The Dilemmas of a Search for Cultural Synthesis: A Portrait of Cemil Meriç as a Conservative Intellectual

Abstract

The altered psychological environment demanded a shift in emphasis from a pure critique of traditions to a critique of traditions coupled with a critique of modernity.Ashis Nandy, Traditions, Tyranny and UtopiasModern conservatism, at least in its philosophical form, is a child of what it attacks—modernity. If the central ethos of modernity is a belief in the plasticity of society and the individual, the central ethos of conservatism is a belief in the sanctity of community, kinship, tradition. Modernity's fascination with the new is matched by conservatism's defense of past tradition. It is on the priority of a past order bequeathed by history, and its traditional institutions, that the conservatives base their critique of modernity. The modernist idea that societies can be shaped, molded, and steered in new directions, and that individuals can direct their own destinies, finds its counterpart in conservative thought in the rediscovery of the past-its institutions, values, themes, structures.