The concept of conservatism can be interpreted extremely broadly - from one of the main political strategies to the characteristics of a person. In the history of social thought, there were several interesting concepts based on this term.
The concept of "conservatism" comes from the Latin verb conservo (save). In a general sense, conservatism is a guideline for preserving the existing state of things, consolidating existing values.
Initially, the concept of conservatism was purely political in nature. The term itself dates back to the time of the reaction after the French Revolution: the writer F.R. Châteaubriand founded a magazine called Conservative, which expressed the interests of the aristocratic class who advocated restoration. The main theorists of conservatism at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries were J. de Mestre, E. Burke, S. Coleridge, L. de Bonald.
However, times have changed, and the estate groups that became the first conservatives are a thing of the past, and the concept continued to live. The separation of conservatism from reactionism reveals the essence of this position in a new way. The political scientist S. Huntington formulated it most correctly: conservatism is a historically variable phenomenon, which consists in the desire to maintain the status quo. At the same time, the reasonable position of conservatism allows for innovations, guided by the formula: "as many changes as necessary, and as much conservation as possible." This approach allows us to understand the interesting historical collision characteristic of the USSR, where communism (originally a left-wing political position) has become a conservative current.
There is an axiological interpretation of the term "conservatism." In this sense, conservatism is spoken of as a system of values based on calmness, measuredness, stability, and order. In a broad sense, a tradition is called conservative, going from Plato and Aristotle through Dante and Machiavelli to Burke and de Toville, contrasting it with the line of Descartes, Rousseau, Marx. However, this understanding of conservatism is very broad.
The classic of conservatism E. Burke accurately formulated the main features of this trend, which can be transferred from the political plane to personal psychology in order to understand who such a “conservative by nature” is. A conservative position is characterized by: continuity, trust in the experience of generations; stability, respect for values; respect for order and hierarchy - both at the state level and at the family level; understanding of freedom as finding one's place in society; pessimism and distrust of innovation.
