(As an aside, I just realized that if I have any hope of becoming an academic, I ought to get some practice at being photographed in front of bookshelves, preferably while smoking.)
"Imagination, directly or indirectly, is the great modifier of traditions."
...
"The capacity to exercise the function of reason is one of the best qualities with which human beings are endowed. The tradition which forms, praises, and encourages this capacity is among the best of the traditions of civilization." --Edward Shils, Tradition
3 comments:
kirk would say the opposite, re: imagination, don't you think?
which is not to say kirk is right.
Hmmm...Kirk on imagination: "The moral imagination aspires to the apprehending of right order in the soul and right order in the commonwealth." and "The moral imagination, embracing tradition, looks to theology and history and humane letters, especially, for evidences of human nature and of the permanent things."
So I think you're right: Kirk would be much closer to Burke on this point. And I think that Eliot (on whom Kirk is writing in the quotations I cited) might be somewhere in between Kirk and Shils (Shils also frequently refers to Eliot, and, I think, was motivated by Eliot to take up the idea of tradition at all).
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