IMAGINARY CONSERVATISM OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI
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wykładowca w Instytucie Nauk Politycznych
Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Publication date: 2020-01-28
Studia Politologiczne 2009;13
ABSTRACT
Political thought of Benjamin Disraeli and his policy as a leader of Conservative
Party marks a new stage in evolution of English conservatism. In particular
catastrophic vision of W. Burke and nostalgic-retrospective conservatism of Lake
Poets (S.T. Coleridge, W. Wordsworth and R. Southey) were forsaken. Disraeli is
the first consequent conservative who treated evolutionary change as a method of
development not only legitimate by history and neglected by modernity but still
possible to implement in reality. Although the project of “conservative progress”
made him a critic of liberal ideology, it let him accept basic institutions of liberal
society in the name of their conservative correction.
In the world speaking many languages which describe its dilemmas and conflicts
in different ways, Disraeli formulated a proposition of a meta-language which
could overcome the said dilemmas and conflicts. The key word of this language
is an empire – meta-material, solidarity community of imagined goal, reorganizing
relations between classes and integrating them in different dimension and reality.
Thus one of fundamental features of human art dominating over the nature is
the ability to create and introduce the values which would regenerate the society
as a whole. Indeterministic ability of integrating social spirituality becomes one
of the fundamental instruments of conservative policy.