The Conservative Critique of the Enlightenment: The Limits of Social Engineering

Abstract

The conservative, mainly Anglo-Saxon, critique of “social engineering” in Enlightenment thinking, which goes back to Edmund Burke and David Hume, among others, has recently resurfaced in the works of Michael Oakeshott, Roger Scruton, and Friedrich Hayek. This article focuses on their conservative critiques and more specifically on two common issues: the unintended negative consequences of political planning, and the institutions in civil society that act as a positive counterpart to this form of engineering.

Notes

1. In addition to Hume, cf. philosophers such as Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson.

2. David Hume, “Of Commerce,” in David Hume: Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1987), 254. Cf. Hume’s moral philosophy in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003).

3. Danish conservative intellectuals have long written about this. See Henning Fonsmark’s comprehensive review of government reports and statements in Historien om den danske utopi [The History of the Danish Utopia] (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1990) and his Kampen mod kundskaber [The War on Knowledge] (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1996). See also Inger K. Brøgger, “Harmoniske, gode og lykkelige mennesker: Det Radikale Venstre og den danske skole” [Harmonious, Good and Happy People: The Radical Party and Danish Schools], Nomos 3 (2005). The low academic level among primary school pupils has been documented by, for example, the PISA studies.

4. See, for example, Henning Fonsmark, Historien om den danske utopi, and Søren Krarup, Demokratisme [Democratism] (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1968). The current debate in Denmark about modernism’s social relevance questions the same edifying cultural-radical understanding of art and culture. See Anne Borup, Morten Lassen, and Jon Helt Haarder, eds., Modernismen til debat [Modernism Debated] (Odense: University of Southern Denmark Press, 2005). Concerning the Nordic welfare states’ cultural policy, see Peter Duelund, The Nordic Cultural Model (Copenhagen: Nordic Cultural Institute, 2005).

5. The critique of the modern managerial state, understood as a therapeutic state, has of course been levelled in other countries. See, for example, James L. Nolan, The Therapeutic State (New York: NYU Press, 1998), Paul E. Gottfried, After Liberalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), and Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven (New York: Norton, 1991). In a Danish context, the critique of victimisation has been put forward by scholars and writers such as Henrik Jensen, Ole Thyssen, Henrik Dahl and Ole. B. Olesen.

6. On the value of established institutions and the conservative attitude, see “On Being Conservative”; concerning moral philosophy and the necessity of basing society on customs and practice, see “The Tower of Babel,” both in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Press, 1991). On human fallibility and criticism of scientism, see “Scientific Politics,” in Religion, Politics and the Moral Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993).

7. Michael Oakeshott, “Rationalism in Politics,” in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1991), 5f.

8. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: Penguin, 1986), 151.

9. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 152.

10. Roger Scruton writes that the planning fallacy “is the natural response to collective difficulties in the mind of anyone who does not recognize that consensual solutions to collective problems are not, as a rule, imposed but discovered, and that they are discovered over time. The planning fallacy consists in the belief that we can advance collectively to our goals by adopting a common plan, and by working towards it, under the leadership of some central authority such as the state. It is the fallacy of believing that societies can be organized as armies are organized, with a top-down system of commands and a bottom-up system of accountability, ensuring the successful coordination of the many around a plan devised by the few.” Roger Scruton, The Uses of Pessimism (London: Atlantic Books, 2010), 98.

11. Scruton, The Uses of Pessimism, 117.

12. Cf. Hans Georg Gadamer’s work Wahrheit und Methode [Truth and Method] from 1960. Edmund Burke also asserted that the merits of traditions are confirmed by the solid test of long experience.

13. Cf. the critique of “Eurotopia” in “Erinnerungslosigkeit” [Memoryless], in Ekstasen der Zeit [The Ecstasy of Time] (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2003), and “Europrovinzialismus” in Provinzialismus (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2000).

14. Cf. Albert O. Hirschman’s three theses on the negative consequences of progressive reform in The Rhetoric of Reaction (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1991): “The Perversity Thesis,” “The Futility Thesis,” and “The Jeopardy Thesis.” In international terms, there are, of course, many other examples of unintended negative consequences on a grand scale, such as when the UN’s peacekeeping operations result in prostitution, widespread corruption and high inflation. Cf. Chiyuki Aoi, Cedric de Coning, and Ramish Thakur, Unintended Consequences of Peacekeeping Operations (New York: UN University Press, 2007).

15. Several studies show this, including, for example, the English report on the increasing religious radicalisation of young Muslims: “Living Apart Together,” published by the think tank Policy Exchange in early 2007.

16. On the correlation between a positive, culturally based sense of nation and social capital, cf. Kasper Støvring, “The Cultural Prerequisites of Social Cohesion,” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 32.3/4 (2012); Francis Fukuyama, Trust (London: Penguin, 1995) and The Great Disruption (London: Profile, 1999); Roger Scruton, The Need for Nations (London: Civitas, 2004); and Lawrence Harrison and Samuel Huntington, eds., Culture Matters (New York: Basic Books, 2000); in a specific Nordic context, see Ralf Pittelkow, Forsvar for nationalstaten [Defence of the Nation State] (Copenhagen: Lindhardt og Ringhof, 2004). On the relation between multiculturalism and mistrust, cf. Robert D. Putnam: “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century,” Scandinavian Political Studies 30 (2007).

17. I am extending here the classic sociological definition of latent functions outlined by Robert K. Merton in “Manifest and Latent Functions,” in Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1968); cf. his “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action,” in Sociological Ambivalence and Other Essays (New York: Free Press, 1976).

18. See, for example, Peter L. Berger and Richard J. Neuhaus, To Empower People: The Role of Mediating Structures in Public Policy (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1977).

19. Friedrich A. Hayek, “The Errors of Constructivism,” in New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas (London: Routledge, 1978), 6f., and “The Results of Human Action But Not of Human Design,” in Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (London: Routledge, 1967).