Robert Nisbet Archives ~ Page 3 of 4 ~ The Imaginative Conservative

The Quest for Community in the Age of Obama

By Ross Douthat|2015-04-15T06:41:46-05:00April 11th, 2015|Categories: Community, Conservatism, Featured, Modernity, Robert Nisbet|Tags: Ross Douthat|

Today’s political debates often set up a simple tension: the individual versus government. Certainly individual liberty and limited government are fundamental principles of a free society, but such a polarized perspective overlooks the ways we actually live our lives—in families, as part of neighborhoods, in church communities, in civic groups, and so on. In this [...]

The Case for “Serfdom,” Rightly Understood

By Patrick J. Deneen|2014-04-26T16:50:26-05:00April 26th, 2014|Categories: Conservatism, Robert Nisbet|Tags: 1TAC, Patrick J. Deneen|

Last Saturday I had the honor of addressing the 50th anniversary meeting of the Philadelphia Society. The title of the meeting was “The Road Ahead—Serfdom or Liberty?” My remarks sought to suggest that conservatives should be more circumspect about their rote incantation of the word “liberty,” and that there may even be something to be [...]

Robert Nisbet & The Quest for Community

By Jeffrey O. Nelson|2015-04-28T08:40:30-05:00March 9th, 2013|Categories: Books, Community, Conservatism, Robert Nisbet, TIC Featured Book|Tags: Jeffrey O. Nelson|

Featured Book: The Quest For Community, by Robert Nisbet, ranks high among the foundational works of post-war American conservatism. In it, Nisbet argued that the emergence of the “centralized territorial State” in the wake of the Middle Ages decisively impacted Western social organization. Nisbet was particularly sensitive to the rise of the “national community,” the total political [...]

A Tale of Two Cités: Mediating Associations

By Leo Linbeck III|2013-11-21T14:40:35-06:00January 23rd, 2013|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Barack Obama, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Politics, Robert Nisbet|Tags: Guns, Leo Linbeck III|

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But what is “best” for some is “worst” for others, and vice-versa. Monday, President Obama was sworn in for his second term. This event was a “best” for his stalwart supporters, such as Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, and is a sign of a [...]

Still Questing for Community

By Robert Nisbet|2019-09-10T17:04:54-05:00September 26th, 2012|Categories: Books, Community, Conservatism, Robert Nisbet, Russell Kirk|Tags: 1IR|

In the retrospect of forty years I can see my book, The Quest for Community (first published by Oxford University Press in 1953), as one of the harbingers of what would become by the end of the 1950s a full-fledged renascence of conservatism. There had been authentic and forthright individual conservatives before the 50s; among [...]

The War on Terror and the Quest for Community

By Greg Weiner|2014-01-16T22:24:46-06:00September 2nd, 2012|Categories: Community, Conservatism, Foreign Affairs, Politics, Robert Nisbet, War|Tags: Greg Weiner|

There will be ample disputation at this week’s and next’s presidential nominating conventions, but one point is virtually sure to unite them: a rhetorical commitment to the “War on Terror” and, particularly, to the troops fighting it. Already, Paul Ryan has offered up the obligatory salute to the troops who have “defended our freedom”—which is, [...]

The Effects of War on Education in the Writings of Russell Kirk and Robert Nisbet

By Glenn Davis|2015-04-28T01:30:51-05:00August 13th, 2012|Categories: Education, Glenn Davis, Robert Nisbet, Russell Kirk, War|Tags: Glenn Davis|

This is part 2 of this essay, for part 1 click here. Glenn Davis According to Nisbet, warfare seduces largely because acts of war demand certain qualities of character from its participants which the community values: valor, heroism, courage, and sacrifice. Individuals who are given the opportunity to manifest these moral qualities, often [...]

Conservatives and Libertarians: Uneasy Cousins

By Robert Nisbet|2020-09-23T15:40:41-05:00July 15th, 2012|Categories: Conservatism, Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill, Libertarians, Robert Nisbet|Tags: 1MA|

Modern political conservatism takes its origin in Edmund Burke’s insistence upon the rights of society and its historically formed groups such as family, neighborhood, guild and church against the “arbitrary power” of a political government. By common assent modern conservatism, as political philosophy, springs from Edmund Burke: chiefly from his Reflections on the Revolution in [...]

Ethics, Rhetoric & Community

By Russell Kirk|2019-09-02T09:19:55-05:00May 3rd, 2012|Categories: Books, Community, RAK, Richard Weaver, Robert Nisbet, Russell Kirk|

Russell Kirk Thirty years ago, Irving Babbitt wrote that the highest order of true work is an ethical working, labor of the spirit; and that no important problem of economics or politics can be solved within its own terms. “When studied with any degree of thoroughness, the economic problem will be found to [...]

Robert Nisbet and the Idea of Community

By Fred Donovan Hill|2015-04-07T16:54:35-05:00August 3rd, 2011|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Community, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Robert Nisbet|Tags: 1UB|

Robert Nisbet Unlike Max Weber or Emile Durkheim, Robert A. Nisbet has not produced a remarkably original theory that has shaken the sociological world or revolutionized its concepts and methods of analysis. What Nisbet has done over the period of a long career in American sociology is to act as a consistent, and [...]

The Family, Religious Association, and Local Community

By Robert Nisbet|2017-06-27T16:15:22-05:00March 24th, 2011|Categories: Community, Conservatism, Quotation, Robert Nisbet|

Robert Nisbet The family, religious association, and local community—these, the conservatives insisted, cannot be regarded as the external products of man’s thought and behavior; they are essentially prior to the individual and are the indispensable supports of belief and conduct. Release man from the contexts of community and you get not freedom and [...]

Robert Nisbet, “Conservatism: Dream and Reality”

By Chuck Chalberg|2017-06-19T12:43:35-05:00October 22nd, 2010|Categories: Books, Community, Robert Nisbet|

Originally published in 1986, Robert Nisbet’s recently reissued study of the history and prospects of both conservative thought and political conservatism from Edmund Burke to Ronald Reagan is as relevant today as it would have been over the course of many yesterdays and as it will be for many tomorrows. No doubt intended to shore [...]

The Domestic Consequences of Foreign Wars

By Glenn Davis|2017-06-12T16:12:04-05:00July 31st, 2010|Categories: Foreign Affairs, Glenn Davis, Robert Nisbet, War|Tags: Glenn Davis|

There is no quicker way to get the blood up than to question the integrity of our nation’s war policies. Yet, on the political right, it used to be respectable, without being narrowly isolationist or pacifist, to examine and challenge the wisdom of military engagement, especially abroad. We need mention just a few names to [...]

Robert Nisbet, War, and the American Republic

By George W. Carey|2022-09-28T23:57:21-05:00July 30th, 2010|Categories: Featured, Federalist Papers, Foreign Affairs, George W. Carey, Robert Nisbet, War|Tags: Elites|

Winston does well in bringing Robert Nisbet’s teaching to bear upon the basic problems we confront (War, Crisis and Centralization of Power). An assigned reading in my contemporary American conservative course at Georgetown is Nisbet’s The Present Age. While this work incorporates much of his previous thought and findings, I assign it primarily because it is [...]