An Oakeshott across the bow

A quick response to Will's assertion that "there are compelling, non-braindead arguments for defending tradition qua tradition": Yes, But. Both Will and I seem to be trying to come up with a conservatism that allows us to say "You should do X simply because it is traditional," but Will's vision, while non-braindead (and well-illustrated!), is not quite compelling.

It's a familiar argument: I can't pass any kind of judgment on my tradition without stepping outside of it, which is impossible to do. Given that I derive my standards of judgment from the tradition in which I grew up, to criticize it from within is schizophrenic, and to criticize it from without is, in some meaningful sense, impossible.

The argument makes sense without being true. Trusting in my tradition completely (on the assumption that I can hardly do otherwise and still hope to make sense to myself) silences the nagging doubts that do sometimes break through. Tradition is an ineradicable part of my identity? Sure. Therefore being a whole person rather than a fragmented one means always going with tradition? Not quite.

The way I "believe in" tradition isn't quite like the way I believe in Catholicism, which is a matter of trusting the word of God more than I trust my own judgments. It's more like the way in which I believe that a production of a Sophoclean tragedy is real. This from Raymond Geuss's introduction to The Birth of Tragedy:

One has failed to experience the tragedy if one sees only one's friend and fellow actor up there on the stage parading around in an odd mask. One has also failed if one thinks that it really is Oedipus up there, that the blood dripping down from his eyes is real blood, etc.

I should take my tradition seriously, even to the point of allowing it to alter my own fundamental beliefs in the way that a brush with great art can, but I don't have to convince myself that the Western Canon is objectively better than the alternatives. (It might be objectively better or worse in various ways, and there are productive conversations to be had on that question, although Will is certainly right that those conversations are irrelevant to whether or not English departments in the United States should study it.)