Book Reviews : The Conservative Illusion. By M. MORTON AUERBACH. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959. Pp. xii, 359. $6.75.)

• DOI: 10.1177/106591296001300316
• Published date: 01 September 1960
• Date: 01 September 1960
• Subject Matter: Articles

BOOK REVIEWS
The Conservative Illusion. By M. MORTON AUERBACH. (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1959. Pp. xii, 359. $6.75.)
Conservatives are always anachronisms. They are also always necessarily
inconsistent because they cannot possibly find a theoretical perspective that will
reconcile their positive ideals with the means necessary to realize them in any
historical situation. They are also dangerous because their unrealistic ideologies
inhibit changes necessary for survival and progress, but offer no sufficient alterna-
tive. This, in sum, is the indictment ranged by Professor Auerbach against con-
servatives and their doctrines, past and present. Nor does he see any hope for
them in the future.
The work obviously has its polemical elements, yet one cannot deny its
merits. It is the most thorough attempt at a theoretical analysis of conservatism
yet to appear, and is far more objective than most treatments of this topic have
managed to be. Auerbach generously permits the conservative thinkers he treats
to hang themselves. He merely points out their inconsistencies or their retreats
into obscurity. His interest is in why conservative ideologies seem always so self-
defeating, and his conclusion is that their premises are inadequate both psycho-
logically and sociologically. They can neither explain nor justify the history that
a conservative can hardly ignore.
To obtain food for his reflections Auerbach casts a rather broad net. Con-
servatism is not, he insists, merely a blind worship of the past; it is a doctrine
that stresses human capacity for affection as the source of all good, decline of it
as the source of all evil, and social harmony as the end of man. He finds that
Plato was the first conservative, not Burke, although this requires a somewhat
unconventional view of Plato and he is compelled to qualify the assertion from
time to time. Indeed, the only unqualifiedly conservative thinker he can identify
is John of Salisbury, who was hardly one of...