Conservatism, analytically reconsidered

Abstract

This special issue is motivated by the observation that conservatism plays a marginal role in contemporary philosophy even though it appears to be of considerable importance in moral, social, and political reality. One reason for this neglect is that defenders of conservatism have often refrained from articulating their arguments in a language that is acceptable to and understandable by analytically -trained philosophers. The contributions of this special issue show that conservatism can profitably be approached from the point of view of analytic philosophy. Many of them are indebted to Jerry Cohen’s (2012) seminal paper on conservative value, which develops a sophisticated justification of what Oakeshott (1991) called the disposition to be conservative.