What Conservatives Value: Reply to Blackburn
| Author | Kieron O’Hara |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299211062039 |
| Published date | 01 August 2022 |
| Date | 01 August 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299211062039
Political Studies Review
2022, Vol. 20(3) 448 –451
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/14789299211062039
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What Conservatives Value:
Reply to Blackburn
Kieron O’Hara
Abstract
In reply to Dean Blackburn’s ‘In the Shadows’, it is argued that the situated nature of the conservative
ideology entails that its adherents cannot have a substantive set of shared values, but that their
values will typically be a cultural inheritance. The epistemological element of conservatism may
not be the most electorally salient in any concrete context, but has strategic value as the common
element of conservatism most likely to support a public reason defence.
Keywords
conservatism, epistemology, ideology, value
Accepted: 4 November 2021
If we take the dictionary definition of ‘conservatism’ seriously, as the problematisation of
change, then it has to be a situated ideology (Huntington, 1957), because the nature of the
changes to be attacked and the institutions to be preserved will necessarily vary across
contexts. If conservatism has any common core, then it can only be its appraisal of the
risks of change. In my own work, I boiled this down to two principles:
The knowledge principle: because society and its mediating institutions are highly complex
and dynamic with natures that are constantly evolving as they are co-constituted with the
individuals who are their members, both data and theories about society are highly uncertain
(O’Hara, 2011: 49–50).
The change principle: because the current state of society is typically undervalued, and because
the effects of social innovations cannot be known fully in advance, then social change (a) must
always risk destroying beneficial institutions and norms and (b) cannot be guaranteed to achieve
the aims for which it was implemented. It therefore follows that societies should be risk-averse
with respect to social change, and the burden of proof placed on the innovator, not his or her
opponents (O’Hara, 2011: 88).
Neither will deliver conservatism on its own, jointly they are sufficient, and I refer to their
combination as kp + cp. Note that these are general epistemological arguments that demand
Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK.
Corresponding author:
Kieron O’Hara, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK.
Email: kmoh@soton.ac.uk
1062039PSW0010.1177/14789299211062039Political Studies ReviewO’Hara
research-article2021
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