Political beliefs resist reduction to stated interests or formal consistency.
Evidence
A social philosophy is rarely comprehended by reducing its arguments to social or material interests, or by distilling its tenets into rigidly formalized schemes. The homo economicus is useful only as a formal abstraction, and few of us would withstand an interpretive procedure that ceased with the judgment that there were points of apparent confl ict among aspects of our stated worldview. Our experience of the social environment is relentlessly complex, and our po liti cal perspectives are formed through a dynamic and everchanging interaction among abstract idealism, purposive strategy, emotive inclination, and intuitive response. They are provisional responses to an alwaysincomprehensible world. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 24
Categorization
- QUESTION: This is an implicit methodological manifesto for how to read intellectual history — worth weighing against interest-based and economic-determinist accounts of the conservative turn.
- XREF: connects to: Political beliefs cannot be reduced to material interests or formal schemes — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 24; Identical political beliefs can serve different psychological functions; People’s abstract political principles often fail to match their concrete policy preferences — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3748 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Political beliefs cannot be reduced to material interests or formal schemes
#corroborates(0.98) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 24 - People’s abstract political principles often fail to match their concrete policy preferences
#exemplifies(0.82) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3748 - Identical political beliefs can serve different psychological functions
#corroborates(0.80) - Political expression is switched on and off by group context rather than individual belief
#corroborates(0.78) — Nina Eliasoph, “Close to home”, 97 - Ideas, not vested interests, ultimately shape political possibility.
#corroborates(0.72) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 136