A Treatise on a New Conservatism

“The rich and enlightened societies of the modern West are the most prosperous, tolerant, and democratic the world has ever known,” writes Sterling Professor of Law Anthony Kronman ’75 at the beginning of his book, "True Conservatism: Reclaiming Our Humanity in an Arrogant Age" (Yale University Press, 2025). 

All people have reason, he says, to subscribe to the leading ideals of our enlightened civilization — those of political equality, religious toleration, and scientific reason. But these ideals harbor three prejudices, Kronman argues, that do great damage to the human spirit and the possibility of human fulfillment. One is the belief that equality is not only an important value, but the highest one of all, dictating the terms on which every other value is to be given its appropriate weight. A second is that the past is merely a storehouse of useful experiments on which people are free to draw as our present needs require. A third prejudice is that the existence of God is a belief to which one may or may not subscribe — and not the truth about the world. In his book, Kronman diagnoses each of these prejudices and shows how it cuts us off from what people need to live lives of a fully human kind: an appreciation of the worth of custom and inheritance; an openness to the splendor of what is excellent and rare; a feeling for the expansive solidarity of our friendship for the dead; and a recognition of the dignity, indeed necessity, of the human longing for a connection to the eternal and divine. 

In Kronman’s view, the true conservative is the one who seeks to protect these human values in an enlightened age that puts all of them at risk, without repudiating the ideals of equality, reason, and toleration that ought to continue to inspire our loyalty and commitment. His is a humanistic conservatism based on “many years reading and teaching old books of great power and beauty in an undergraduate program devoted to the study of literary, philosophical, and historical works of lasting value.” It is, he says, “the conservatism of a child of the enlightenment, grateful to have been born when he was yet not entirely at home in his enlightened world.” The aim of his book, Kronman writes, is “to show that humanism is conservatism, not at all times and places, perhaps, but under the aegis of the prejudices that surreptitiously accompany our enlightened ideals and, drawing false authority from them, do so much harm” to the human spirit.

Anthony Kronman is a Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School. A former dean of the Law School, Kronman currently teaches constitutional law and legal philosophy. In the past, he has taught in the areas of contracts, commercial law, bankruptcy, and professional responsibility. He has also taught for many years in the Directed Studies program in Yale College. Kronman’s 2019 book “The Assault on American Excellence” was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Among his other books are “Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life” (2007), “Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan” (2016), and “After Disbelief: On Disenchantment, Disappointment, Eternity, and Joy” (2022), all published by Yale University Press.