Russell Kirk’s “The Conservative Mind” teaches us the importance of conserving our cultural patrimony and provides us with images of the customs, institutions, and beliefs that we ought to conserve. In this way, Kirk grounds us in the conservative intellectual tradition, from Burke to Eliot, that can stand against the ideologies of our age.

Conservatism in Postwar America

As the Second World War came to an end, liberalism seemed to be the dominant intellectual force in America. So great was the influence of liberalism during this time that Lionel Trilling wrote in The Liberal Imagination (1950) that it was our “sole intellectual tradition.” To the extent that conservatism had a notable presence in America, he argued, it expressed itself as “irritable mental gestures which seem to resemble ideas.”^[1] In other words, Trilling argued that there was no serious conservative intellectual tradition discernable in America. As historian Bradley Birzer puts it, conservatism in the aftermath of the Second World War seemed “black, blue, beaten, adrift, and broken, devoid of any real respectability.” Conservatives, it seemed, had been unequipped to deal with the challenge of economic depression at home as well as radical ideologies and war abroad.^[2] The ideas in circulation during this time were almost exclusively liberal or radical in their orientation.

This changed, however, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Notable books by eminent thinkers in the conservative and humanist tradition emerged during this time, including ones by Robert Nisbet, Richard Weaver, Eric Voegelin, T.S. Eliot, Christopher Dawson, and William F. Buckley. No book was more significant, however, than one published in 1953 by Russell Kirk. Originally published under the title The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana, this book altered the intellectual landscape in America more than any other conservative text published in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. As The New York Times wrote a few years after his death, Kirk’s The Conservative Mind gave conservatives “an identity and a genealogy” that “catalyzed the postwar movement.”^[3] Providing conservatism with an intellectual genealogy and identifying conservatism as a disposition, rather than a political program, were among Kirk’s unique contributions to the postwar conservative renaissance in America. So great was this book and the subsequent works that flowed from Kirk’s pen that he was later called a “father” of the postwar conservative intellectual movement. Without Kirk, conservatism in America would not have served as a notable challenge to the forces of liberalism and radicalism in the way that it did. For those who are interested in learning more about this history, George H. Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 is an excellent place to begin.

Russell Kirk’s influence on the intellectual conservative movement in postwar America was vast. At a time when the conservative intellectual movement was virtually non-existent, Kirk was able to catalyze the emergence of this movement and show that conservatism is an important part of the American and Western tradition. Yet what influence can he have today? Seventy years after the publication of The Conservative Mind, Kirk can still speak to what he called the “rising generation” — showing young people an appealing vision of conservatism, one that drinks deeply from the imaginative and humane wellspring of American and Western civilization. Kirk’s vision of conservatism defends what T.S. Eliot called the “permanent things,” preferring the permanent and the traditional over the peripheral and the ideological. Kirk’s understanding of conservatism is something that many young people, bombarded constantly by shallow slogans and ideological schemes to remake society and human nature, would do well to consider.

Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind

When Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind was first published in 1953, it was an outstanding success. Coming onto the intellectual landscape at just the right time, Kirk’s “fat book” was favorably reviewed by outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Thanks to the recommendation of Whittaker Chambers, Time magazine even devoted an entire book review section to Kirk’s landmark text. Eventually, in 1956, Time magazine declared Kirk one of the most “important intellectuals in America.”^[4] Kirk’s influence extended far beyond political pundits and those involved in what would eventually become the conservative movement. Eminent cultural and literary figures would also find much to admire in Kirk. For instance, Catholic fiction writer Flannery O’Connor recognized that Kirk was essential in making conservatism respectable in postwar America, in large part due to the publication of The Conservative Mind.^[5] So great was Kirk’s influence that he was able to become an independent man of letters, living and writing at his ancestral home in Mecosta, Michigan. Throughout his career, he wrote roughly thirty books, spoke across hundreds of college campuses, and took up temporary teaching posts. He continued to articulate the conservative intellectual tradition and worked to restore respectability to conservative thinkers and ideas. Writing both fiction and nonfiction, he was respected by figures ranging from writer Ray Bradbury to President Ronald Reagan.

Russell Kirk’s conservatism was more than a mere political expression, drawing instead from the wellspring of humane letters and the moral imagination. This is one of the greatest strengths of Kirk’s vision of conservatism, and it was likewise a strength of The Conservative Mind. As Kirk recalled in his memoir, The New York Times Book Review had accurately categorized Kirk’s 1953 book as belles lettres. Quarterlies of humane letters paid much attention to Kirk’s new book, including Sewanee Review, Kenyon Review, Yale Review, and The Month. Today, readers will discover that The Conservative Mind does not have the shallowness of the political pundits of our own day. Kirk did not pen a manifesto of policy positions, nor did he write a book to ridicule his opponents for the purpose of influencing an election. Instead, “he meant to wake the moral imagination through the evocative power of humane letters.” Kirk wrote as a historian of ideas and literary critic, and in doing so wrote a text of long-lasting value.^[6]

Seventy years later, as new debates about the meaning of conservatism arise, many will wonder how Kirk defined the idea. What, indeed, is Kirk’s understanding of conservatism? Who among us may be rightfully called “conservative?” Thoughtful readers will be pleasantly surprised that Kirk does not provide a litmus test for what passes as conservatism. He instead shows the historic and imaginative ways that the conservative tradition of English-speaking civilization stands as a viable alternative to liberalism and radicalism. This is because simple definitions and easy solutions are the approach of an ideologue. For Kirk, “ideology” is a precise term, and it produces uncompromising political fanaticism. In fact, it produces the kind of mentality that excommunicates the politically impure, demanding rigid adherence to a strict litmus test or political program. Ideology, argued Kirk, is like an inverted religion, promising a kind of secular salvation through politics. With ahistorical and abstract solutions ready in hand, the modern ideologue seeks to topple our heritage in an attempt to implement his vision of the perfect society. He believes that political legislation and uncompromising political dogmas are solutions to the complex problems that touch the human condition. The conservative, in contrast, recognizes the complexity of human society and the imperfectability of man. The conservative does not seek to make a perfect society; he only seeks a tolerable society. Conservatism, Kirk taught, is the negation of ideology on both left and right.^[7]

Weary of simple definitions and easy solutions, Kirk was careful when he put forward a list of conservative “canons” at the beginning of his book. These canons were not a list of rigid dogmas, but rather a summary of what conservatives in the English-speaking tradition tend to believe. To ensure that such canons were not misconstrued by readers as dogmas of a conservative ideology, Kirk kept them purposefully vague. He also modified them throughout his career, and in The Politics of Prudence (1993) he had as many as ten. The latest edition of The Conservative Mind lists the canons of conservative thought as follows:

1. Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. […]

2. Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence. […]

3. Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes. […]

4. Persuasion that freedom and property are closely linked. […]

5. Faith in prescription and distrust of “sophisters, calculators, and economists” who would reconstruct society upon abstract designs. Custom, convention, and old prescription are checks both upon man’s anarchic impulse and upon the innovator’s lust for power. […]

6. Recognition that change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress. […]^[8]

There is much to be said about these canons. First, they are mostly pre-political and cultural. Conservatism, after all, is a disposition to conserve the best of our patrimony, not a set of fanatical and rigid political doctrines. Second, nowhere does Kirk tolerate such rigid doctrines in his canons. For instance, he does not advocate for ahistorical and abstract “rights” of man, nor does he call for an ahistorical and unordered liberty. And nowhere does he advocate for an abstract order, devoid of freedom or justice. Third, these canons are vague enough that they permit a great variety of opinions. Conservatives in Britain and America have held a variety of viewpoints, depending on the time in which they have lived. Conservatives have, over the years, held a variety of views, and many of the conservatives sketched in The Conservative Mind would have even disagreed with each other. All of this is a testament to the genius of Kirk’s canons and to his perennial significance as a thinker. These canons, seventy years after they were first published, can continue to ground us.

That being said, as the late Gerald Russello argued, the best of Russell Kirk’s thinking is not found in his canons. Instead, the best of his thinking is found in the main body of the text.^[9] Within the pages of The Conservative Mind, Kirk drew from an older body of belief, as all serious thinkers do. In particular, he drew from Edmund Burke, the eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher. Conscious conservatism, indeed, did not manifest until 1790 when Edmund Burke penned his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke was convinced that the French Revolutionaries were undermining the fabric of traditional civilization. They were destroying in a moment of fleeting passion what had taken generations to build. Anglo-American conservatives, Kirk taught, follow in the footsteps of Burke. Suspicious of revolutionary change, the conservative speaks old truths in new ways.^[10] Like Burke, he understands that the great problem of politics is “the maintenance of a tolerable tension between the claims of order and the claims of freedom.”^[11] To advocate for one at the entire exclusion of the other is to articulate an ideology, not Anglo-American conservatism.

The Conservative Mind is a series of intellectual biographies of primarily British and American statesmen, men of letters, poets, and churchmen. Seventy years after they were first published, these biographical sketches can provide young people with an introduction to the conservative intellectual tradition. After reading Kirk’s own account of them, new readers will hopefully feel encouraged to go directly to the written works of these thinkers. Kirk’s book includes treatments of Edmund Burke, John Adams, Fenimore Cooper, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Quincy Adams, Orestes Brownson, Nathanial Hawthorne, John Henry Newman, Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, George Santayana, and others. In a later edition, Kirk decided to end his book with none other than T.S. Eliot, replacing Santayana with Eliot in the subtitle. That Kirk ended with T.S. Eliot, a poet, is significant. Kirk’s admiration for Eliot, among other humane and imaginative writers described in this book, is a testament to his humane and imaginative disposition.

Contemporary readers will find in The Conservative Mind various thinkers who embody the “moral imagination” and in doing so stand against the ideological follies of our age. For Kirk, the conservative goes beyond practical politics to enliven the “moral imagination” in the modern world. The phrase “moral imagination,” borrowed from Edmund Burke, refers to a “power of ethical perception” that allows the human person to see beyond “the barriers of private experience and momentary events,” especially as this power is “exercised in poetry and art.”^[12] Kirk wanted The Conservative Mind to describe the conservative as “statesman, as critic, as metaphysician, as man of letters.”^[13] Showing the conservative disposition in all of its different manifestations, Kirk was able to show the power of imagination in shaping the civil-social order. As Kirk would say, “[m]en of imagination, rather than party leaders, determine the ultimate course of things.”[14] The renewal of the moral imagination is perhaps the best way to combat the errors of ideology.

Seventy Years Later

At first glance, it might seem like a great distance separates the world today and the world of 1953. New forms of ideology threaten our cultural patrimony. Such ideologies, furthermore, have taken over many of our institutions in recent years — including many schools, campuses, businesses, and churches. Upon further consideration, however, our experience today is not altogether different from the experience of the early 1950s. The traditional norms of American and Western civilization were increasingly eroding, and no organized response existed to combat it. As George H. Nash shows, what would eventually become a united conservative movement was at the time nothing more than “scattered voices of protest” who were “profoundly pessimistic” about the future of civilization.[15] The situation that confronted conservatives in the early 1950s, in other words, has some resemblance to our situation today.

Then and now, ideology runs rampant, taking over many of our institutions and seeking new ways to transform society and human nature. Ideologues have done much damage to the civil social order and have separated many young people from their cultural patrimony. To borrow the words of Kirk, they have “been able to rouse the appetite for novelty,” and in doing so they have done much damage to the world. Nevertheless, as Kirk wrote in 1953, what we retain is greater than what we have forfeited. Many young people are seeing the deadening effect of ideology and instead seek solace in small-scale communities, churches, and families. Such young people are seeking new ways to renew our time-tested institutions and customs. The American traditions of order, justice, and freedom have been dealt many blows, but they are not altogether defeated.

Seventy years later, Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind is in its seventh edition and remains in print. It teaches us the importance of conserving our cultural patrimony and provides us with images of the customs, institutions, and beliefs that we ought to conserve. In this way, Kirk grounds us in the conservative intellectual tradition, from Burke to Eliot, that can stand against the ideologies of our age. Conservatism, taught Kirk, is a disposition. It is not a set of policy positions or abstract principles but instead “a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the social order.” Conservatism is an “attitude” that is “sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata.” As Kirk would write elsewhere, the conservative is someone who “finds the permanent things more pleasing than Chaos and Old Night.”^[16] Just as Kirk was able to help catalyze a consciously conservative movement in the 1950s, he can likewise help young people reinvigorate and sustain that movement today.

On December 5, 2023, the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal will celebrate the 70th anniversary of Dr. Kirk’s landmark book, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot in Washington, DC. Tickets are available to the public and can be purchased here.

[1] Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (1950; repr. New York: New York Review Books, 2008), xv.

[2] Bradley Birzer, Russell Kirk: American Conservative (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), 3.

[3] Patricia Cohen, “Leftist Scholars Look Right at Last, And Find a History,” The New York Times, April 18, 1998.

[4] Birzer, Russell Kirk: American Conservative, 112-120.

[5] Flannery O’Connor, “A letter to ‘A.’” October 12, 1955, published in The Letters of Flannery O’Connor: The Habit of Being, edited by Sally Fitzgerald (1979; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988), 110.

[6] Russell Kirk, The Sword of Imagination: Memoirs of a Half-Century of Literary Conflict (Wilmington, DE: ISI Conservative Classics, 2002), 166.

[7] Russell Kirk, “The Drug of Ideology,” in The Essential Russell Kirk, ed. George A. Panichas (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2007), 348-49.

[8] Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, 7th ed. (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway Editions, 2019), 7-9.

[9] Gerald Russello, The Postmodern Imagination of Russell Kirk (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2007), 41.

[10] Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 7-8.

[11] Kirk, The Sword of Imagination, 148.

[12] Russell Kirk, “The Perversity of Recent Fiction: Reflections on the Moral Imagination,” in Redeeming the Time, ed. Jeffrey O. Nelson (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2006), 71.

[13] Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 10.

[14] Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 10.

[15] George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (1976; repr. Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2006), xv.

[16] Russell Kirk, “Ten Conservative Principles,” The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, accessed online. This essay was adapted from The Politics of Prudence (ISI Books, 1993).

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