Can anyone name a conservative thinker?

[brainshrub]

Seriously, I'm looking for a conservative philosopher (Alive or dead) renown for h/er critical thinking skills.

Joke around if you want, but I am looking for the name of a philosopher like that.

For example: William F. Buckley

[Call Me Wesley]

1. Arthur Schopenhauer,

Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger. Just a few.

[tishaLA]

14. I don't think Nietzsche is "conservative"

...and Deleuze and Foucault agree with me, dammit! :P

[GirlinContempt]

15. Master-salve morality isn't conservative?

His ideas that showing compassion and helping your fellow man are signs of weakness and that only the strong will survive, and rule the weak, that isn't conservative?

[tishaLA]

24. Your characterization would be "conservative"

I suppose, but I don't think it's an accurate characterization of Nietzsche's position. Deleuze is widely considered the most important interpreters of Nietzsche in the past 40 years, so let me try to lay out his feelings. A better understanding of it appears in his seminal book Nietzsche and Philosophy

Deleuze argues against "personalist" readings that assign direct social roles to the master and the slave (Hardt) and instead insists that the master-slave trope refers not to the working class and capitalists but to the abstract process of the development of logic (Marxists like Kojeve, another important interpreter of Nietzsche--tied more closely to Hegelian dialectic than to Nietzschean dynamism--would disagree with this point, but that is perhaps why Kojeve influenced Lacan, the quintessential dialectician, as much as he did). Deleuze understands the master as a hero because her/his Being is bound up with direct negation of reality through the unmediated exercise of power, and all of this is associated with the will to power and the advocacy of active change; thus, the Nietzschean master and slave morality bears no resemblance to the Hegel's conservative master-slave dialectic.

Michael Hardt explains this both more and less clearly than the above. I think Judith Butler has also encountered it in The Psychic Life of Power, but I don't remember her argument right now and I'm too lazy to look it up.

[JVS]

26. Mmmm Master-salve, for when you need to sooth that sore skin

[tigereye]

2. D'nesh D'souza ( sp)

I don't think he's a philosopher, though.


Ayn Rand (j/k)

[EstimatedProphet]

3. Adam Smith, Keynes, Machiavelli possibly

[FuzzySlippers]

18. Keynes was conservative?

He was a proponent of government spending to stimulate the economy.

[EstimatedProphet]

21. Or maybe not Keynes...:)

Sorry, I was obviously thinking of someone else. And now I have no idea who it was!

D'OH!

[YellowRubberDuckie]

4. If someone's conservative, can you label them a thinker?

:shrug:

[Sugar Smack]

5. Ummm...That was EXACTLY the one I was going to use.

We must be on the same brainwave. :D

[ghostsofgiants]

6. Edmund Burke

[NoPasaran]

7. Thomas Hobbes

[anarch]

8. George W. Bush -- he hardly thinks at all!

Sorry...Edmund Burke, Kung Fu Tse, Thomas Jefferson (by some definitions, anyway).

[DBoon]

9. GK Chesterton?

nt

[Deja Q]

10. Ayn Rand??

[Catchawave]

11. Ayn Rand ?

I think she was against the VN war before she was for it :shrug: Is that conservative philosophy?

[jmowreader]

19. Flip-flopping? It certainly is.

Ronald Reagan was against wasteful government spending before he was for it.

GHWB was against raising taxes before he was for it.

GWB was against fighting terrorism before he was for it.

GWB was also for cocaine before he was against it, for booze before he was (supposedly) against it, for abortion (at least for the 15-year-old he knocked up) before he was against it, for drunk driving before he was against it...

Yeah. I'd say flip-flopping is definitely conservative philosophy.

[DBoon]

12. George Santayana

maybe?

[Rabrrrrrr]

13. I have most often felt William Safire is well-reasoned.

Wrong, most times, yes; but one can always tell how he got to where he is in his thinking. His starting points are different than mine, but his progression, given his root assumptions, always makes sense, is logical, and is well-reasoned.

[wovenpaint]

16. Isn't that an...

oxy"moran"?

sorry, couldn't resist.....:evilgrin:

[Jade Fox]

17. Christopher Lasch....

was considered to be Conservative by many, and he certainly had that in him. But he was also unapologetic about being an anti-capitalist, and loathed what today we call Neocons.

Here's a link:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=4361

[tjwmason]

29. Most real conservatives would be loathed by the neo-cons.

n/t

[KitchenWitch]

20. George Will

[Zorra]

22. Leo Strauss, the idol of PNAC. Major asshole. n/t

[specimenfred1984]

23. Hitler. Read his Book, He Thought A Lot

and he thinks a lot like todays conservatives.

[neoteric lefty]

25. Are we all forgeting the most important conservative philosopher???

Jesus Christ! (no, that wasn't an exclamation. I'm actually saying Jesus) :)

at least that is what George W. Bush says. And we all know that what Dubya says is gospel.

[WCGreen]

27. Jesus was a liberal.......

http://www.liberalslikechrist.org/

[neoteric lefty]

30. I know, but when Dubya says Jesus was his most inspirational

philosopher, then you have to stand in awe of the irony :)

[leftofthedial]

28. these days, that's an oxymoron

[LSdemocrat]

31. Antonin Scalia, at times, writes well