds of changes on the basic idea here.

Madison’s thesis that the US is “partly national, partly federal.” (“Federal” = a confederation of strong states.) A more general version of this topic would be conflict within the state (separation of powers would be another example)–compromise? ideal situation? necessary restraint on state action?

Can conclusions about the nature of man be drawn from the study of what various governments have done well and poorly?

the family in political philosophy. Is the family a threat to the state? Is that good?

criticisms and defenses of philosophy as a practice–starting with The Clouds.

In what ways are natural-law arguments in tension with personalist arguments? What can one kind of argument do that the other kind can’t? (My sympathies are very much with personalism but I wonder if that’s just because I don’t understand natural-law arguments.)

Is traditionalism relativism? Has traditionalism been rendered irrelevant?

theories of spontaneous order–economic, the Internet, whatever else people can come up with. What kinds of rules/design/constraints to s.o. systems require in order to flourish?

the political rights and status of children

…That’s what I’ve got for now. I’ll post more if I think of them.