Abstract

A great deal of ink has been spilled trying to define political conservatism. Yet, far too many of these definitions have failed to isolate a unified and distinctive set of normative commitments that conservatives can be said to share. This has led some critics to allege that the view has no definition. In this paper, I show that there are in fact two perfectly comprehensible conceptions of the theory that meet these criteria. However, I argue that, given some fairly uncontroversial facts about human institutions, neither version represents a believable political philosophy. I conclude that there are legitimate and distinctive conservative political reasons, but that any attempt to describe these as our sole or primary political reasons is doomed to fail.