Yuval Levin, to whom I defer on all things Burkean offers some very interesting observations:
Just catching up on my liberal fascism blog reading. Very interesting stuff on Locke and Rousseau (and the blog is great fun in general, by the way, I wondered if you could sustain it after the initial rush of book publicity, and you really have, it’s wonderful). I definitely agree with the point you’re making in shorthand there, and it seems like most of the criticism you posted just has to do with people not seeing it’s shorthand. But the equation of Locke and Burke in your 7/14 post strikes me as very problematic. Burke certainly was anti-Rousseauian. He read Rousseau, they had some mutual acquaintances, and Burke believed Rousseau was the worst and most dangerous of the French (or Swiss, I suppose) troublemakers. He also writes several times in his personal letters that he thinks Rousseau doesn’t really believe what he writes, and is some of kind of borderline psychotic. But on the question you defined as key—the question of individualism vs. collectivism—Burke is not a Lockean. In fact, Burke’s opponents (most notably Thomas Paine) were much closer to Locke on this point, and Burke specifically rejects Locke’s political teaching almost in its entirety. Burke clearly thought well of Locke’s “Essay Concerning Human Understanding,” which he cites approvingly in his book on esthetics, but he just as clearly thought Locke’s politics (including especially his radical individualism) were off the mark.
James Boswell (Samuel Johnson’s chronicler, and a close friend of Burke’s) reports in one of his essays the following: “a great politician, and at the same time a very good philosopher [Boswell’s frequent description of Burke, whom he never names because Burke was an active politician at the time -YL], observed to me that Locke, who displayed such extraordinary powers in analyzing human understanding, shewed he had very little use of it himself, when he attempted to apply it practically to the subject of government.”
It is true that American conservatism today seeks in large part to conserve Lockean (or classical) liberalism, and in that sense, as you well put it, Locke has become a conservative in our hands. He was also certainly not a ruinous radical in his own inclinations and aims. But on the particular question of individualism, when you write: “If you want to replace the name Locke with Edmund Burke’s or Adam Smith’s and Rousseau’s with — I dunno — Dewey’s or Sorel’s, I think you can make pretty much the same point I make in my Locke v. Rousseau spiel” I think Burke doesn’t quite belong. He certainly rejected the “general will” and predicted it would lead to blood, but he didn’t really believe “the individual is sovereign.”
This is probably a tiny and pedantic point in the context of the case you’re making—forgive me, I’m deep in my project on Burke and Paine this month, and so surely see things out of proportion—but what’s the internet for if not for pressing tiny and pedantic points?
Warm regards,
Yuval