The state thus introduces a profound transformation in human life. But the fundamentals of human nature are not changed by it. Human beings continue to form families, clans, and tribes. And while these loyalty groups are to various degrees domesticated—meaning that they become more peaceable among themselves—they nonetheless retain their hierarchical structure, their tendency to adopt a common judgment based on the views of leading figures within the hierarchy, and their intense competition for honor and influence. All this continues, along with the insult and anger that occur when one’s family or tribe has been disregarded or dishonored and its influence slighted. And if the norms of domestic speech and behavior, which have been established to guarantee a measure of honor and influence to all sides, are not upheld, then the peaceful coexistence and alliance among the tribes will quickly disintegrate. At such times, the old order of tribes and clans inevitably reasserts itself. Then the competition among the tribes becomes violent again, and their assertions of independence from one another grow more strident, until finally the state exists in name only or not at all. Yoram Hazony (2022) Conservatism: A Rediscovery, Chapter: V "The Purposes of Government,"pp. 234-235)
This is the third in a series of posts on Hazony's Conservatism (recall the first one here; and here the second one on Hazony's post-feminist conception of the family). And as should be clear by now, I mix exposition with immanent critique (even if sometimes I am bad at hiding my own liberal commitments). Hazony starts the fifth chapter with the claim that "Enlightenment liberalism" -- by which he means an ideology that originates in what he calls a "rationalist manifesto," Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1689) -- has, in virtue of a one-sided focus on the "freedom of the individual," no place for "the national interest, or of the general welfare of the nation, or of the common good of the nation, or of the good of the commonwealth" (p. 223 emphasis in original).
The claim would have surprised Locke, who, after all, put the Latin phrase "Salus populi suprema lex esto" [that is, The health/welfare of the people should be the supreme law"] on the frontispiece of the Two Treatises. Locke goes on to remind the reader (at II.158) that it "is certainly so just and fundamental a rule, that he, who sincerely follows it, cannot dangerously err." Even Jefferson -- who is the high priest of Enlightenment liberalism in Hazony's book -- appealed to the principle in a 1810 letter to John B. Colvin (28 September) in order to explain that the executive sometimes can ignore written law (and offering several examples of this behavior from one of Hazony's heroes, George Washington).*
I do not mean to suggest there is no genuine contrast between liberalism in all its varieties and Hazony's conservatism. One cluster of contrasts becomes clear if we look at how Hazony describes the purpose of government and the function of statecraft in it. As the quoted passage shows, the state transforms the state of war (constant bloodshed) into a situation of "intense competition for honor and influence." (At another point, Hazony describes a "bitter" competition. (p. 237)) The Hobbesian or Spinozistic state of nature is always a latent possibility within the ordinary life of the polity. Hazony doesn't mention Spinoza, but his view is actually rather close to Spinoza.** Unlikes Hobbes and Spinoza, Hazony understands the state of nature and peace not in terms of individuals, but in terms of hierarchically organized loyalty groups (families, congregations, tribes, clans, nations, etc.).
As a crucial aside, for Hazony such loyalty groups are not primarily organized around genes or race. He makes this clear in a crucial note attached to the introduction where he distinguishes his views from those of "the “white identity” movements of the extreme right, which seek a politics based on biological race." His loyalty groups share a "heritage, usually including a common language or religious traditions, and a past history of joining together against common enemies." In the note, Hazony emphasizes his is "the traditional Anglo-American conception of the nation, inherited from the Bible." In context he does not explain what he means, but there is a passage (recall here), drawing on Talmud Megillah 13a, in his earlier God and Politics in Esther, centered on an interpretation of the daughter of the Pharao's actions at Exodus 2: 5-6, which shows that for Hazony through one's actions one can become part of, and be adopted by, a loyalty group. (In Graeber and Wengrow's Dawn of Everything one finds (recall) a description of such a mechanism in their account of pre-Columbian conquest practices of the Turtle and Bear clans.)
It's worth noting that the mechanism of inclusion (and exit) from a loyalty group is ground in a kind of individual conscience that the pharaoh's daughter exercises. Conscience is emphasized in Hazony's (protestant and American) sources, but Hazony ignores it in Conservatism. But the freedom to act on conscience -- and some room for exit -- is crucial for Hazony's scheme if one wish to avoid loyalty groups to become despotic. This is tacitly recognized in the moving, concluding autobiographical personal chapter. But it does not have a comfortable theoretical place in his general argument (because it would move his stance too close to Locke's and presumably open the door to a species of liberalism.)
Be that as it may, a key function, then, of statecraft or the art of government in Hazony's political theory is to manage or balance the intense competition for honor and influence among the hierarchically organized, social pillars of state. The point of managing it is to generate internal cohesion, so as to allow not just domestic peace, but also for a "unified front...[and] power projected" against foreign rivals. (p. 237) Without such proper management the cohesion and "bonds of loyalty" will quickly fall apart.
Hazony explicitly recognizes that the skill-set involved in managing honor and influence among traditional loyalty groups is distinct from the leadership within traditional loyalty groups. But Hazony treats the problem as one involving issues of scale due to lack of repeated personal interaction. When one has a liberal sensibility one immediately recognizes a further problem for such statecraft in Hazony's account. Honor is intrinsically zero-sum. This is a feature and not a bug within traditional loyalty group in Hazony's account, but it turns into a dangerous impediment to stability in the interactions among loyalty groups, absent a common enemy.
Hazony rejects the liberal solution which, roughly, is to displace the political onto non-zero-sum 'growing the pie activities' (increase trade -> wealth and cosmopolitan structures). So he offers an alternative:
To put this matter as simply as possible: The state and government are traditional institutions of certain societies. Their continued existence therefore depends entirely on the cultivation of bonds of mutual loyalty among the rival tribes that constitute the nation; and these bonds, in turn, depend on the conservation and transmission of particular traditions of speech and behavior that allow rival tribes and parties to compete, while at the same time honoring one another. There is, in other words, a causal relation between the cultivation and transmission of certain traditions within society and the existence of the state and state government. If appropriate traditions are not intensively and successfully cultivated, then the alliance among these rival tribes will end, and both the state and its government will cease to be. (237)
One effect of this is that political management becomes an intense task not just for the leadership of the state but also the leadership of the loyalty groups. And the glue that holds them together is constituted by traditions (including nationalism and a national religion(s)).
This is not incompatible with democratic life and constitutional parliamentarianism (as Hazony emphasizes). In fact, in principle, it can also be characterized by pluralism (which Hazony ignores). Some version of such an approach is familiar from, say, Lijphart's account of the social pillar system of Dutch Consociationalism. This is characterized by quite intense elite interaction (as Hazony emphasizes, too). Hazony's account does not really emphasize the pluralist possibilities. (The word 'pluralist' occurs, I think, only once in a reference to Isaiah Berlin's analysis of Selden, who is, in fact, a key progenitor of Hazony's intellectual thought.) In a later post, I discuss the motives and grounds for as well complications of Hazony's rejection of a pluralist consociationalism, and his insistence on adopting Christianity as a public religion.
The problem here is that the existence of such glues does not solve the zero-sum nature of honor. Hazony himself kind of recognizes this because he returns to it again as follows:
What is needed above all else is to do the practical political work of cultivating ties of mutual loyalty among the various tribes and parties. This involves constantly balancing their interests and needs against one another, and ensuring that this balance leads to a renewed exchange of honors among them. Where the national political leadership has cultivated such mutual loyalties among the differents [sic] tribes and factions that constitute the nation, then the state can be firm and its government effective. (p. 239)
So, the domestic art of government requires constant political management of interests and needs of loyalty groups. The cultivation of "ties of mutual loyalty" is -- echoing Hume, who is self-consciously echoing Montesquieu -- in the service of the national spirit of unity. But the spirit of unity can only be stable if the loyalty groups have a commerce in honors among them. The problem is that such a commerce (it's the nature of the beast) has winners and losers.
The problem for Hazony's scheme is not, as one might suspect I'll argue, that a system of hierarchy ground/founded on honor is intrinsically unstable (although it is always teetering on the brink of violence), but rather that it requires unusual if not rare and rather demanding skill to manage it properly. And as far as I can tell, he offers no mechanism such that the nation or the leaders of the nation can recognize and regularly elevate the right sort of leader into the position. (For as he notes this is not a skill that is exhibited in the life of loyalty groups themselves.) If anything, since in his scheme such leadership accrues non-trivial honor, one should expect the honor loving to seek it in particular. But there is no reason to believe that honor loving and the practical judgment needed to manage the honor loving are naturally conjoined.
*The main issue involves General Wilkinson's behavior toward Vice President Burr. It's pretty clear that Jefferson thinks Wilkinson (and he himself) were very much in the same position as Cicero toward Cataline.
**Hazony does claim Montesquieu as a source of inspiration, but he does not analyze the latter's account of the Troglodytes.
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