The History of European Conservative Thought

by Francesco Giubilei

Overview

Modern conservatism was born in the crisis of the French Revolution that sought to overturn Christianity, monarchy, tradition, and a trust in experience rather than reason. In the name of reason and progress, the French Revolution led to the guillotine, the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte, and a decade of continental war.

Today Western Civilization is again in crisis, with an ever-widening progressive campaign against religion, tradition, and ordered liberty; Francesco Giubilei's cogent reassessment of some of conservatism's greatest thinkers could not be timelier.

Within these pages, English-speaking readers will come across some familiar names: Burke, Disraeli, Chesterton, and Scruton. Americans get their own chapter too, including penetrating examinations of John Adams, Richard Weaver, Henry Regnery, Robert Nisbet, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr., and Barry Goldwater. But perhaps most interesting is Giubilei's coverage of the continental European tradition–largely Catholic, monarchical, traditionalist, and anti-Jacobin, anti-Communist, and anti-Fascist.

Giubilei offers insightful intellectual portraits of statesmen and philosophers like Count Klemens von Metternich, the man who restored Europe after the Napoleonic Wars; Eric Voegelin, the German political philosopher who made his career in America and traced recurrent strains of leftism to an early Christian heresy; Joseph de Maistre, the leading French counterrevolutionary philosopher; George Santayana, a Spaniard who became an American philosopher and conservative pragmatist; Jose Ortega y Gasset, who warned of the "revolt of the masses"; and a wide variety of Italian thinkers whose conservatism was forged against a Fascist ideology that presented itself as a force for stability and respect for the past, but that was fundamentally modernist and opposed to conservatism.

Unique and written by one of Italy's youngest and brightest conservative thinkers, Francesco Giubilei's History of European Conservative Thought is sure to enlighten and inform.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781621579090
Publisher:	Skyhorse Publishing
Publication date:	06/11/2019
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Francesco Giubilei is an author, publisher, teacher, and professor based in Italy. He is the president of the leading Italian conservative foundation Fondazione Tatarella, a writer for the newspapers Il Giornale and Il Messaggero, and a professor at the University G. Fortunato of Benevento. Giubilei was recently included in Forbe's list of 100 most influential youths in Italy under 30. He is the author of six books. The History of European Conservative Thought is his first book to be published in English.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Chapter 1 Conservatism: Interpretations, Ideas, and Principles 1

Is Conservatism an Ideology? 10

The Birth of Conservatism 14

The Principles of Conservatism 17

Types of Conservatism 24

The Differences between Reactionaries and Conservatives 30

The Differences between Conservatives, Liberals, and Libertarians 37

Chapter 2 British Conservatism 45

The Oxford Movement 50

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) 51

Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834) 57

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) 58

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) 59

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) 60

Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) 60

John Ronald Reuel Tolkein (1892-1973) 62

Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990) 66

Roger Scruton (1944-) 67

Chapter 3 German, Austrian, and Prussian Conservatism 95

Austro-Hungarian Empire and Austria 95

Prussia, the German Empire, and Germany 99

Karl Ludwig von Haller (1768-1854) 105

Klemens von Metternich (1773-1859) 106

Johann Joseph von Görres (1776-1848) 107

Friedrich Julius Stahl (1802-1861) 108

Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897) 108

Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936) 110

Stefan George (1868-1933) 111

Thomas Mann (1875-1955) 112

Arthur Moeller van den Bruck (1876-1925) 117

Robert Michels (1876-1936) 122

Othmar Spann (1878-1950) 124

Franz von Papen (1879-1969) 127

Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) 128

Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) 132

Ernst Niekisch (1889-1967) 139

Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) 141

Ernst Jünger (1895-1998) 144

Leo Strauss (1899-1973) 156

Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) 159

Arnold Gehlen (1904-1976) 160

Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner (1939-2011) 161

Chapter 4 French Conservatism 165

Counterrevolutionaries 171

Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) 172

Antoine de Rivarol (1753-1801) 176

Louis Gabriel Ambroise de Bonald (1754-1840) 177

François-René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) 178

Hugues Félicité Robert de Lamennais (1782-1854) 179

Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly (1808-1889) 183

Louis Veuillot (1813-1883) 184

Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931) 185

Georg Simmel (1858-1918) 187

Maurice Barres (1862-1923) 188

Leon Daudet (1867-1942) 190

Charles Maurras (1868-1952) 191

Maurice Pujo (1872-1955) 194

Alexis Carrel (1873-1944) 195

Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) 196

Georges Bernanos (1888-1948) 200

Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) 201

Marcel de Corte (1905-1994) 202

Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-1994) 204

Chapter 5 Spanish Conservatism 205

Carlist Thinkers 207

Juan Donoso Cortés (1809-1853) 209

Jaime Luciano Balmes (1810-1848) 214

Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo (1856-1912) 215

George Santayana (1863-1952) 216

Rarairo de Maeztu (1875-1936) 218

José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) 219

Salvator de Madariaga (1886-1978) 220

Ramiro Ledesma Ramos (1905-1936) 221

Juan Vázquez de Mella (1861-1928) 222

Victor Pradera Larumbe (1872-1936) 223

Francisco Eías de Tejada y Spínola (1917-1978) 224

Chapter 6 Britain's Heir: American Conservatism 227

John Adams (1735-1826) 231

Franks. Meyer (1909-1972) 232

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) 232

Richard Malcom Weaver (1910-1963) 234

Henry Regnery (1912-1996) 235

Robert Alexander Nisbet (1913-1996) 236

Peter Viereck (1916-2006) 239

Charles Wright Mills (1916-1962) 241

Russell Kirk (1918-1994) 242

Thomas Molnar (1921-2010) 244

William Frank Buckley Jr. (1925-2008) 246

Samuel P. Huntington (1927-2008) 247

The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater 248

Chapter 7 Italian Conservatism 253

Fascism and Conservative Thought 258

Vincenzo Cuoco (1770-1823) 263

Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) 265

Alfredo Oriani (1852-1909) 266

Gaetano Mosca (1858-1941) 269

Enrico Corradini (1865-1931) 270

Alfredo Rocco (1875-1935) 271

Ardengo Soffici (1879-1964) 272

Giovanni Papini (1881-1956) 273

Giuseppe Prezzolini (1882-1982) 275

Panfilo Gentile (1889-1971) 283

Giovanni Ansaldo (1895-1969) 285

Leo Longanesi (1905-1957) 286

Giovanni Volpe (1906-1984) 288

Indro Montanelli (1909-2001) 289

Ennio Flaiano (1910-1972) 291

Notes 295