My point here is that conservatives like Lawler have no reason to fear a
Darwinian science of human life as promoting a reductionistic materialism that denies
human freedom. A Darwinian conservatism can explain the unique freedom of human
beings for deliberate thought and action as arising from the emergent evolution of the
soul.
Religious conservatives like Lawler look to God’s eternal order as providing a
transcendent purpose for morality and politics. Skeptical conservatives like Hayek look
to the natural order of life as providing a purely natural purpose for morality and politics.
Skeptical conservatives will be satisfied with Hayek’s thought that “life has no purpose
but itself.”
Darwinian conservatism cannot resolve these transcendent questions of ultimate
causation. But at least it can provide a scientific account of the moral and political nature
of human beings that sustains the conservative commitments to private property, family
life, limited government, and religious belief as the grounds for human liberty. And in a
free society, individuals will be free to associate with one another in social groups—in
families, in religious communities, and other voluntary associations—in which people
can freely explore the ultimate questions of human existence and organize their lives
around religious or philosophical answers to those questions.
Carson Holloway’s Tocquevillian Conservatism
Like Lawler, Carson Holloway is a religious conservative who fears the morally
corrupting effects of Darwinism. One of the most thoughtful attacks on Darwinian
58
Friedrich Hayek, Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988),
133.
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Convention