Genesis, Justification, and Conservatism

Yesterday, I discussed interpretive charity as it relates to arguments. Today, I want to discuss an expansion of that thought which underlies--at least elements of--conservatism.

We interpret social structures, institutions, and human biology as well as arguments. Each of these have some degree of justification in their genesis. However one thinks human beings came to be, every theory presumes some degree of adaption to our environment, in terms of which we may speak of our biological constitution as justified. Likewise, social structures and institutions are justified by their role in a society, and are instituted because they serve a purpose.

When interpreting any of these things, then, interpretive charity calls on us to recognize that there was some degree of justification for how things are at some time. The justification which was accepted might not be a good one, but it was there. Conservatism is thus the instinct to understand the justification well enough to see how someone might once have thought it a good justification, before dismantling it. This is called Chesterton's Fence (HT: Mere Orthodoxy). If you do not know why it was justified, or at least considered justified, then you do not know that it is no longer justified--although it may be, and it may never have truly been justified.

Perhaps it is best to distinguish between justification in the sense that we give justifications, and justification in the sense that things are justified. Call the first "proposed justification" and the second "vindicating justification." The kind of justification which social structures, institutions, and biology must have is proposed justification, which need not mean that anyone has ever articulated the proposed justification, simply that there is a justification in virtue of which the phenomenon has been brought forth and preserved. The kind of justification which may or may not ever have existed is vindicating justification.

We may recognize bad proposed justifications in our past, but we must in these cases as much as with our contemporaries seek to find what the good and true thing is which led them down the wrong road. If we can find no good or truth, then we cannot be confident that we have understood the institution well enough to change it.

I hope it is clear that I do not think we should do things simply because we have always done them that way. I am, after all, articulating conditions under which one may be justified in altering social structures and institutions. We have made mistakes in our constitution of society, and we have made improvements. Just as the liberal does not see all change as good, the conservative does not see all change as bad. Change is bad when it removes a good, but good when it sustains a good. The principle of interpretive charity with respect to the past, Chesterton's Fence, simply urges us to change things with care and understanding, recognizing why the past was, and giving reason for it to be in the past. We should adapt to new situations when the justification proposed no longer vindicates and is not replaced by a new vindicating justification.

Hegel, in Elements of The Philosophy of Right §3 may be taken to be minimizing the need to understand the justification of a social structure or institution in its origin when he says:

If it can be shown that the origin of an institution was entirely expedient and necessary under the specific circumstances of the time, the requirements of the historical viewpoint are fulfilled. But if this is supposed to amount to a general justification of the thing itself, the result is precisely the opposite; for since the original circumstances are no longer present, the institution has thereby lost its meaning and its right [to exist]. (Wood, ed Nisbet, trans. Cambridge University Press p.30, brackets in original)

But he is rather making a point which I agree with: that institutions play a role and are justified in the context of a whole society, so that as the society changes the institutions must, as well. This does not mean that we can be blind to the historical justifications of our institutions when altering them, and that is not Hegel's point. Hegel wants to make clear that the particular contingent institutions are contingent and not an essential part of what Right is, so that, while the institutions should fit the culture and environment, they need not be the same in all cultures and environments. There is a great deal more in Hegel's Elements of The Philosophy of Right about the relation of genesis and justification, which I suspect I will discuss later, but currently I have only read so far in the book, and it is not all on topic. Tomorrow, however, I will discuss the need for social structures and institutions to fit with the culture and environment.