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To What Extent Is Conservatism a Philosophy of Imperfection?

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Conservatism does not have one single viewpoint or stance on human nature or imperfection as Conservatism as a whole encompasses different strands or beliefs within it. For example One Nation conservatives have a different philosophy on human imperfection than New Right conservatives do. One Nation conservatives hold the belief that we as humans are: greedy and have a limited capacity for altruism, a complex mix of emotions and contradictory motivations making us irrational, not totally consistent and are at balance the majority of the time with corruption. They believe that our inherent imperfect human nature stems from original sin, the Christian Belief. This shows a wholesome negative outlook on human nature. The New Right on the other hand is more positive as a result of the neo-liberal ideological view that we are in fact rational, shown by the classical liberal belief in self-regulating society and a ‘realm of coercion’. However, as the New Right is a marriage of neo-liberal and neo-conservative views there is also the negative view of human nature present, as held by traditional conservatives. At the heart of the debate, obviously is whether or not conservatism is a philosophy of imperfection, it is my view that it is a philosophy of imperfection to a large extent, as I will explain now.

To begin, it is important to quote O’Sullivan who in 1976 said that conservatism is a ‘philosophy of imperfection. He said this, as unlike many ideologies which believe that humans are naturally good or at least can be made good through the improvement of their social circumstances (like liberals and socialists who believe in personal development), conservatives have an intrinsically negative view on human nature that they are imperfect and also unperfectible. This is shown firstly through the idea that humans are psychologically flawed. Traditional conservatives think that

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