Sculptor turned Philosopher, Swiss writer Titus burckhardt gave a compendious response on Conservatism and might be interested to someone who questions modernity. Some highlights from his article in this thread.
1. Man these days has a prejudice against any conservative attitude, because, consciously or unconsciously, he is influenced by the materialistic thesis that all “conserving” is inimical to constantly changing life and so leads to stagnation.
2. Is it necessary to say that the spiritual center of man is more than the psyche, subject as this is to instincts and impressions, and also more than rational thought? There is something in man that links him to the Eternal.
3. In a culture which, from its very foundations (thanks to its sacred origin), is directed towards the spiritual center and thereby towards the eternal, the question of the value or otherwise of the conservative attitude does not arise; the very word for it is lacking.
4. In a Christian society one is Christian, more or less consciously and deliberately, in an Islamic society one is Muslim and so on; otherwise one does not belong to the respective community and is not a part of it, but stands outside it or is secretly inimical to it.
5. Such a culture lives from a spiritual strength that puts its stamp on all forms from the highest downwards, and in doing this it is truly creative; at the same time it has need of conservational forces, without which the forms would soon disappear.
6. A culture in which the arts are the exclusive preserve of a specially educated class—so that there is no longer any popular art or any universally understood artistic language—fails completely in this respect. I see, Quality over quantity. — Hello Netflix ? You there ?
7. To pray for rain, to create something meaningful, to compensate the lack of some with the surplus of others, to rule, while being ready to sacrifice one’s life for the ruled, to teach for the sake of truth—these, amongst others, are the “inwardly” privileged occupations.
8. The true measure of man is that he should pray and bless, struggle and rule, build and create, sow and reap, serve and obey—all these things pertain to man. — not just standing infront of machine.
9. On castes — If hierarchically structured societies were able to maintain themselves for millennia, this was not because of the passivity of men or the might of the rulers, but be- cause such a social order corresponded to human nature.
10. On achieving nobility — When the nobility, by heredity and education, is aware of the essential oneness of the powers of nature and the powers of the soul, it possesses a superiority that can hardly be acquired in any other way; and whoever is aware of a genuine superiority has the right to insist upon it, just as the master of any art has the right to prefer his own judgement to that of the unskilled.
Article available in Google.
Landed there while reading the book “Remembering, in a world of Forgetting – Thoughts on Tradition and Postmodernism (Library of Perennial Philosophy) “.
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