The so-called "crisis of the eighteenth century," when the full impact of seventeenth-century rationalist and scientific modes of thought was felt, constituted a watershed for modern political thought. And the attack on the authority of accepted ideas was soon accompanied by an attack on the legitimacy of accepted institutions. "Rude establishments," wrote Bentham, must be brought "to the test of polished reason." Under the impress of revolutionary events set in motion in America and Europe, modern conservatism was formed. In its origins, conservatism was not so much a defense of the existing order, which had been breached by the establishment of revolutionary regimes, as a sustained attack on the rationalist currents which had come to dominate much of European thinking since the days of Hobbes, Descartes, and Newton. Whatever else may be said of the conservative response, it cannot be held to have disagreed about the identity of its enemy. Burke's strictures against "men of theory," Hegel's condemnation of the "abstract reason" of the French revolutionaries, and Metternich's sarcasms about the "presumptuous man" were all testimony to an almost unanimous rejection of the claims of reason to be the ultimate arbiter in political questions. According to the conservative indictment, the Enlightenment, inspired by a destructive rationalism, had succeeded in loosening the cohesive ties of society; it had insisted that slumbering beliefs and institutions, which men had unthinkingly and naturally "accepted," be made to undergo the ordeal of conscious, rational acceptance.
(Sheldon S. Wolin, "Hume and Conservatism," The American Political Science Review 48 [December 1954]: 999-1016, at 1000)
Note from KBJ: "Men of theory" are alive and well in the 21st century. They are known as progressives. They demand, among other things, that institutions such as marriage "undergo the ordeal of conscious, rational acceptance." This demand must be resisted. Marriage, by virtue of its status as an institution, is self-certifying. To attempt to defend it on theoretical grounds is to play into the rationalist's (i.e., the progressive's) hands.
Note 2 from KBJ: Here is an interview with Sheldon Wolin.
