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Conservatism: A contribution to the sociology of knowledge
Book Reviews
607
Conservatism: A Contribution to the Sociology of Knowledge, Karl Mannheim, Kettler, Volker Meja and Nice Stehr (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, vii + 256 pp., f25.00, cloth.
David 1986),
Conservatism consists of a substantial but incomplete essay originally submitted by Mannheim for certification as a teacher at Heidelberg in 1925. It was previously available in a shorter version as the influential essay ‘Conservative Thought’. ’ It has now been edited with an interesting introductory essay from a recently discovered fuller text. Mannheim’s essay consists of three sections: one discussing the methodological problems of the study, a second defining the concept of conservatism and a final, lengthier, section on early conservatism in Germany. As the subtitle suggests, the essay, especially the section on German conservatism, is intended to show how Mannheim meant the sociology of knowledge to be applied to a specific problem. The result is one of considerable brilliance as one would have every reason to expect. It is because its treatment is of a substantive problem that the essay in its earlier form has always enjoyed areadership wider than much of Ma~heim’s other work. Mannheim traces the development of conservatism as an answer to liberalism by thinkers struggling to understand and oppose the French Revolution. Mannheim concentrates on the German experience because he feels that it is there that is found the purest examples of the two opposing ways of thought, and that opposition was consequently most marked. Hence in German conservatism and liberalism are to be found almost ideal types for study. By contrast, the English experience is much less clear. As Mannheim suggests, in England the two ways of thought become ‘fudged’ by the exigencies and accommodations of Parliamentary debate. This is clearly so in the case of Burke whose ‘conservatism’ is really a retrospective abridgement by later writers of his personal version of Whiggism. Although Mannheim discusses Burke and his influence on German followers it is a pity more is not said on this score. The obvious risk is, of course, that the ideal types of the German experience would become enmeshed in a more complex and shifting subject matter. German conservatism emerges as the mirror image of the liberalism of the European Enlightenment. The latter was built on the norms of Natural Law derived from timeless reason. In consequence it denied a place to the irrational and to the particularity of history. These were to become the source of the Romantic reaction. This reaction interpreted reason as both limited and historically conditioned. Here again, the development is most marked in Germany where a self-consciously recreated Middle Ages was the result. These broad strokes of Mannheim will be familiar already. It is rather in the more detailed discussion of individual thinkers that Mannheim’s essay is seen to its best advantage. He discusses the work of Moser, Mtiller and Savigny in particular, showing how conservatism developed in their thought. There is much of great fascination to be found here. For English readers especially, it forms a welcome addition to the meagre material available in this area of the history of political thought. The concluding paragraph of the essay begins with the words, ‘We now turn to Hegel. . .’ . Regrettably, the essay was never extended further, although intended to be several times its present length. The absence of a discussion of Hegel must inevitably diminish the stature of the work and raise suspicions that the ideal types of the study would flounder on the complexities of Hegel’s system. Although Mannheim’s essay now has classic status it is probably historians who will continue to have most reservations about it. At least with the present fuller version it is now possible to assess Manheim’s intentions in the most complete form that is available. Terry Hopton Lancashire Polytechnic
Book Reviews
608
NOTES 1. Karl Mannheim, ‘Conservative Thought’ ed. P. Kecskemeti, (London: Routledge
in Essays in Sociology andSocialPsychology, and Kegan Paul, 1953).
Liberty and Order in Early Modern Europe: The Subject and the State, 1650-1800, J. H. Shennan (London and New York: Longman, (1986). xii + 144, 7.95 paper. Professor Shennan has written a short, dense, wide ranging and provocative study, on ‘the pursuit of the impersonal state idea’, playing ‘political ideas and political practices’ against each other. He is keen to move the reader from the brute facts to their implications, to juxtapose, for example, Catherine the Great’s policies towards the nobility with the ruminations of Radischev and Karamzin, or to test Catherine against Hobbes, or Locke and Montesquieu against the Cossacks. Shennan’s juggling of liberty against order and the two against privilege and inequality is a virtuoso performance. Even where finessing and corner cutting are apparent, the book remains a challenge. Hand in hand, Shennan believes, with the impersonal state (something which is both ‘pursued’ and ‘emerges’) came liberty. Liberty (as opposed, of course, to ‘liberties’)could not survive ‘in a political world based upon the inequality of relationships between government and governed’, in, essentially, a society of orders and a world of privilege. So far so good, but Shennan goes on to argue that ‘the fundamental insecurity of that world gradually dictated the emergence of the all-poweful state and with it a growing preoccupation with political liberty’. Here I find the argument, even before we get to ‘liberty’, more difficult to accept. Shennan does not define security with sufficient precision (nor does he argue out how and why national security was used as an argument by early modern sovereigns) nor does he convincingly link the forms of external security and the forms of internal governance: is it that a society of inequality by its very nature found external security particularly hard to achieve’? The quest for security, buttressed by intellectual developments, forced internal reordering. Shennan leaves the impression that knowledge eventuates in uniformity. But political arithmetic, for example, while it led to reordering was not necessarily levelling. Shennan hinges his argument around the contrasting evolution of France and of Russia. With France, he briefly compares England, Spain and the United Provinces; with Russia, Poland and Sweden. The section on Russia is particularly interesting. There, in the mid 17th century, ‘equality had a political meaning.. the total subjection of all the subjects to the personal dictates of the ruler’; in western Europe, ‘possessory, patrimonial kingship implied a fundamental inequality between subjects’ (is ‘implied’ a weak word here’?). In the west, ‘administrative, bureaucratic developments’ prompted the ideas and politics of equality; in Russia, something of the reverse occurred. The ‘chief servants of the state’ came to see themselves as ‘the natural leaders of society’. Their control of the peasants, for which Pugachev’s rebellion provided compelling justification, ‘inevitably weakened the central government’s freedom of action’. Shennan concludes with the 1785 Charter of Nobility which revealed the failure of the quest for a modern Russian state. ‘Impersonal state power developed more readily in countries where sovereignty was veiled’, for example in England where it was ‘concealed within the complex and fluid definition of the king-in-Parliament’. The pages on England are less convincing, the argument a little too pat. Complications (e.g. the dynastic issues, Hanoverian and Jacobite, of the 18th century)are left on one side. There is little mention of the established church (cf. Clark’s recent emphasis on the ‘confessional’ nature of the English state). Clark, Bush and Cannon have recently, from different perspectives, emphasized the aristocratic basis of the 18th century regime in
607
Conservatism: A Contribution to the Sociology of Knowledge, Karl Mannheim, Kettler, Volker Meja and Nice Stehr (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, vii + 256 pp., f25.00, cloth.
David 1986),
Conservatism consists of a substantial but incomplete essay originally submitted by Mannheim for certification as a teacher at Heidelberg in 1925. It was previously available in a shorter version as the influential essay ‘Conservative Thought’. ’ It has now been edited with an interesting introductory essay from a recently discovered fuller text. Mannheim’s essay consists of three sections: one discussing the methodological problems of the study, a second defining the concept of conservatism and a final, lengthier, section on early conservatism in Germany. As the subtitle suggests, the essay, especially the section on German conservatism, is intended to show how Mannheim meant the sociology of knowledge to be applied to a specific problem. The result is one of considerable brilliance as one would have every reason to expect. It is because its treatment is of a substantive problem that the essay in its earlier form has always enjoyed areadership wider than much of Ma~heim’s other work. Mannheim traces the development of conservatism as an answer to liberalism by thinkers struggling to understand and oppose the French Revolution. Mannheim concentrates on the German experience because he feels that it is there that is found the purest examples of the two opposing ways of thought, and that opposition was consequently most marked. Hence in German conservatism and liberalism are to be found almost ideal types for study. By contrast, the English experience is much less clear. As Mannheim suggests, in England the two ways of thought become ‘fudged’ by the exigencies and accommodations of Parliamentary debate. This is clearly so in the case of Burke whose ‘conservatism’ is really a retrospective abridgement by later writers of his personal version of Whiggism. Although Mannheim discusses Burke and his influence on German followers it is a pity more is not said on this score. The obvious risk is, of course, that the ideal types of the German experience would become enmeshed in a more complex and shifting subject matter. German conservatism emerges as the mirror image of the liberalism of the European Enlightenment. The latter was built on the norms of Natural Law derived from timeless reason. In consequence it denied a place to the irrational and to the particularity of history. These were to become the source of the Romantic reaction. This reaction interpreted reason as both limited and historically conditioned. Here again, the development is most marked in Germany where a self-consciously recreated Middle Ages was the result. These broad strokes of Mannheim will be familiar already. It is rather in the more detailed discussion of individual thinkers that Mannheim’s essay is seen to its best advantage. He discusses the work of Moser, Mtiller and Savigny in particular, showing how conservatism developed in their thought. There is much of great fascination to be found here. For English readers especially, it forms a welcome addition to the meagre material available in this area of the history of political thought. The concluding paragraph of the essay begins with the words, ‘We now turn to Hegel. . .’ . Regrettably, the essay was never extended further, although intended to be several times its present length. The absence of a discussion of Hegel must inevitably diminish the stature of the work and raise suspicions that the ideal types of the study would flounder on the complexities of Hegel’s system. Although Mannheim’s essay now has classic status it is probably historians who will continue to have most reservations about it. At least with the present fuller version it is now possible to assess Manheim’s intentions in the most complete form that is available. Terry Hopton Lancashire Polytechnic
Book Reviews
608
NOTES 1. Karl Mannheim, ‘Conservative Thought’ ed. P. Kecskemeti, (London: Routledge
in Essays in Sociology andSocialPsychology, and Kegan Paul, 1953).
Liberty and Order in Early Modern Europe: The Subject and the State, 1650-1800, J. H. Shennan (London and New York: Longman, (1986). xii + 144, 7.95 paper. Professor Shennan has written a short, dense, wide ranging and provocative study, on ‘the pursuit of the impersonal state idea’, playing ‘political ideas and political practices’ against each other. He is keen to move the reader from the brute facts to their implications, to juxtapose, for example, Catherine the Great’s policies towards the nobility with the ruminations of Radischev and Karamzin, or to test Catherine against Hobbes, or Locke and Montesquieu against the Cossacks. Shennan’s juggling of liberty against order and the two against privilege and inequality is a virtuoso performance. Even where finessing and corner cutting are apparent, the book remains a challenge. Hand in hand, Shennan believes, with the impersonal state (something which is both ‘pursued’ and ‘emerges’) came liberty. Liberty (as opposed, of course, to ‘liberties’)could not survive ‘in a political world based upon the inequality of relationships between government and governed’, in, essentially, a society of orders and a world of privilege. So far so good, but Shennan goes on to argue that ‘the fundamental insecurity of that world gradually dictated the emergence of the all-poweful state and with it a growing preoccupation with political liberty’. Here I find the argument, even before we get to ‘liberty’, more difficult to accept. Shennan does not define security with sufficient precision (nor does he argue out how and why national security was used as an argument by early modern sovereigns) nor does he convincingly link the forms of external security and the forms of internal governance: is it that a society of inequality by its very nature found external security particularly hard to achieve’? The quest for security, buttressed by intellectual developments, forced internal reordering. Shennan leaves the impression that knowledge eventuates in uniformity. But political arithmetic, for example, while it led to reordering was not necessarily levelling. Shennan hinges his argument around the contrasting evolution of France and of Russia. With France, he briefly compares England, Spain and the United Provinces; with Russia, Poland and Sweden. The section on Russia is particularly interesting. There, in the mid 17th century, ‘equality had a political meaning.. the total subjection of all the subjects to the personal dictates of the ruler’; in western Europe, ‘possessory, patrimonial kingship implied a fundamental inequality between subjects’ (is ‘implied’ a weak word here’?). In the west, ‘administrative, bureaucratic developments’ prompted the ideas and politics of equality; in Russia, something of the reverse occurred. The ‘chief servants of the state’ came to see themselves as ‘the natural leaders of society’. Their control of the peasants, for which Pugachev’s rebellion provided compelling justification, ‘inevitably weakened the central government’s freedom of action’. Shennan concludes with the 1785 Charter of Nobility which revealed the failure of the quest for a modern Russian state. ‘Impersonal state power developed more readily in countries where sovereignty was veiled’, for example in England where it was ‘concealed within the complex and fluid definition of the king-in-Parliament’. The pages on England are less convincing, the argument a little too pat. Complications (e.g. the dynastic issues, Hanoverian and Jacobite, of the 18th century)are left on one side. There is little mention of the established church (cf. Clark’s recent emphasis on the ‘confessional’ nature of the English state). Clark, Bush and Cannon have recently, from different perspectives, emphasized the aristocratic basis of the 18th century regime in