De strijd tegen de geest van de moderniteit

Abstract

According to Samuel Huntington, conservatism is the opposite of radicalism. In this article, I try to review this claim by analysing three main (neo)conservative thinkers: Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss and Irving Kristol. I show that not only (neo)conservatism is infected by its opposite, in becoming the more or less radical adversary of radicalism, but it is the awareness of the radicality of the formation of social and political order itself – the consciousness of the very roots or foundations of order. In this respect, (neo)conservatism and what is commonly called radicalism, are both the anti-modern companions of modernity. In the vocabulary of Avishai Margalit, (neo)conservatism and radicalism both stick to a ‘religious’ self-understanding of politics, in contrast to a modern, secularized, and pragmatic ‘economic’ self-understanding of politics.