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NRODT Review of "Russell Kirk and the Age of Ideology" by W. Wesley McDonald

Central to Kirk's philosophy is the connection between order in the soul and order in the commonwealth. A society's politics reflects its culture, and hence its morality. Kirk sought — in McDonald's words — to "rediscover, articulate, and defend those enduring moral norms, now blurred in our consciousness, by which civilized peoples have governed their conduct." McDonald situates this effort within the concept of "ethical dualism," as fleshed out in the work of Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More. In this view, man is torn between two natures: his lower self, which focuses on selfish and momentary goals, and his higher self, which has the ability to envision something nobler. The moral man checks his lower self and seeks to strengthen his higher self.

Out of this inner tension comes an outer tension, one between order and freedom. For Kirk, true freedom is not the libertarian's total lack of external restraint but rather the opportunity to attain one's own natural potential, and to live in harmony with the moral order. "Liberty," writes McDonald, "can be found neither in individual self-gratification (as the utilitarian would hold) nor in flowing with one's spontaneous impulses (as the Rousseauists would affirm), but resides instead in [what Babbitt called] the individual's 'ethical self; and the ethical self is experienced not as expansive emotion, but as inner control.'"