Why do conservatives distrust grand plans to remake society? The answer lies in a deeply pessimistic view of what human beings actually are. While liberals and socialists tend to see people as rational beings capable of designing a better world, conservatism begins from the opposite premise: humans are flawed, limited, and far more driven by habit and instinct than by clear thinking. This single assumption shapes nearly everything else conservatives believe about politics, society, and change. Understanding it is the key to understanding why conservatism remains one of the most influential political traditions in the world.
Table of Contents
The conservative view of human nature
Conservatism rests on the idea that human nature is imperfect and, more importantly, cannot be perfected. Political scientist Noël O’Sullivan once called conservatism a “philosophy of human imperfection,” capturing the negative view of human nature that runs through the tradition. Where other ideologies promise to improve or even transform people, conservatives insist that the limitations we are born with are permanent features, not problems waiting to be solved.
This is not pessimism for its own sake. Conservatives argue that recognising our limits is the first step toward sensible politics. Any ideology that tries to work against the grain of human nature in pursuit of a utopia, they warn, is likely to produce the opposite. The bloody outcomes of the French Revolution, and later of communist and fascist experiments, are frequently cited as proof that schemes to create a “new man” end in disaster rather than paradise.
Andrew Heywood, whose textbooks are widely used by students of political theory, identifies human imperfection as one of the five central beliefs of conservatism, alongside tradition, organic society, authority and hierarchy, and property. These ideas are not separate; they all flow from the basic conviction that people are flawed and dependent.
Three kinds of imperfection
Conservative thinkers usually describe human imperfection in three distinct ways. Understanding each helps explain how the tradition reaches its conclusions.
Psychological imperfection. Humans are seen as limited and dependent creatures who crave safety, familiarity, and security. People like to know their place in the social order. Excessive freedom and rapid change create uncertainty and anxiety, which is why conservatives place a premium on social order rather than liberty. Order provides the predictability and stability that anxious human beings need to feel settled.
Moral imperfection. Conservatives tend to view crime and disorder as the result of flawed human character rather than poor social conditions. Thomas Hobbes, often regarded as an intellectual ancestor of the realist right, argued that the natural condition of humanity was a war of all against all, requiring strong authority to keep the peace. For many traditional conservatives, this moral flaw is connected to religious ideas such as original sin. The practical conclusion is a belief in tough law and order, since firm rules and clear sanctions are seen as the only reliable deterrent against our darker impulses.
Intellectual imperfection. This is perhaps the most important kind for our topic. Conservatives argue that the world is far more complex than the human mind can fully grasp. Because our reasoning is limited, we should be suspicious of grand theories and ideologies that claim to explain or predict how society will develop. The political philosopher Michael Oakeshott described political life as a vast and unfathomable ocean, far too deep for any single mind to chart.
Why conservatives are skeptical of reason
The intellectual imperfection of human beings leads directly to one of conservatism’s defining features: a deep skepticism of abstract reason. This sets conservatism sharply against the Enlightenment, the eighteenth-century movement that celebrated reason as the tool that could liberate humanity from superstition, tradition, and tyranny.
Conservatives do not reject reason entirely. Rather, they reject the belief that reason alone is enough to design a good society. Edmund Burke, the Anglo-Irish statesman widely seen as the father of modern conservatism, made this argument forcefully in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. He was alarmed by revolutionaries who wanted to tear down centuries-old institutions and rebuild society according to abstract principles of liberty and equality. To Burke, this was the height of arrogance, an attempt to replace the accumulated experience of generations with the untested theories of a few clever individuals.
The danger, as conservatives see it, is that abstract ideas appear neat and logical on paper but ignore the messy reality of human life. A blueprint for a perfect society assumes we can predict how people will behave and how institutions will function once they are redesigned. Conservatives believe this confidence is misplaced. Because human reason is fallible, sweeping reforms tend to produce unintended consequences that are often worse than the problems they were meant to fix.
Prudence over perfection
This skepticism does not mean conservatives oppose all change. Instead, it leads them to favour what classical conservatives call prudence, which is the recognition of the limits of what is realistically possible. As one academic resource on political ideologies explains, classical conservatism emphasises prudence over perfection and warns against redesigning society according to a systematic blueprint. Change should be gradual, cautious, and rooted in existing arrangements rather than imposed from above by reason alone.
Prejudice as inherited wisdom
Here we arrive at one of the most misunderstood ideas in conservative thought. When conservatives speak approvingly of prejudice, they do not mean bigotry or unfair bias. The word is used in its older sense, meaning a pre-judgment, that is, the settled opinions, instincts, and customs that people inherit from their society rather than work out for themselves through pure reasoning.
Burke famously defended prejudice in this sense. He argued that an individual’s own stock of reason is small and fallible, and that people are far better off drawing on the “general bank and capital of nations and of ages” than relying solely on their own intellect. In other words, the collective wisdom built up over centuries is more trustworthy than the bright ideas of any single generation.
The conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, writing in the twentieth century, defined prejudice as the set of beliefs and instincts that arise naturally in social beings and reflect the deep experiences of social life. Russell Kirk described it as the answer that intuition and ancestral consensus provide when a person lacks the time or knowledge to reason something out from scratch. Seen this way, prejudice is a kind of “latent wisdom” that has been quietly tested by trial and error across many generations.
Consider how much of daily life actually works this way. We rarely calculate from first principles how to behave at a wedding, how to raise children, or how to treat our elders. We rely on inherited customs and traditions that have proven their usefulness over time. Conservatives argue that these inherited prejudices are not obstacles to good judgment but valuable shortcuts that contain more practical wisdom than any individual could ever generate alone.
Learned knowledge versus imparted knowledge
This brings us to a crucial distinction that lies at the heart of conservative thinking about reason. Conservatives draw a line between knowledge that is genuinely learned through experience and practice, and knowledge that is merely imparted through rules and instruction. The most influential treatment of this idea comes from Michael Oakeshott in his essay collection Rationalism in Politics.
Oakeshott distinguished between two types of knowledge. The first is technical knowledge, which can be written down as rules, formulated in books, and applied mechanically even by someone with no experience. The second is practical knowledge, which can only be acquired through experience and exists in use rather than in formal rules. Practical knowledge cannot be fully captured in a manual; it has to be absorbed through doing, often by working alongside someone more experienced.
A familiar example is cooking. A recipe book provides technical knowledge, but it cannot teach the instinct of an experienced cook who knows by feel when a dish is ready or how to adjust seasoning. That deeper skill comes only from years of practice. Oakeshott argued that the same is true of politics and government. The genuine art of governing is a practical skill learned through tradition and experience, not a technique that can be downloaded from a textbook or a political manifesto.
The error of rationalism
The mistake Oakeshott called rationalism is the belief that technical knowledge is the only real knowledge, and that practical knowledge can be ignored or replaced. The rationalist assumes that government is essentially a problem to be solved by experts applying the correct rules, much like solving an equation. Oakeshott considered this a profound error. He argued that theory is always the child of practical know-how, never its parent, meaning the rules themselves are simply abridgements of practices that already exist.
For conservatives, this is why they value learned knowledge over imparted knowledge. The practical wisdom embedded in long-standing institutions, customs, and traditions represents the tested experience of countless people across many generations. To throw this away in favour of a clever-sounding theory is to discard real knowledge for a dangerous illusion.
Why this leads to caution and tradition
Once these ideas are put together, the conservative position becomes coherent. If humans are imperfect and dependent, they need the security of familiar social structures. If human reason is limited, we cannot trust abstract blueprints for remaking society. And if the most valuable knowledge is learned through experience rather than imparted through rules, then the institutions and traditions that have survived over time deserve our respect.
This is why conservatives generally prefer gradual, evolutionary change that builds on what already exists, rather than revolutionary change that sweeps the past away. Established institutions, in this view, are not arbitrary leftovers from the past but the carriers of accumulated wisdom. A tradition that has lasted for generations has, in a sense, already passed a long test of usefulness, even if we cannot fully articulate why it works.
It is worth noting that not all conservatives accept these premises equally. Thinkers associated with the New Right and neo-liberalism place far greater faith in human rationality and individual self-interest, viewing society as a collection of self-reliant individuals rather than an organic whole. This internal division shows that conservatism is not a single fixed doctrine but a tradition with genuine debates inside it. Critics from the left, meanwhile, argue that the appeal to “inherited wisdom” can serve to defend existing hierarchies and inequalities, dressing up the protection of privilege as timeless common sense. These criticisms are an important part of any honest study of the ideology.
Still, the core insight remains powerful and continues to influence politics today. The conservative skepticism of reason is, at bottom, a warning about intellectual humility. It asks us to remember that we know less than we think, that the world is more complicated than our theories suggest, and that the slow, accumulated wisdom of those who came before us is not so easily improved upon.
What do you think? Do you believe that human imperfection truly justifies a cautious, gradual approach to political change, or can well-reasoned reforms genuinely make society better? And how should we decide which inherited traditions still carry real wisdom and which ones simply protect outdated privileges?
References
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism
- https://sites.google.com/site/thepoliticsteacherorg/home/a-and-as-politics-2017/unit-1-politics-in-the-uk-year-12–13/year-13-a2-core-political-ideas/conservative-view-of-human-imperfection
- https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/political-ideologies/chapter/3-1-4-human-imperfection-and-fallibility/
- https://rgranttate.substack.com/p/an-intellectual-genealogy-of-conservative
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/conservatism/Intellectual-roots-of-conservatism
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/oakeshott/
- https://fee.org/articles/michael-oakeshott-on-rationalism-in-politics/
Leave a Reply