One of the philosophical problems I would like to attempt to solve over the course of my career is the identification of the bedrock principles of the liberal, or left-leaning, brain as opposed to the conservative one. This insight from Hayek qualifies as a critical distinction between the two archetypes. Liberals tend to believe in the unlimited potential for human progress, and along with it in their own ability to shape human nature, or human institutions, to help fulfill those progressive objectives. In some liberal minds, it seems to me, this belief is so strong that it swells into a self-righteousness, a conceipt, so to speak, by which they define their very existence. I think that this helps to explain the contempt that many liberals have for those who disagree with them, and their unwillingness to consider arguments contrary to their views, even when the facts are stacked heavily against their policy choices.
Conservatives, on the other hand, do not believe that human progress is inevitable, and tend to emphasize the importance of custom, and the potential consequences that can be created by drastic attempts to reshape society. Too often, liberal objectives require policies that simply defy the inclinations of human nature, both individually and collectively. Conservatives believe that the world must be dealt with as it is, rather than as we would like it to be.
This short essay by Roger Kimball in Standpoint discusses the philosophy of John Stuart Mill, and the consequences of his progressive beliefs. Kimball identifies Mill's work as a foundational component of modern liberalism (along with that of Rousseau). On Mill's utilitarian program, Kimball argues that "It is a recipe that has proven irresistible to those infatuated with the spectacle of their own virtue." This strikes a divisive tone and threatens to undermine any and all noble attempts to pick up the downtrodden, but nevertheless, there is something to it--the self-righteouss spirit, the naive belief in unlimited and uninterrupted human progress, the subordination of reason to emotion, that rest at the bottom of the liberal program.
Kimball cites one particularly interesting example of Mill's philosophy that serves to expose a flaw in the liberal armor--his support for "experiments in living" and his contempt for tradition. With these corollaries firmly in place, Mill argued that all human progress had been the result of social, moral, and intellectual innovators that, in their own time, had been shunned by their societiers as dangerous radicals. Mill argued, on the basis of this observation, that innovation in these realms should be forcefully encouraged. But as Kimball astutely points out:
To my mind, this is a good example of the difference between the liberal heart and the conservative mind. The liberal "thinks" with his emotions, and thus looks on instances of human progress with congratulatory sentiments, turning away from the negative outcomes of radical changes gone awry. The conservative mind, on the other hand, looks not only on isolated examples of when innovator X produced human benefit Y, but on the more general category of the causal relationships between innovations and their aftermaths. The sum total is not nearly as sunny as the best-known parts.Granted that every change for the better has depended on someone embarking on a new departure: well, so too has every change for the worse...This means that we have at least as much reason to discourage innovators as to encourage them, especially when their innovations bear on things as immensely complex as the organisation of society.
