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Russell Kirk: American Conservative
Emerging from two decades of the Great Depression and the New Deal and facing the rise of radical ideologies abroad, the American Right seemed beaten, broken, and adrift in the early 1950s. Although conservative luminaries such as T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley Jr., Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin all published important works at this time, none of their writings would match the influence of Russell Kirk's 1953 masterpiece The Conservative Mind. This seminal book became the intellectual touchstone for a reinvigorated movement and began a sea change in Americans' attitudes toward traditionalism.
In Russell Kirk, Bradley J. Birzer investigates the life and work of the man known as the founder of postwar conservatism in America. Drawing on papers and diaries that have only recently become available to the public, Birzer presents a thorough exploration of Kirk's intellectual roots and development. The first to examine the theorist's prolific writings on literature and culture, this magisterial study illuminates Kirk's lasting influence on figures such as T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley Jr., and Senator Barry Goldwater—who persuaded a reluctant Kirk to participate in his campaign for the presidency in 1964.
While several books examine the evolution of postwar conservatism and libertarianism, surprisingly few works explore Kirk's life and thought in detail. This engaging biography not only offers a fresh and thorough assessment of one of America's most influential thinkers but also reasserts his humane vision in an increasingly inhumane time.
In Russell Kirk, Bradley J. Birzer investigates the life and work of the man known as the founder of postwar conservatism in America. Drawing on papers and diaries that have only recently become available to the public, Birzer presents a thorough exploration of Kirk's intellectual roots and development. The first to examine the theorist's prolific writings on literature and culture, this magisterial study illuminates Kirk's lasting influence on figures such as T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley Jr., and Senator Barry Goldwater—who persuaded a reluctant Kirk to participate in his campaign for the presidency in 1964.
While several books examine the evolution of postwar conservatism and libertarianism, surprisingly few works explore Kirk's life and thought in detail. This engaging biography not only offers a fresh and thorough assessment of one of America's most influential thinkers but also reasserts his humane vision in an increasingly inhumane time.
608 pages, Hardcover
First published November 5, 2015
14 people are currently reading
266 people want to read
About the author
Bradley J. Birzer
31 books64 followersBradley J. Birzer is an American historian. He is a history professor and the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies at Hillsdale College, the author of five books and the co-founder of The Imaginative Conservative. He is known also as a J.R.R. Tolkien scholar.
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November 24, 2016
I spent a lot of time during my 30's writing Letters to the Editor, mostly to the Atlanta Constitution and Wall Street Journal. I've always been glad for the experience, since in the process I got to know some of the editors, whose input and coaching were wise guidance for my passionate scribbling.
To help hone my fledgling writing craft, I was also reading widely, and I will always remember my first encounter with Kirk's masterpiece, "The Conservative Mind" (and, following that, many of his other books). Not only did TCM plant my political and philosophical views in good, rich soil, but in reading Kirk I was transfixed by his uniquely lovely, erudite and thoughtful prose. The best part of all was having the privilege of corresponding back and forth with Dr. Kirk, on a couple of occasions, a few years before his passing; I treasure the letters he sent, hammered out on an old typewriter.
So naturally, I was excited to read Bradley Birzer's lengthy new book on Kirk, and it did not disappoint. Very thorough and well-footnoted, it's much more a history of Kirk's thought, writings, and intellectual jousting, than an actual year by year biography. Russell Kirk was a pivotal, important figure in the 20th Century intellectual resurgence of conservatism, who lived a unique, fascinating, full and productive life. I'm confident his influence will be felt far into the future.
For anyone interested in the history of ideas and the conservative movement, this is a highly recommended book!
To help hone my fledgling writing craft, I was also reading widely, and I will always remember my first encounter with Kirk's masterpiece, "The Conservative Mind" (and, following that, many of his other books). Not only did TCM plant my political and philosophical views in good, rich soil, but in reading Kirk I was transfixed by his uniquely lovely, erudite and thoughtful prose. The best part of all was having the privilege of corresponding back and forth with Dr. Kirk, on a couple of occasions, a few years before his passing; I treasure the letters he sent, hammered out on an old typewriter.
So naturally, I was excited to read Bradley Birzer's lengthy new book on Kirk, and it did not disappoint. Very thorough and well-footnoted, it's much more a history of Kirk's thought, writings, and intellectual jousting, than an actual year by year biography. Russell Kirk was a pivotal, important figure in the 20th Century intellectual resurgence of conservatism, who lived a unique, fascinating, full and productive life. I'm confident his influence will be felt far into the future.
For anyone interested in the history of ideas and the conservative movement, this is a highly recommended book!
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August 16, 2016Once upon a time, it seemed that Russell Kirk might, as he so devoutly wished, “redeem the time.” For two brief, shining moments, in the late 1950s and the early 1980s, Kirk’s efforts must have seemed to him like they might bear permanent fruit. But the moments passed, and it is clear now (in the summer of 2016) that Kirk’s efforts were always doomed. Or maybe only doomed in this age—on the farther side of our Ragnarok, perhaps his star will rise again.
He knew this himself, no doubt. But despair was not his way. More than once in this book he is quoted as using Tolkein’s term, “the long defeat” (the fuller quote, from the elf Queen Galadriel, is “together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat”). Kirk died in 1994. As the American of August 2016 peeps above his parapet, to view in the foreground the midget jousting of the moral degenerates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and then sweeps his eye around and to the horizon, across the lone and level sands, to view what in any earlier age would have been deemed the utter ruin of a civilization, yet for now is still animated by wealth and thus able to shamble onwards, it’s probably good that Kirk did not live to see today.
Bradley Birzer’s outstanding biography covers Kirk’s philosophy in detail, focusing on Kirk’s thought and interactions, both with others in the conservative movement and with larger societal currents. In the early 1950s, Kirk singlehandedly revitalized, or perhaps more accurately recreated from nothing, conservatism as an American philosophy. We mostly forget that at mid-century, all of America’s political class and elite regarded liberalism, in its 20th Century sense of large government Progressivism, as having swept the field. This was most infamously captured in Lionel Trilling’s 1950 comment, “Liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is a plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation.” Kirk, starting in 1953 with “The Conservative Mind,” proved this wrong. (It is entirely bizarre, reading Birzer’s extensive discussion of the impact of Kirk’s first book, to see the high quality of discourse that used to exist in mass market magazines and newspapers. Whether critical or supportive of Kirk, intelligent people using big words reviewed and commented on his work, addressing it directly and on its own terms. This, alone, shows how far downhill America’s intellectual life has fallen.)
As to the substance of Birzer’s excellent book, it is lucid, well organized and compelling. If you think “conservative thought” is an oxymoron, or, like Obama and his sycophants, you think history began in 1968, you will find little to interest you here. But if the various intersections of Enlightenment thought, natural law and Augustinian thought, and tradition vs. rationalism interest you, or the politico-philosophical currents of the second half of the 20th Century in general interest you, this is a very illuminating book. And it tells much about the development, intricacies and arc of its subject’s own thought.
For forty years, from roughly 1955 to 1995, Kirk dominated the Burkean (anti-ideology, pro-prudential tradition) wing of the American conservative movement. After Kirk made conservatism intellectually respectable, American conservatives grew into varying subgroups, held loosely together for decades by two things: anti-Communism and William Buckley. Other than Kirkian conservatism, the conservative big tent included many former Communists (Frank Meyer; Whittaker Chambers); minarchists and less extreme libertarians (various disciples of Albert Jay Nock); Southern Agrarians (M.E. Bradford, Robert Penn Warren); Straussians; Ayn Rand Objectivists (until expelled from the movement, along with the Birchers); and later, neoconservatives (Irving and William Kristol; Midge Decter).
Of all these, Kirk was the most famous individual, with a mass audience in books, periodicals and newspapers. Other than Rand, few (including Kirk) are remembered in the broader culture today, and many of the people Kirk engaged in constant dialogue, such as Eric Voegelin and Harry Jaffa, are nearly completely forgotten by anyone under the age of forty, conservative or not.
It is, unsurprisingly, difficult to capture in a set program or list of goals the philosophy of someone like Kirk, doubly so when one remembers that he was opposed to all ideology as simplistic and pernicious, and that his own thought developed over decades. But Birzer does a good job of both citing and summarizing elements of Kirk’s thought. For example, Birzer summarizes Kirk, “The best government, regardless of type, should really only offer two things: (1) the security of the pursuit of excellence while restraining the excellent from using their gifts to oppress the less excellent; and (2) acts in harmony with the traditional norms and mores of the people.” Similarly, as to the common claim that the main characteristic of the state is its monopoly on legitimate violence, he quotes Kirk: “The application of violence, though, is the ultimate means only of creating and preserving a political order, it is not its ultimate reason: the function proper of order is the creation of a shelter in which man may give to his life a semblance of meaning.”
More broadly than the specifics of government, Birzer notes that “Kirk consistently made four points about the principles that should underlie politics in Western civilization . . . . First, he believed that every government and society must pursue order, justice, and freedom. Any good society rested on these three principles. Second, he believed whole-heartedly in a Ciceronian natural law as ordering all of creation. Third, he believed that man must live according to a variety of inherited and natural rights, rejecting all forms of egalitarianism except equality before the law. Finally, he thought these three things would thrive best individually and collectively in a republic, the form of government the American Founding Fathers had wisely chosen.”
And finally, Kirk himself set out his view of what a person should be in the whole of his or her life. “A truly humane man is a person who knows we were not born yesterday. He is familiar with many of the great books and the great men of the past, and with the best in the thought of his own generation. He has received a training of mind and character that chastens and ennobles and emancipates. He is a man genuinely free; but free only because he obeys the ancient laws, the norms, which govern human nature. He is competent to be a leader, whether in his own little circle or on a national scale—a leader in thought and taste and politics—because he has served an apprenticeship to the priests and the prophets and the philosophers of the generations that have preceded us in our civilization. He knows what it is to be man—to be truly and fully human. He knows what things a man is forbidden to do. He knows his rights and his corresponding duties. He knows what to do with his leisure. He knows the purpose of his work. He knows that there is a law for man, and a law for thing.”
Most, even his sympathizers, would probably say that Kirk does not have the right of every point. But he rarely goes far wrong, and his prudential approach would certainly aid us if applied broadly today. Kirk can justly be accused of overmuch nostalgia and over-little appreciation of the necessity of participation in politics. He thought the inherent gutter nature of politics sullied the humane man, and he referred to the politically active as the “quarter-educated” (although he still became heavily involved in the Goldwater campaign, costing him some of his influence). But his hero, Burke, was an active career politician, and without champions, the best and noblest philosophy is merely a clanging cymbal. And the conservative movement he founded quickly devolved into internecine warfare, showing the weakness of philosophy. Yes, the movement did greatly assist in getting Reagan elected, but ever since then, the conservative movement has been most powerful in its own mind. It may be a richly textured, fully developed and lushly insightful mind. But it’s more a brain in a vat than the engine of political power, and without political power, ideas lack consequences.
I actually have some personal insight into all this. I came late to the party, but in my youth (the 1980s) I was an active member in good standing of what, later in the 1990s, we ironically called (following Hillary Clinton at the time) “The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.” I met both Russell and Annette Kirk several times, during seminars hosted at their Piety Hill home in the late 1980s, and I was a friendly acquaintance of their two older daughters. I may not still be an active participant in the Conspiracy, but the ironic thing is that there is actually such a thing, though not in the sense Clinton meant. As far as I can tell, today, with a few exceptions, the conservative movement is much less philosophically oriented and much more fractured than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. But it is more of a conspiracy, in that there are close connections among the participants, than organizations on the Left, with their tendency to splinter into ludicrous factions like Trotskyite/Spartacist infighters. Most people on the intellectual Right are within one or two degrees of separation (though the Left has succeeded, through its domination of the media, academia and popular culture, at totally capturing the mechanisms of power, regardless of its greater intellectual fragmentation). And certainly, from my perspective, Birzer’s book is accurate.
My only criticism, if one can call it that, is that the book is 95% an analysis of Kirk’s thought, and 5% a biography of his life. It does draw a compelling, and as far as I can tell, accurate picture of the man. But we learn almost nothing about Kirk’s internal personal thoughts about Kirk or Kirk’s life, other than much detail about Kirk’s personal philosophy of life (basically, a form of Christian Stoicism). Given that apparently Annette Kirk gave Birzer extensive access to Kirk’s papers and correspondence, and Kirk wrote two autobiographies himself which are only mentioned in passing, this seems odd. Maybe Kirk didn’t do much, if any, navel gazing. His seamless and tranquil glide path into orthodox Christianity suggest that internal anguish was an emotion foreign to him. However, I, for one, am still curious about Russell Kirk, the man, beyond that knowledge that can be found in his thought, his own books, and the intermittent bits of information about his personal life that can be found in Birzer’s book.
(One pedantic note. Birzer mentions several times Kirk’s fascination with, and devotion to, the Shroud of Turin. But that is not, as Birzer says, “the cloth that Veronica supposedly used to wipe Jesus’s face while he climbed to Golgotha . . . and became his burial shroud.” That veil, the Sudarium, is a totally different relic than the Shroud.)
Unfortunately, what we need now is not another Kirk. His work is done, and there is no need to repeat or parrot it. We need to preserve Kirk, certainly, something to which his widow has apparently devoted her life. A time will come when his thought, his insight and his wisdom can again contribute greatly to renewing the time. But for now, as far as the broader society, his message falls on barren ground, and what we need instead is hard men who will literally fight the long defeat, in order that on the other side, when the ashes and bones are cleared away, a green and fertile space can exist and abide, upon which Kirk’s ideas may be planted.
He knew this himself, no doubt. But despair was not his way. More than once in this book he is quoted as using Tolkein’s term, “the long defeat” (the fuller quote, from the elf Queen Galadriel, is “together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat”). Kirk died in 1994. As the American of August 2016 peeps above his parapet, to view in the foreground the midget jousting of the moral degenerates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and then sweeps his eye around and to the horizon, across the lone and level sands, to view what in any earlier age would have been deemed the utter ruin of a civilization, yet for now is still animated by wealth and thus able to shamble onwards, it’s probably good that Kirk did not live to see today.
Bradley Birzer’s outstanding biography covers Kirk’s philosophy in detail, focusing on Kirk’s thought and interactions, both with others in the conservative movement and with larger societal currents. In the early 1950s, Kirk singlehandedly revitalized, or perhaps more accurately recreated from nothing, conservatism as an American philosophy. We mostly forget that at mid-century, all of America’s political class and elite regarded liberalism, in its 20th Century sense of large government Progressivism, as having swept the field. This was most infamously captured in Lionel Trilling’s 1950 comment, “Liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is a plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation.” Kirk, starting in 1953 with “The Conservative Mind,” proved this wrong. (It is entirely bizarre, reading Birzer’s extensive discussion of the impact of Kirk’s first book, to see the high quality of discourse that used to exist in mass market magazines and newspapers. Whether critical or supportive of Kirk, intelligent people using big words reviewed and commented on his work, addressing it directly and on its own terms. This, alone, shows how far downhill America’s intellectual life has fallen.)
As to the substance of Birzer’s excellent book, it is lucid, well organized and compelling. If you think “conservative thought” is an oxymoron, or, like Obama and his sycophants, you think history began in 1968, you will find little to interest you here. But if the various intersections of Enlightenment thought, natural law and Augustinian thought, and tradition vs. rationalism interest you, or the politico-philosophical currents of the second half of the 20th Century in general interest you, this is a very illuminating book. And it tells much about the development, intricacies and arc of its subject’s own thought.
For forty years, from roughly 1955 to 1995, Kirk dominated the Burkean (anti-ideology, pro-prudential tradition) wing of the American conservative movement. After Kirk made conservatism intellectually respectable, American conservatives grew into varying subgroups, held loosely together for decades by two things: anti-Communism and William Buckley. Other than Kirkian conservatism, the conservative big tent included many former Communists (Frank Meyer; Whittaker Chambers); minarchists and less extreme libertarians (various disciples of Albert Jay Nock); Southern Agrarians (M.E. Bradford, Robert Penn Warren); Straussians; Ayn Rand Objectivists (until expelled from the movement, along with the Birchers); and later, neoconservatives (Irving and William Kristol; Midge Decter).
Of all these, Kirk was the most famous individual, with a mass audience in books, periodicals and newspapers. Other than Rand, few (including Kirk) are remembered in the broader culture today, and many of the people Kirk engaged in constant dialogue, such as Eric Voegelin and Harry Jaffa, are nearly completely forgotten by anyone under the age of forty, conservative or not.
It is, unsurprisingly, difficult to capture in a set program or list of goals the philosophy of someone like Kirk, doubly so when one remembers that he was opposed to all ideology as simplistic and pernicious, and that his own thought developed over decades. But Birzer does a good job of both citing and summarizing elements of Kirk’s thought. For example, Birzer summarizes Kirk, “The best government, regardless of type, should really only offer two things: (1) the security of the pursuit of excellence while restraining the excellent from using their gifts to oppress the less excellent; and (2) acts in harmony with the traditional norms and mores of the people.” Similarly, as to the common claim that the main characteristic of the state is its monopoly on legitimate violence, he quotes Kirk: “The application of violence, though, is the ultimate means only of creating and preserving a political order, it is not its ultimate reason: the function proper of order is the creation of a shelter in which man may give to his life a semblance of meaning.”
More broadly than the specifics of government, Birzer notes that “Kirk consistently made four points about the principles that should underlie politics in Western civilization . . . . First, he believed that every government and society must pursue order, justice, and freedom. Any good society rested on these three principles. Second, he believed whole-heartedly in a Ciceronian natural law as ordering all of creation. Third, he believed that man must live according to a variety of inherited and natural rights, rejecting all forms of egalitarianism except equality before the law. Finally, he thought these three things would thrive best individually and collectively in a republic, the form of government the American Founding Fathers had wisely chosen.”
And finally, Kirk himself set out his view of what a person should be in the whole of his or her life. “A truly humane man is a person who knows we were not born yesterday. He is familiar with many of the great books and the great men of the past, and with the best in the thought of his own generation. He has received a training of mind and character that chastens and ennobles and emancipates. He is a man genuinely free; but free only because he obeys the ancient laws, the norms, which govern human nature. He is competent to be a leader, whether in his own little circle or on a national scale—a leader in thought and taste and politics—because he has served an apprenticeship to the priests and the prophets and the philosophers of the generations that have preceded us in our civilization. He knows what it is to be man—to be truly and fully human. He knows what things a man is forbidden to do. He knows his rights and his corresponding duties. He knows what to do with his leisure. He knows the purpose of his work. He knows that there is a law for man, and a law for thing.”
Most, even his sympathizers, would probably say that Kirk does not have the right of every point. But he rarely goes far wrong, and his prudential approach would certainly aid us if applied broadly today. Kirk can justly be accused of overmuch nostalgia and over-little appreciation of the necessity of participation in politics. He thought the inherent gutter nature of politics sullied the humane man, and he referred to the politically active as the “quarter-educated” (although he still became heavily involved in the Goldwater campaign, costing him some of his influence). But his hero, Burke, was an active career politician, and without champions, the best and noblest philosophy is merely a clanging cymbal. And the conservative movement he founded quickly devolved into internecine warfare, showing the weakness of philosophy. Yes, the movement did greatly assist in getting Reagan elected, but ever since then, the conservative movement has been most powerful in its own mind. It may be a richly textured, fully developed and lushly insightful mind. But it’s more a brain in a vat than the engine of political power, and without political power, ideas lack consequences.
I actually have some personal insight into all this. I came late to the party, but in my youth (the 1980s) I was an active member in good standing of what, later in the 1990s, we ironically called (following Hillary Clinton at the time) “The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.” I met both Russell and Annette Kirk several times, during seminars hosted at their Piety Hill home in the late 1980s, and I was a friendly acquaintance of their two older daughters. I may not still be an active participant in the Conspiracy, but the ironic thing is that there is actually such a thing, though not in the sense Clinton meant. As far as I can tell, today, with a few exceptions, the conservative movement is much less philosophically oriented and much more fractured than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. But it is more of a conspiracy, in that there are close connections among the participants, than organizations on the Left, with their tendency to splinter into ludicrous factions like Trotskyite/Spartacist infighters. Most people on the intellectual Right are within one or two degrees of separation (though the Left has succeeded, through its domination of the media, academia and popular culture, at totally capturing the mechanisms of power, regardless of its greater intellectual fragmentation). And certainly, from my perspective, Birzer’s book is accurate.
My only criticism, if one can call it that, is that the book is 95% an analysis of Kirk’s thought, and 5% a biography of his life. It does draw a compelling, and as far as I can tell, accurate picture of the man. But we learn almost nothing about Kirk’s internal personal thoughts about Kirk or Kirk’s life, other than much detail about Kirk’s personal philosophy of life (basically, a form of Christian Stoicism). Given that apparently Annette Kirk gave Birzer extensive access to Kirk’s papers and correspondence, and Kirk wrote two autobiographies himself which are only mentioned in passing, this seems odd. Maybe Kirk didn’t do much, if any, navel gazing. His seamless and tranquil glide path into orthodox Christianity suggest that internal anguish was an emotion foreign to him. However, I, for one, am still curious about Russell Kirk, the man, beyond that knowledge that can be found in his thought, his own books, and the intermittent bits of information about his personal life that can be found in Birzer’s book.
(One pedantic note. Birzer mentions several times Kirk’s fascination with, and devotion to, the Shroud of Turin. But that is not, as Birzer says, “the cloth that Veronica supposedly used to wipe Jesus’s face while he climbed to Golgotha . . . and became his burial shroud.” That veil, the Sudarium, is a totally different relic than the Shroud.)
Unfortunately, what we need now is not another Kirk. His work is done, and there is no need to repeat or parrot it. We need to preserve Kirk, certainly, something to which his widow has apparently devoted her life. A time will come when his thought, his insight and his wisdom can again contribute greatly to renewing the time. But for now, as far as the broader society, his message falls on barren ground, and what we need instead is hard men who will literally fight the long defeat, in order that on the other side, when the ashes and bones are cleared away, a green and fertile space can exist and abide, upon which Kirk’s ideas may be planted.
September 24, 2016
Conservatism is a narrow idealism in today’s political environment. It masquerades as a unifying banner under which half of America’s voters seek asylum: the religiously frustrated, the economically thwarted, the bureaucratically confined.
As a political platform it has had its successes and failures. It has promoted prosperity just as it has forgotten the importance of a sustainable future. It has insisted on the value of a human life just as it has created international roadblocks that make us more vulnerable as a nation. Russell Kirk would argue that these are problems with conservatism as a political party, not with conservatism per se.
For progress, as Kirk’s biographer Bradley Birzer reminds us, has always been conservative. It accumulates the very best from the past as it confronts the future. Yet it is discriminating in what it decides to put in its place. The modern notion of change for the sake of change is clearly irresponsible. Nature herself, after all, adjusts to the changing onslaught of the world but does so with the tools that history has given her.
But what is conservatism without the politics? Is it a Luddite? A nature preserve? A historian? More than anyone else of his generation, Russell Kirk both exemplified, just as he considered, this question. In fact Kirk tended to avoid politics altogether (with a notable exception in the Goldwater campaign) and his economic arguments were thin and never fully developed.
His conservatism was a cultural criticism of modern presumptions, not a campaign. He showed us that conservatives come from all walks of life and that they typically don't wield majority political views because they prefer their own company to that of maddening crowds.
In his private life Kirk favored traditional agriculture, religious devotion, Gothic stories (of which he wrote several) and his traditional family. This is not to say that his influence was slight. On the contrary, most of the major conservative thinkers from the mid-1900’s on owed him a great debt. His The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana (1953) did more than anything else to bring sympathetic citizens together and give them a voice. It remains a very accessible and relevant history even today – a testimony in its own right of Kirk’s commitment to timeless things.
Kirk’s writing career continued for decades and his output was prodigious. Even so, I doubt that one in a hundred students on America’s campuses today would recognize his name – not even one in a hundred of the decidedly conservative. We have passed through too many iterations of conservative claims to appreciate the timeless arguments of an erstwhile Michigan thinker. Yet the irony will be that Kirk’s writings will be read a hundred years from now when the political concerns of today will linger on merely as abbreviated footnotes in disregarded history books. Thanks to Bradley Birzer for contributing to the valuable corpus of Kirk’s building academic legacy. This is a biography for all of Kirk’s admirers.
As a political platform it has had its successes and failures. It has promoted prosperity just as it has forgotten the importance of a sustainable future. It has insisted on the value of a human life just as it has created international roadblocks that make us more vulnerable as a nation. Russell Kirk would argue that these are problems with conservatism as a political party, not with conservatism per se.
For progress, as Kirk’s biographer Bradley Birzer reminds us, has always been conservative. It accumulates the very best from the past as it confronts the future. Yet it is discriminating in what it decides to put in its place. The modern notion of change for the sake of change is clearly irresponsible. Nature herself, after all, adjusts to the changing onslaught of the world but does so with the tools that history has given her.
But what is conservatism without the politics? Is it a Luddite? A nature preserve? A historian? More than anyone else of his generation, Russell Kirk both exemplified, just as he considered, this question. In fact Kirk tended to avoid politics altogether (with a notable exception in the Goldwater campaign) and his economic arguments were thin and never fully developed.
His conservatism was a cultural criticism of modern presumptions, not a campaign. He showed us that conservatives come from all walks of life and that they typically don't wield majority political views because they prefer their own company to that of maddening crowds.
In his private life Kirk favored traditional agriculture, religious devotion, Gothic stories (of which he wrote several) and his traditional family. This is not to say that his influence was slight. On the contrary, most of the major conservative thinkers from the mid-1900’s on owed him a great debt. His The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana (1953) did more than anything else to bring sympathetic citizens together and give them a voice. It remains a very accessible and relevant history even today – a testimony in its own right of Kirk’s commitment to timeless things.
Kirk’s writing career continued for decades and his output was prodigious. Even so, I doubt that one in a hundred students on America’s campuses today would recognize his name – not even one in a hundred of the decidedly conservative. We have passed through too many iterations of conservative claims to appreciate the timeless arguments of an erstwhile Michigan thinker. Yet the irony will be that Kirk’s writings will be read a hundred years from now when the political concerns of today will linger on merely as abbreviated footnotes in disregarded history books. Thanks to Bradley Birzer for contributing to the valuable corpus of Kirk’s building academic legacy. This is a biography for all of Kirk’s admirers.
April 25, 2020
I developed a bad habit over the years of career and family of getting part or even most of the way through a book, then leaving it unfinished. Russell Kirk would not approve of allowing Leviathan to interfere with the pleasures of reading a good book! But such was the case here; thankfully, retirement and, especially, the virus situation allows for rectification. I'm happy that I finally have this one checked off my bucket list.
Having spent 39 years in the high-tech field, I just didn't run into guys anything like Russell Kirk, a self-proclaimed "independent man of letters." Maybe so during my undergrad years at a couple of liberal arts colleges, but even then my main academic focus was mathematics and computer science.
Kirk may be most well known for his 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, and somewhat less so for his gothic novels, though his novels outsold his non-fiction. This biography is essentially a tour through the post-war conservative movement through the time of Kirk's death in 1994, with Kirk as one of its intellectual leaders. But I would challenge any contemporary, clear-thinking "liberal" to try this as I doubt they'd find much to object to: Kirk's brand of conservatism is not what conservatism has been branded as today; I'll say no more.
Russell Kirk's legacy is kept alive at the site of his ancestral home in Mecosta, Michigan by The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal.
Having spent 39 years in the high-tech field, I just didn't run into guys anything like Russell Kirk, a self-proclaimed "independent man of letters." Maybe so during my undergrad years at a couple of liberal arts colleges, but even then my main academic focus was mathematics and computer science.
Kirk may be most well known for his 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, and somewhat less so for his gothic novels, though his novels outsold his non-fiction. This biography is essentially a tour through the post-war conservative movement through the time of Kirk's death in 1994, with Kirk as one of its intellectual leaders. But I would challenge any contemporary, clear-thinking "liberal" to try this as I doubt they'd find much to object to: Kirk's brand of conservatism is not what conservatism has been branded as today; I'll say no more.
Russell Kirk's legacy is kept alive at the site of his ancestral home in Mecosta, Michigan by The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal.
September 4, 2024
Brilliant introduction to a very important thinker.
"As Kirk would later write in a rare and revelatory historiographic moment, 'In every age, society has been relieved only by the endeavors of a few people moved by the grace of God.' This grace was, kirk assumed, the 'divine tactic' of which Edmund Burke had written in 'Further Reflections' (1791). 'Saints and martyrs will be raised up within this land of ours, during the next hundred years,' Kirk wrote in 1976, 'men and women not swept away by the running tide of prosperity and triviality.'"
May we be such prudent and honorable men and women, faithful in difficult times. 2nd reading.
"As Kirk would later write in a rare and revelatory historiographic moment, 'In every age, society has been relieved only by the endeavors of a few people moved by the grace of God.' This grace was, kirk assumed, the 'divine tactic' of which Edmund Burke had written in 'Further Reflections' (1791). 'Saints and martyrs will be raised up within this land of ours, during the next hundred years,' Kirk wrote in 1976, 'men and women not swept away by the running tide of prosperity and triviality.'"
May we be such prudent and honorable men and women, faithful in difficult times. 2nd reading.
December 21, 2024
A well-written and thorough biography. As an intellectually biography, the book tracks Kirk's thought over the course of his life, providing detail and backstories to all of Kirk's main influences (e.g., Burke, Eliot, More, Babbitt, Dawson, Bradbury, etc.) as well as those of his main sparring partners and adversaries.
November 16, 2016
Anyone who has a passing acquaintance with Russell Kirk’s work knows he emphasized culture over politics, and thought that only by way of cultural renewal might we eventually achieve political health. So, it is perhaps unsurprising that Bradley Birzer’s impressive biography, Russell Kirk: American Conservative, provides a rich and convincingly articulated examination of Kirk’s intellectual development that stresses Kirk’s Christian humanism and his commitment to a Republic of Letters more than politics conventionally understood, and that honors and pays close attention to Kirk’s fiction as well as his non-fiction work.
For readers interested in understanding and exploring Kirk’s influences, Birzer provides a useful roadmap. Major, indispensable figures such as Burke and Eliot (the two most influential thinkers in Kirk’s life) and Babbitt and More (two critical early guides) receive treatment, as do several others. Kirk was always something of a stoic, even after his conversion to Catholicism in 1964, and Marcus Aurelius always remained close to his heart. (Kirk had The Meditations with him on his deathbed.) Various libertarians from Kirk’s youth that he later marginalized or even excised from his intellectual biography are given their due, as is the sociologist Robert Nisbet, whose scholarship provided Kirk with a non-libertarian anti-statism that helped render figures like Albert Jay Nock and Isabel Paterson increasingly unnecessary. Wilhelm Ropke comes to light as Kirk’s favorite economist, and Birzer also explores various connections between Kirk and the political philosophers Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss. One small criticism I have is that Birzer seems to insist too strongly that Kirk’s assessment of Strauss never took a downturn. The fact that Strauss was largely excised from Kirk’s intellectual biography, much like the libertarian Paterson, is only mentioned in an endnote, and even in this obscure location Birzer chooses to play down this disappearing act, rather than attempting to articulate the reasons behind it. One obvious reason Kirk might have had for reassessing Strauss might have been the ammunition his work provided to the neoconservatives, whom Kirk came to loathe. Interestingly enough, though, after reading through Birzer’s text I do not recall a single instance where he explicitly linked Strauss or his students with neoconservatism. Another small criticism I have with regards to Birzer’s treatment of Kirk’s influences is that Birzer could have better articulated why he considers Christopher Dawson the third most influential thinker in Kirk’s life.
For readers interested in selectively exploring Kirk’s formidably large body of writings, Birzer proves a useful guide as well. For instance, Birzer calls attention to Kirk’s ironically titled 1954 book, A Program for Conservatives (in actuality, a Christian humanist manifesto), claiming it to be his most profound and well-written non-fiction work, and also asserting that it contains what Birzer considers perhaps Kirk’s most original contribution to social thought: an analysis of boredom and its harmful effects. Birzer also treats Eliot and His Age (1971) with great praise, considering it as one of Kirk’s three greatest non-fiction efforts. (The Conservative Mind, unsurprisingly, also made the short list.) Birzer is right when he points out that it speaks volumes that T.S. Eliot himself thought highly enough of his friend and disciple Kirk to encourage his book on the poet. Birzer also provides a thorough look at Kirk’s splendid though often neglected fiction, recognizing that it was a wonderful vehicle through which Kirk articulated his vision and nourished the moral imagination of his readers. Birzer calls Kirk's last novel, Lord of the Hollow Dark (1979), perhaps his greatest achievement as a writer.
Given Kirk’s interest in and commitment to liberal education, it would have been nice to have seen Birzer explore Kirk’s ideas as an educational reformer. Given Birzer’s focus on Kirk’s interest in cultural renewal, this omission seems at first glance rather curious. Perhaps Birzer decided his book was packed full of enough information and was content that Wes McDonald focused on educational reform in his 2004 book on Kirk. However, perhaps Birzer steered clear of this issue as well because educational reform is in many ways a political task, and Russell Kirk: American Conservative is a book that deemphasizes the importance of politics. At any rate, in McDonald’s account, Kirk’s most comprehensive treatment of education, Decadence and Renewal in the Higher Learning, receives much more attention than it gets from Birzer.
Speaking of Birzer’s deemphasis on politics, it goes without saying that Kirk was of course concerned with political matters. Cultural renewal and political renewal were both goals of his, and since order in the soul influences order in the commonwealth, and vice-versa, culture and politics became practically impossible to disentangle. Birzer even has a section in the book where he examines Kirk as a political theorist. However, Kirk’s conservatism could be considered apolitical in that he was not so much interested in programmatic political change in the here and now. (Education reform apparently being the exception to the rule.) Having said this, if Birzer’s book deemphasizes the importance of “practical” politics, it does not deemphasize the importance of the fact that Kirk himself occasionally got absorbed in such “practical” political endeavors. In particular, Birzer examines Kirk’s increasing involvement with National Review and his decision to help with the Goldwater campaign. Birzer thinks Kirk probably made a mistake to associate himself with Buckley and Goldwater. His involvement made it easy to dismiss Kirk as a political partisan rather than treat him as the serious thinker he was, and the increasing amount of time invested in such activity detracted from more important work. So, Birzer thinks Kirk did damage to his reputation and his productivity with such activities. Even so, the great lost opportunity for Kirk-style cultural conservatism, thinks Birzer, came when Kirk resigned as editor of the journal Modern Age in 1959. Kirk had high hopes for this publication and for its potential to influence the right people, and Birzer stresses that under Kirk’s direction Modern Age was a truly great publication. However, Kirk quit because he eventually fell into dispute with Henry Regnery and David Collier over the direction of Modern Age and saw no way to salvage the situation. Had things worked out differently, thinks Birzer, the general public today would probably have a very different (and more elevated) mental image in mind than they currently do when they think of conservatism.
Despite Birzer tending to view Kirk’s excursions into practical politics as a mistake, at times Birzer seems more appreciative that Kirk occasionally decided to fight partisan political battles. For instance, Birzer thinks it important and instructive to chronicle and explain the elderly Kirk’s antipathy toward the neoconservative takeover of the conservative movement. Several incidents/controversies are explored. Birzer defends Kirk from the charge of anti-semitism and portrays Kirk as being consistent in his own long held beliefs when he railed against neoconservative global imperialism in the form of democratic capitalism.
Birzer’s biography does a fine job of portraying Kirk as a man and as a thinker, and is an incredibly empowering resource for generally educated lay readers like myself who simply wish to learn more about Kirk. Highly recommended!
January 2, 2017
Birzer provides an engaging, in-depth, critical biography of a significant figure in the American Conservative movement. Readers are introduced to all aspects of Kirk’s life from cradle to grave.
Kirk came to national prominence when he published his re-worked Ph.D. dissertation from St. Andrew’s University. The Conservative Mind published in 1953, garnered critical applause of both friend and foe of the conservative movement because of Kirk’s erudition. Kirk was widely read in newspapers through his column To the Point. He published From the Academy, a regular column in the National Review. Kirk worked behind the scenes in providing speeches and advice for the early part of the Barry Goldwater Presidential campaign. Ronald Reagan read Kirk’s work with appreciation and encouraged an ongoing friendship between the two men. Kirk wrote numerous books, articles, reviews, and gave lectures.
The multiple strengths of this biography are: First, Birzer explores in detail the influences upon Kirk. In particular he focuses on Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, and T.S. Eliot. Eliot gets his own chapter. Second, Birzer helps us understand the American social and intellectual climate in which Kirk worked. Third, Birzer explains how Kirk distinguished himself from the neo-conservatives that grew to prominence in politics and entertainment outlets. Fourth, we are introduced to Kirk the fiction writer who was a best selling horror writer. Fifth, we are introduced to a man who is a complex personality. Birzer’s considerable writing skills make Kirk come alive to the reader.
In generations to come, research on Kirk’s life and influence will begin with this biography.
Kirk came to national prominence when he published his re-worked Ph.D. dissertation from St. Andrew’s University. The Conservative Mind published in 1953, garnered critical applause of both friend and foe of the conservative movement because of Kirk’s erudition. Kirk was widely read in newspapers through his column To the Point. He published From the Academy, a regular column in the National Review. Kirk worked behind the scenes in providing speeches and advice for the early part of the Barry Goldwater Presidential campaign. Ronald Reagan read Kirk’s work with appreciation and encouraged an ongoing friendship between the two men. Kirk wrote numerous books, articles, reviews, and gave lectures.
The multiple strengths of this biography are: First, Birzer explores in detail the influences upon Kirk. In particular he focuses on Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, and T.S. Eliot. Eliot gets his own chapter. Second, Birzer helps us understand the American social and intellectual climate in which Kirk worked. Third, Birzer explains how Kirk distinguished himself from the neo-conservatives that grew to prominence in politics and entertainment outlets. Fourth, we are introduced to Kirk the fiction writer who was a best selling horror writer. Fifth, we are introduced to a man who is a complex personality. Birzer’s considerable writing skills make Kirk come alive to the reader.
In generations to come, research on Kirk’s life and influence will begin with this biography.
April 13, 2023
A very interesting biography of the late conservative Russell Kirk. Primarily focusing upon his intellectual influences and his intellectual influence, as well as the popularity of his fiction writing. I found the chapter on Kirk’s ghost tales to be the most enjoyable. A unique intellect and a great champion of the importance of the liberal arts. Interestingly, friends with a crowd as eclectic as Ray Bradbury to William F. Buckley. Recommend.
January 15, 2019
Simply a must read if you are interested in conservatism, intellectual history or Russell Kirk. I need to take the time to read it again in larger chunks. Life intervened numerous times as I was trying to finish it and so I got sidetracked a few times. But just a fascinating and intellectually stimulating book.
November 5, 2022
Loved it as I knew nothing about the man.
February 27, 2017
A Great Scholar and Gentleman
When I was in college (1960-1964), my liberal professor of political science recommended Kirk's classic "The Conservative Mind". I did so and I've been reading conservative thinkers ever since. Kirk's thought is of enduring value. Birzer's biography is a wonderful introduction to the mind and person of this great man.
When I was in college (1960-1964), my liberal professor of political science recommended Kirk's classic "The Conservative Mind". I did so and I've been reading conservative thinkers ever since. Kirk's thought is of enduring value. Birzer's biography is a wonderful introduction to the mind and person of this great man.
December 20, 2015
As Plutarch did in his Parallel Lives, Dr. Bradley Birzer parallels the lives that influenced, interacted and reflected the conservative mind in Russell Kirk: American Conservative. This well written and insightful biography paints a picture of Kirk as a multi-dimensional thinker, revealing Kirk’s many passions, eccentricities and his philosophical underpinnings. Bizer writes in an engaging and excellent style which contributes to the understanding of this significant figure of modern Conservative thought. This is an outstanding and well researched addition to the literature about Kirk from original sources.
Want to read
August 9, 2016Books & Culture review here.
July 9, 2016
Excellent study not just of Kirk, but of the development of the idea of American conservatism in the post WWII decades.
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August 26, 2016Biog K593b 2015
April 20, 2020
Prof. Birzer does a great job profiling a great man.
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