Russell Kirk | |
|---|---|
 Kirk in 1962 | |
| Born | Russell Amos Kirk (1918-10-19)October 19, 1918 Plymouth, Michigan, U.S. |
| Died | April 29, 1994(1994-04-29) (aged 75) Mecosta, Michigan, U.S. |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 4 |
| Education | |
| Education | Michigan State University (BA) Duke University (MA) University of St Andrews (DLitt) |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Traditionalist conservatism American conservatism |
| Main interests | Politics, history, fiction |
| Notable works | |
| Website | kirkcenter |
Russell Amos Kirk (October 19, 1918 – April 29, 1994)[1] was an Americanpolitical philosopher,moralist, historian,social critic,literary critic, lecturer, author, and novelist who influenced 20th centuryAmerican conservatism. In 1953, he authoredThe Conservative Mind, which traced the development of conservative thought in the Anglo-American tradition andEdmund Burke. The book helped establish the intellectual framework for the conservative movement in the postwar era.
Kirk was the chief proponent oftraditionalist conservatism. He was also an accomplished author ofGothic andghost story fiction. In 1953Clinton Rossiter said that thanks to Kirk, "the so-called 'new conservatism' of the postwar period takes on new substance and meaning".[2] In 2013,Alfred Regnery calledThe Conservative Mind "the catalyst that began the transformation of a band of disparate conservative critics into the political, cultural, and intellectual force that it is today."[3]
Kirk was born inPlymouth, Michigan, on October 19, 1918, the son of Russell Andrew Kirk, a railroad engineer, and Marjorie Pierce Kirk. Kirk attendedMichigan State University, where he received aBachelor of Arts, andDuke University, where he was awarded aMaster of Arts.
DuringWorld War II, Kirk served in theUnited States Armed Forces and corresponded withIsabel Paterson, a libertarian writer who helped to shape his early political thought. After readingOur Enemy, the State byAlbert Jay Nock, Kirk engaged in a similar correspondence with Nock. Following the end of World War II, Kirk attendedUniversity of St Andrews inScotland, where, in 1953, he became the university's first American to be awarded aDoctor of Letters.[4] Kirk "laid out a post-World War II program for conservatives by warning them, 'A handful of individuals, some of them quite unused to moral responsibilities on such a scale, made it their business toextirpate the populations ofNagasaki and Hiroshima; we must make it our business to curtail the possibility of such snap decisions.'"[5]
After obtaining his degree at the University of St. Andrews, Kirk secured an academic position atMichigan State University, his alma mater. He resigned in 1953, after growing disenchanted with the rapid growth in student number and emphasis on intercollegiate athletics and technical training at the expense of the traditionalliberal arts. He subsequently referred to Michigan State as "Cow College" or "Behemoth University", and later wrote that academic political scientists and sociologists were "as a breed—dull dogs".[6]
After leaving Michigan State, Kirk moved permanently to the village ofMecosta, Michigan. From there he exerted his influence on American politics and intellectual life though many books and articles, as well as the syndicated newspaper column, which was published for 13 years. In his entire career he published nearly 3,000 newspaper columns, hundreds of essays and books reviews, and over 30 books.[7]
In 1953, Kirk authoredThe Conservative Mind,[8] the published version of Kirk's doctoral dissertation/ It contributed materially to the 20th centuryBurke revival, drawing attention to:
Kirk wrote for many publications, especially for three U.S.-based conservative journals,National Review, which he helped found in 1955 and contributed a column for 25 years;Modern Age, which he helped found in 1957 and edited from 1957 to 1959; and theUniversity Bookman, which he founded in 1960 and edited until his death.[9]
Kirk's other important books includeEliot and his Age: T. S. Eliot's Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century (1972),The Roots of American Order (1974), and the autobiographicalSword of the Imagination: Memoirs of a Half Century of Literary Conflict (1995). As was the case with his heroEdmund Burke, Kirk became renowned for the prose style of his intellectual and polemical writings.[10]
Beyond his scholarly achievements, Kirk was talented both as anoral storyteller and as an author ofgenre fiction, most notably in his telling of consummateghost stories in theclassic tradition ofSheridan Le Fanu,M. R. James,Oliver Onions, andH. Russell Wakefield. He also wrote other admired and much-anthologizedworks that are variously classified as horror, fantasy, science fiction, andpolitical satire. These earned him plaudits from fellowcreative writers as varied and distinguished asT. S. Eliot,Robert Aickman,Madeleine L'Engle, andRay Bradbury.[citation needed]
Kirk's body of fiction, encompassing three novels and 22 short stories, was written amid a busy career as prolific non-fiction writer, editor, and speaker. Like otherspeculative fiction authorsG. K. Chesterton,C. S. Lewis, andJ. R. R. Tolkien,[citation needed] each of whom only wrote non-fiction for their day jobs, there areconservative undercurrents,social,cultural,religious, andpolitical, to Kirk's fiction. In 1984, Kirk described the purpose of his fictional stories:
The political ferocity of our age is sufficiently dismaying: men of letters need not conjure up horrors worse than those suffered during the past decade by the Cambodians and Ugandans, Afghans and Ethiopians. What I have attempted, rather, are experiments in the moral imagination. Readers will encounter elements of parable and fable...some clear premise is about the character of human existence...a healthy concept of the character of evil...[11]
His first novel,Old House of Fear (1961, 1965), was written in a self-consciouslyGothic vein. The plot is concerned with an American assigned by his employer to a bleak locale in rural Scotland—the same country where Kirk had attended graduate school. This was Kirk's mostcommercially successful and critically acclaimed fictional work, doing much to sustain himfinancially in subsequent years.Old House of Fear was inspired by the novels ofJohn Buchan and Kirk's own Scottish heritage.[11] The story ofOld House of Fear concerns an young American, Hugh Logan, a World War II veteran who is both brave and sensitive, sent to buy Carnglass, a remote island in the Hebrides.[11] Upon reaching the island, he discovers that the island's owner, Lady MacAskival and her beautiful adopted daughter Mary are being held hostage by foreign spies, who are presumably working for the Soviet Union, out to sabotage a nearby NATO base.[11] The leader of the spies is Dr. Jackman, an evil genius and nihilist intent upon wrecking a world that failed to acknowledge his greatness and whom reviewers noted was a much more vividly drawn character than the hero Logan.[11] Dr. Jackman appears to be a prototype of Kirk's best known character, Manfred Arcane, with the only difference being the former has no values while the latter does.[11]
His later novels includeA Creature of the Twilight (1966), adark comedysatirizingpostcolonial African politics; andLord of the Hollow Dark (1979, 1989), set in Scotland, which explores the greatevil inhabiting ahaunted house.A Creature of the Twilight concerns the adventures in Africa of a reactionary, romantic mercenary Mandred Arcane, a self-proclaimed mixture of Machiavelli and Sir Lancelot, who is an anachronistic survival of the Victorian Age who does not belong in the modern world and yet defiantly still exists, making him the "creature of the twilight".[11] Kirk has Arcane write his pseudo-memoir in a consciously Victorian style to underline that he does not belong in the 1960s. Arcane is both a dapper intellectual and a hardened man of action, an elderly man full of an unnatural vigor, who is hired by the son of the assassinated Sultan to put down a Communist rebellion in the fictional African nation of Hamnegri, which he does despite overwhelming odds.[11] In 1967, Kirk published a short story "Belgrummo's Hell" about a clever art thief who unwisely tries to rob the estate of the ancient Scottish warlock, Lord Belgrummo, who is later revealed to be Arcane's father.[11] In another short story published in the same collection, "The Peculiar Demesne of Archvicar Gerontion" concerned a wizard, Archvicar Gerontion, who tries to kill Arcane by casting deadly spells.[12]
TheLord of the Hollow Dark is set at the same Belgrummo estate first encountered in "Belgrummo's Hell" where an evil cult led by theAleister Crowley-like character Apollinax have assembled to secure for themselves the "Timeless Moment" of eternal sexual pleasure by sacrificing two innocents, an young woman named Marina and her infant daughter in an ancientwarren called the Weem under the Belgrummo Estate.[13] Assisting Apollinax is Archvicar Gerontion, who is really Arcane in disguise.[13] Inspired by the novels of H.P. Lovecraft, Kirk in theLord of the Hollow Dark has Arcane survive a "horrid chthonian pilgrimage" as he faces dark supernatural forces, confronts his own family's history of evil, and refuses the appeal of a "seductive, hubristic immorality".[13] The novel concludes with Arcane's own definition of a true "Timeless Moment" which he states: "it comes from faith, from hope, from charity; from having your work in the world; from the happiness of the people you love; or simply as a gift of grace".[13] During his lifetime, Kirk also oversaw the publication of three collections which together encompassed all his short stories. (Three more such collections have been published posthumously, but those onlyreprint stories found in the earlier volumes. One such posthumous collection,Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales, was edited by his student, friend, and collaboratorVigen Guroian, and includes both an essay by Kirk on 'ghostly tales' and Guroian's own analysis of the stories as well as Kirk's motives in writing them.) Many of Kirk's short stories, especially the ghost stories, were set in either Scotland or in the rural parts of his home state of Michigan.[11]
Among his novels and stories, certaincharacters tend to recur, enriching the already considerable unity and resonance of hisfictional canon. Though—through theirthemes andprose-style—Kirk's fiction and nonfiction works are complementary, many readers of the one have not known of his work in the other.
Having begun to write fiction fairly early in his career, Kirk ceased fiction writing after the early 1980s, while continuing his non-fiction writing and research through his last year of life. For a comprehensive bibliography of his fiction, seethe fiction section of his bibliography.
In 1982,The Portable Conservative Reader, which Kirk edited, included writings by many of the conservatives Kirk featured inThe Conservative Mind.
Kirk later was appointed a distinguished fellow atthe Heritage Foundation, a Washington-basedconservativethink tank, where he gave many lectures.[14] For a number of years Kirk taught one semester a year atHillsdale College, where he was distinguished visiting professor of humanities.[15] He was also a contributor toChronicles magazine.
In 1989, Kirk was presented with thePresidential Citizens Medal by PresidentRonald Reagan.[16]
In 1963, Kirk converted toCatholicism and married Annette Courtemanche;[17] they had four daughters. She and Kirk became known for their hospitality, welcoming many political, philosophical, and literary figures in theirMecosta, Michigan house, known as "Piety Hill", and giving shelter to political refugees, hoboes, and others.[18] Their Michigan home, which also became the site of seminars on conservative thought for university students, now houses theRussell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal. After his conversion to Catholicism, Kirk was a founding board member ofUna Voce America.[19]
On April 29, 1994, Kirk died from heart failure at his home in Mecosta, at age 75.[20]
Kirk developed six canons of conservatism, which Gerald J. Russello described as including:
Kirk said that Christianity andWestern Civilization are "unimaginable apart from one another"[22] and that "all culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief."[23][failed verification]
Kirk declined to drive, calling cars "mechanicalJacobins",[24] and would have nothing to do with television and what he called "electronic computers".[25]
Kirk did not always maintain a stereotypically conservative voting record. In the1944 presidential election, for instance, Kirk voted forNorman Thomas, theSocialist Party of America candidate as opposed to choosing between incumbentFranklin D. Roosevelt and the Republican challengerThomas E. Dewey.[26] In the1976 presidential election, he voted forEugene McCarthy.[27] In 1992 he supportedPat Buchanan'sprimary challenge to incumbentGeorge H. W. Bush, serving as state chair of the Buchanan campaign in Michigan.[28]
Kirk was highly critical of Republican militarism, arguing in 1992 that U.S. presidentGeorge H. W. Bush embarked upon "a radical course of intervention in the region of thePersian Gulf" in leading American engagement in theGulf War, followingSaddam Hussein andIraq's invasion and occupation ofKuwait in August 1990.[29][30]In April 1992, in an address tothe Heritage Foundation, Kirk said:[31]
PresidentsWoodrow Wilson,Franklin Roosevelt, andLyndon Johnson were enthusiasts for American domination of the world. Now George Bush appears to be emulating those eminent Democrats. When the Republicans, once upon a time, nominated for the presidency a "One World" candidate,Wendell Willkie, they were sadly trounced. In general, Republicans throughout the twentieth century have been advocates of prudence and restraint in the conduct of foreign affairs.[32]
Unless theBush administration abruptly reverses its fiscal and military course, I suggest, the Republican Party must lose its former good repute for frugality, and become the party of profligate expenditure, "butter and guns." And public opinion would not long abide that. Nor would America's world influence and America's remaining prosperity.[32]
Yet presidents of the United States must not be encouraged to make Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, nor to fancy that they can establish a New World Order through eliminating dissenters. In the second century before Christ, the Romans generously liberated the Greek city-states from the yoke of Macedonia. But it was not long before the Romans felt it necessary to impose upon those quarrelsome Greeks a domination more stifling to Hellenic freedom and culture than ever Macedon had been. It is a duty of the Congress of the United States to see that great American Caesars do not act likewise.[32]
Kirk supported Burkean conservatism, based on the writings and philosophy ofEdmund Burke, which embraced tradition, political philosophy,belles lettres, and strong religious faith. Especially in his later years, he was an opponent oflibertarianism andfree market economic reasoning, though he made little reference of these positions inThe Conservative Mind.
In a 1981 article forModern Age, Kirk, paraphrasingT. S. Eliot, called libertarians "chirping sectaries." Kirk added that conservatives and libertarians share opposition to "collectivism," "the totalist state," and "bureaucracy", but otherwise have "nothing" in common. He called the libertarian movement "an ideological clique forever splitting into sects still smaller and odder, but rarely conjugating." He said a line of division exists between believers in "some sort of transcendent moral order" and "utilitarians admitting no transcendent sanctions for conduct." He included libertarians in the latter category.[33] Kirk, therefore, questioned the"fusionism" between libertarians and traditional conservatives that marked much of post-World War II conservatism in the United States.[34] Kirk also argued that libertarians "bear no authority, temporal or spiritual" and do not "venerate ancient beliefs and customs, or the natural world, or [their] country, or the immortal spark in [their] fellow men."[35]
In an April 1988 lecture atthe Heritage Foundation, Kirk's praisedclassical liberals, saying that he agreed with them on "ordered liberty" and shared "common cause with regular conservatives against the menace of democratic despotism and economic collectivism."[36]
Tibor Machan, anAuburn University philosophy professor, responded, defending libertarianism in response to Kirk's original Heritage Lecture. Machan argued that the right of individual sovereignty is perhaps most worthy of conserving from the American political heritage, and that when conservatives themselves talk about preserving some tradition, they cannot at the same time claim a disrespectful distrust of the individual human mind, of rationalism itself.[37]
In the 1980s, Kirk grew disenchanted with Americanneoconservatives.[38] In 2004,Chronicles editor Scott Richert wrote:
[One line] helped define the emerging struggle between neoconservatives and paleoconservatives. "Not seldom has it seemed," Kirk declared, "as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States." A few years later, in another Heritage Foundation speech, Kirk repeated that line verbatim. In the wake of the Gulf War, which he had opposed, he clearly understood that those words carried even greater meaning.[39]
Kirk said that neoconservatives were "often clever...seldom wise."[38]Midge Decter, aJewish director of theCommittee for the Free World and wife of neoconservative writerNorman Podhoretz, called Kirk's description of neoconservatives "a bloody outrage, a piece ofanti-Semitism by Kirk that impugns the loyalty of neoconservatives."[40] Decter toldThe New Republic that, "it's this notion of a Christian civilization. You have to be part of it or you're not really fit to conserve anything. That's an old line and it's very ignorant."[41]
Samuel T. Francis called Kirk's "Tel Aviv" remark "a wisecrack about the slavishly pro-Israel sympathies among neoconservatives."[41] He described Decter's response as untrue, "reckless" and "vitriolic." Furthermore, he argued that such a denunciation "always plays into the hands of the left, which is then able to repeat the charges and claim conservative endorsement of them.[41]
In aNational Review column on March 9, 1965, "One Man, One Vote' in South Africa", Kirk wrote that theU.S. Supreme Court's jurisprudence on voting "will work mischief—much injuring, rather than fulfilling, the responsible democracy for which Tocqueville hoped," but in the case ofSouth Africa "this degradation of the democratic dogma, if applied, would bring anarchy and the collapse of civilization."[42] Kirk wrote that "the 'European' element [makes] South Africa the only 'modern' and prosperous African country." He added that "Bantu political domination [of South Africa] would be domination by witch doctors (still numerous and powerful) and reckless demagogues" and that "Bantu and Coloreds and Indians must feel that they have some political voice in the South African commonwealth."
According toAlfred S. Regnery, "For an unknown author writing about an unpopular subject, Kirk received an astounding response. TheNew York Times review byGordon Chalmers, president of Kenyon College, said Kirk was “as relentless as his enemies, Karl Marx and Harold Laski, considerably more temperate and scholarly, and in passages of this very readable book, brilliant and even eloquent.”[43]Clinton Rossiter hailed Kirk’s book as “one of the most valuable contributions to intellectual history of the past decade,” whose “scholarship is manifestly of the highest order.” In it, he said, “the so-called ‘new conservatism’ of the postwar period takes on new substance and meaning.”[44]
Bradley J. Birzer, aHillsdale College history professor, argues that Kirk was immensely influential in inspiring the modern conservative movement, but not many of his followers agreed with his unusual approach to the history of conservatism. As summarized by reviewer Drew Maciag:
Harry Jaffa, a student ofLeo Strauss, wrote, "Kirk was a poor Burke scholar. Burke's attack on metaphysical reasoning related only to modern philosophy's attempt to eliminate skeptical doubt from its premises and hence from its conclusions."[46]
Gerald J. Russello argued that Kirk adapted what 19th centuryOrestes Brownson, an American Catholic writer, called "territorial democracy" to articulate a version of federalism that was based on premises that differ in part from those of the founders and other conservatives. Kirk further believed that territorial democracy could reconcile the tension between treating the states as mere provinces of the central government, and as autonomous political units independent of Washington. Finally, territorial democracy allowed Kirk to set out a theory of individual rights grounded in the particular historical circumstances of the United States, while rejecting a universal conception of such rights.[47]
In addition to bringing public attention to Anglo-American conservative principles, Kirk described his perception of liberal ideals in the first chapter. Kirk identified these ideals as the perfectibility of man, hostility towards tradition, rapid change in economic and political systems, and the secularization of government.[48]
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)Political Errors at the End of the Twentieth Century – Part I: Republican Errors By Russell Kirk. Accessed: November 26, 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)Political Errors at the End of the Twentieth Century – Part I: Republican Errors By Russell Kirk. Accessed: November 26, 2012.Russell Kirk is a Distinguished Scholar at the Heritage Foundation. He spoke at The Heritage Foundation on April 19, 1988, delivering the second of four lectures on the 'Varieties of the Conservative Impulse.'OCLC 20729276
