Well, conservatism is often described as pragmatic or "unideological", eschewing "the politics of principle" with its dogmatic reliance on abstract theory and ideals. However, although there may be no conservative Marx, conservatism isn't just an atheoretical attitude or stance. It does have its own theorists (philosophers) such as Edmund Burke (1729-1797), the founding father of modern conservatism—whose book
(1790) is a central, groundbreaking text in the history of conservatism.
"For the conservative, custom, convention, constitution, and prescription are the sources of a tolerable civil social order. Men not being angels, a terrestrial paradise cannot be contrived by metaphysical enthusiasts; yet an earthly hell can be arranged readily enough by ideologues of one stamp or another. Precisely that has come to pass in a great part of the world, during the twentieth century. To general principles in politics—as distinguished from fanatic ideological dogmata—the conservative subscribes. These are principles arrived at by convention and compromise, for the most part, and tested by long experience. Yet these general principles must be applied variously and with prudence, humankind’s circumstances differing much from land to land or age to age. The conservative refuses to accept utopian politics as a substitute for religion. (In Eric Voegelin’s phrase, the ideologue immanentizes the religious symbols of transcendence.) The Conservative Mind in part treats of such general principles; but it does not point the way to Zion."
(Kirk, Russell. The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot. 7th rev. ed. Washington: Regnery Publishing, 1986. pp. xv-xvi)
"I think that there are six canons of conservative thought—
(1) Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. A narrow rationality, what Coleridge called the Understanding, cannot of itself satisfy human needs. ‘‘Every Tory is a realist,’’ says Keith Feiling: ‘‘he knows that there are great forces in heaven and earth that man’s philosophy cannot plumb or fathom.’’ True politics is the art of apprehending and applying the Justice which ought to prevail in a community of souls.
(2) Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems; conservatives resist what Robert Graves calls ‘‘Logicalism’’ in society. This prejudice has been called ‘‘the conservatism of enjoyment’’—a sense that life is worth living, according to Walter Bagehot ‘‘the proper source of an animated Conservatism.”
(3) Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes, as against the notion of a ‘‘classless society.’’ With reason, conservatives often have been called ‘‘the party of order.’’ If natural distinctions are effaced among men, oligarchs fill the vacuum. Ultimate equality in the judgment of God, and equality before courts of law, are recognized by conservatives; but equality of condition, they think, means equality in servitude and boredom.
(4) Persuasion that freedom and property are closely linked: separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all. Economic levelling, they maintain, is not economic progress.
(5) Faith in prescription and distrust of ‘‘sophisters, calculators, and economists’’ who would reconstruct society upon abstract designs. Custom, convention, and old prescription are checks both upon man’s anarchic impulse and upon the innovator’s lust for power.
(6) Recognition that change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress. Society must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a statesman must take Providence into his calculations, and a statesman’s chief virtue, according to Plato and Burke, is prudence.
Various deviations from this body of opinion have occurred, and there are numerous appendages to it; but in general conservatives have adhered to these convictions or sentiments with some consistency, for two centuries. To catalogue the principles of their opponents is more difficult. At least five major schools of radical thought have competed for public favor since Burke entered politics: the rationalism of the philosophes, the romantic emancipation of Rousseau and his allies, the utilitarianism of the Benthamites, the positivism of Comte’s school, and the collectivistic materialism of Marx and other socialists. This list leaves out of account those scientific doctrines, Darwinism chief among them, which have done so much to undermine the first principles of a conservative order. To express these several radicalisms in terms of a common denominator probably is presumptuous, foreign to the philosophical tenets of conservatism. All the same, in a hastily generalizing fashion one may say that radicalism since 1790 has tended to attack the prescriptive arrangement of society on the following grounds—
(1) The perfectibility of man and the illimitable progress of society: meliorism. Radicals believe that education, positive legislation, and alteration of environment can produce men like gods; they deny that humanity has a natural proclivity toward violence and sin.
(2) Contempt for tradition. Reason, impulse, and materialistic determinism are severally preferred as guides to social welfare, trustier than the wisdom of our ancestors. Formal religion is rejected and various ideologies are presented as substitutes.
(3) Political levelling. Order and privilege are condemned; total democracy, as direct as practicable, is the professed radical ideal. Allied with this spirit, generally, is a dislike of old parliamentary arrangements and an eagerness for centralization and consolidation.
(4) Economic levelling. The ancient rights of property, especially property in land, are suspect to almost all radicals; and collectivistic reformers hack at the institution of private property root and branch.
As a fifth point, one might try to define a common radical view of the state’s function; but here the chasm of opinion between the chief schools of innovation is too deep for any satisfactory generalization. One can only remark that radicals unite in detesting Burke’s description of the state as ordained of God, and his concept of society as joined in perpetuity by a moral bond among the dead, the living, and those yet to be born—the community of souls.
So much for preliminary delineation. The radical, when all is said, is a neoterist, in love with change; the conservative, a man who says with Joubert, Ce sont les crampons qui unissent une génération à une autre—these ancient institutions of politics and religion. Conservez ce qu’ont vu vos pères. If one seeks by way of definition more than this, the sooner he turns to particular thinkers, the safer ground he is on. In the following chapters, the conservative is described as statesman, as critic, as metaphysician, as man of letters. Men of imagination, rather than party leaders, determine the ultimate course of things, as Napoleon knew; and I have chosen my conservatives accordingly. There are some conservative thinkers—Lord Salisbury and Justice Story, for instance—about whom I would have liked to write more; some interesting disciples of Burke, among them Arnold, Morley, and Bryce, I have omitted because they were not regular conservatives. But the main stream of conservative ideas is followed from 1790 to 1986. In a revolutionary epoch, sometimes men taste every novelty, sicken of them all, and return to ancient principles so long disused that they seem refreshingly hearty when they are rediscovered. History often appears to resemble a roulette wheel; there is truth in the old Greek idea of cycles, and round again may come the number which signifies a conservative order. One of those flaming clouds which we deny to the Deity but arrogate to our own employment may erase our present elaborate constructions so abruptly as the tocsin in the Faubourg St. Germain terminated an age equally tired of itself. Yet this roulette-wheel simile would be repugnant to Burke (or to John Adams), who knew history to be the unfolding of a Design. The true conservative thinks of this process, which looks like chance or fate, as, rather, the providential operation of a moral law of polarity. And Burke, could he see our century, never would concede that a consumption-society, so near to suicide, is the end for which Providence has prepared man. If a conservative order is indeed to return, we ought to know the tradition which is attached to it, so that we may rebuild society; if it is not to be restored, still we ought to understand conservative ideas so that we may rake from the ashes what scorched fragments of civilization escape the conflagration of unchecked will and appetite. "
(Kirk, Russell. The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot. 7th rev. ed. Washington: Regnery Publishing, 1986. pp. 8-11)
