From the first time I read this piece by Edmund Burke, I had a strong hunch he was an ISJ. I thought it was garbage, as a whole, and for the most part, but it was very illuminating in terms of explaining to me, an INF, what exactly the ISJ mindset entails.
ISJs are often demonized on these forums -- this is implicitly or otherwise. The stereotype is that they're sort of dumb and needlessly bent on rules and traditions and other frivolous things that only a person with zero imagination could make their focal point.
Well, in the end you'll take it as you will, but after reading some of Burke's insistences on tradition and inheritance, I can see how the Si worldview has its merit, and of course, how it serves a necessary function in ecumenical society.
The essay is incredibly long, but here is the link: http://www.constitution.org/eb/rev_fran.htm
I have copied and pasted relevant passages.
But one of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealthand the laws are consecrated is, lest the temporary possessors and life-rentersin it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors or of what isdue to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters, thatthey should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail or commitwaste on the inheritance by destroying at their pleasure the whole originalfabric of their society, hazarding to leave to those who come after them a ruininstead of an habitation – and teaching these successors as little torespect their contrivances as they had themselves respected the institutions oftheir forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of changing the state asoften, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies orfashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken.No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little betterthan the flies of a summer.
And first of all, the science of jurisprudence, the pride of the humanintellect, which with all its defects, redundancies, and errors is thecollected reason of ages, combining the principles of original justice with theinfinite variety of human concerns, as a heap of old exploded errors, would beno longer studied. Personal self-sufficiency and arrogance (the certainattendants upon all those who have never experienced a wisdom greater thantheir own) would usurp the tribunal. Of course, no certain laws, establishinginvariable grounds of hope and fear, would keep the actions of men in a certaincourse or direct them to a certain end. Nothing stable in the modes of holdingproperty or exercising function could form a solid ground on which any parentcould speculate in the education of his offspring or in a choice for theirfuture establishment in the world. No principles would be early worked into thehabits. As soon as the most able instructor had completed his laborious courseof institution, instead of sending forth his pupil, accomplished in a virtuousdiscipline, fitted to procure him attention and respect in his place insociety, he would find everything altered, and that he had turned out a poorcreature to the contempt and derision of the world, ignorant of the truegrounds of estimation. Who would insure a tender and delicate sense of honor tobeat almost with the first pulses of the heart when no man could know whatwould be the test of honor in a nation continually varying the standard of itscoin? No part of life would retain its acquisitions. Barbarism with regard toscience and literature, unskilfulness with regard to arts and manufactures,would infallibly succeed to the want of a steady education and settledprinciple; and thus the commonwealth itself would, in a few generations,crumble away, be disconnected into the dust and powder of individuality, and atlength dispersed to all the winds of heaven.
To avoid, therefore, the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousandtimes worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we haveconsecrated the state, that no man should approach to look into its defects orcorruptions but with due caution, that he should never dream of beginning itsreformation by its subversion, that he should approach to the faults of thestate as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude. Bythis wise prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children oftheir country who are prompt rashly to hack that aged parent in pieces and puthim into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds andwild incantations they may regenerate the paternal constitution and renovatetheir father's life.
They all know or feel this great ancient truth: Quod illi principi etpraepotenti Deo qui omnem hunc mundum regit, nihil eorum quae quidem fiant interris acceptius quam concilia et coetus hominum jure sociati quae civitatesappellantur. They take this tenet of the head and heart, not from the greatname which it immediately bears, nor from the greater from whence it isderived, but from that which alone can give true weight and sanction to anylearned opinion, the common nature and common relation of men. Persuaded thatall things ought to be done with reference, and referring all to the point ofreference to which all should be directed, they think themselves bound, notonly as individuals in the sanctuary of the heart or as congregated in thatpersonal capacity, to renew the memory of their high origin and cast, but alsoin their corporate character to perform their national homage to the institutorand author and protector of civil society; without which civil society mancould not by any possibility arrive at the perfection of which his nature iscapable, nor even make a remote and faint approach to it. They conceive that Hewho gave our nature to be perfected by our virtue willed also the necessarymeans of its perfection. He willed therefore the state – He willed itsconnection with the source and original archetype of all perfection.
I assure you I do not aim at singularity. I give you opinions which have been accepted amongst us, from very early times to this moment, with a continued and general approbation, and which indeed are worked into my mind that I am unable to distinguish what I have learned from others from the results of my own meditation.
It is on some such principles that the majority of the people of England, far from thinking a religious national establishment unlawful, hardly think it lawful to be without one. In France you are wholly mistaken if you do not believe us above all other things attached to it, and beyond all other nations;and when this people has acted unwisely and unjustifiably in its favor (as insome instances they have done most certainly), in their very errors you will at least discover their zeal.
So tenacious are we of the old ecclesiastical modes and fashions ofinstitution that very little alteration has been made in them since thefourteenth or fifteenth century; adhering in this particular, as in all thingselse, to our old settled maxim, never entirely nor at once to depart fromantiquity. We found these old institutions, on the whole, favorable to moralityand discipline, and we thought they were susceptible of amendment withoutaltering the ground. We thought that they were capable of receiving andmeliorating, and above all of preserving, the accessions of science andliterature, as the order of Providence should successively produce them. Andafter all, with this Gothic and monkish education (for such it is in thegroundwork) we may put in our claim to as ample and as early a share in all theimprovements in science, in arts, and in literature which have illuminated andadorned the modern world, as any other nation in Europe. We think one maincause of this improvement was our not despising the patrimony of knowledgewhich was left us by our forefathers.
ISJs are often demonized on these forums -- this is implicitly or otherwise. The stereotype is that they're sort of dumb and needlessly bent on rules and traditions and other frivolous things that only a person with zero imagination could make their focal point.
Well, in the end you'll take it as you will, but after reading some of Burke's insistences on tradition and inheritance, I can see how the Si worldview has its merit, and of course, how it serves a necessary function in ecumenical society.
The essay is incredibly long, but here is the link: http://www.constitution.org/eb/rev_fran.htm
I have copied and pasted relevant passages.
But one of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealthand the laws are consecrated is, lest the temporary possessors and life-rentersin it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors or of what isdue to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters, thatthey should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail or commitwaste on the inheritance by destroying at their pleasure the whole originalfabric of their society, hazarding to leave to those who come after them a ruininstead of an habitation – and teaching these successors as little torespect their contrivances as they had themselves respected the institutions oftheir forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of changing the state asoften, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies orfashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken.No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little betterthan the flies of a summer.
And first of all, the science of jurisprudence, the pride of the humanintellect, which with all its defects, redundancies, and errors is thecollected reason of ages, combining the principles of original justice with theinfinite variety of human concerns, as a heap of old exploded errors, would beno longer studied. Personal self-sufficiency and arrogance (the certainattendants upon all those who have never experienced a wisdom greater thantheir own) would usurp the tribunal. Of course, no certain laws, establishinginvariable grounds of hope and fear, would keep the actions of men in a certaincourse or direct them to a certain end. Nothing stable in the modes of holdingproperty or exercising function could form a solid ground on which any parentcould speculate in the education of his offspring or in a choice for theirfuture establishment in the world. No principles would be early worked into thehabits. As soon as the most able instructor had completed his laborious courseof institution, instead of sending forth his pupil, accomplished in a virtuousdiscipline, fitted to procure him attention and respect in his place insociety, he would find everything altered, and that he had turned out a poorcreature to the contempt and derision of the world, ignorant of the truegrounds of estimation. Who would insure a tender and delicate sense of honor tobeat almost with the first pulses of the heart when no man could know whatwould be the test of honor in a nation continually varying the standard of itscoin? No part of life would retain its acquisitions. Barbarism with regard toscience and literature, unskilfulness with regard to arts and manufactures,would infallibly succeed to the want of a steady education and settledprinciple; and thus the commonwealth itself would, in a few generations,crumble away, be disconnected into the dust and powder of individuality, and atlength dispersed to all the winds of heaven.
To avoid, therefore, the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousandtimes worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we haveconsecrated the state, that no man should approach to look into its defects orcorruptions but with due caution, that he should never dream of beginning itsreformation by its subversion, that he should approach to the faults of thestate as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude. Bythis wise prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children oftheir country who are prompt rashly to hack that aged parent in pieces and puthim into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds andwild incantations they may regenerate the paternal constitution and renovatetheir father's life.
They all know or feel this great ancient truth: Quod illi principi etpraepotenti Deo qui omnem hunc mundum regit, nihil eorum quae quidem fiant interris acceptius quam concilia et coetus hominum jure sociati quae civitatesappellantur. They take this tenet of the head and heart, not from the greatname which it immediately bears, nor from the greater from whence it isderived, but from that which alone can give true weight and sanction to anylearned opinion, the common nature and common relation of men. Persuaded thatall things ought to be done with reference, and referring all to the point ofreference to which all should be directed, they think themselves bound, notonly as individuals in the sanctuary of the heart or as congregated in thatpersonal capacity, to renew the memory of their high origin and cast, but alsoin their corporate character to perform their national homage to the institutorand author and protector of civil society; without which civil society mancould not by any possibility arrive at the perfection of which his nature iscapable, nor even make a remote and faint approach to it. They conceive that Hewho gave our nature to be perfected by our virtue willed also the necessarymeans of its perfection. He willed therefore the state – He willed itsconnection with the source and original archetype of all perfection.
I assure you I do not aim at singularity. I give you opinions which have been accepted amongst us, from very early times to this moment, with a continued and general approbation, and which indeed are worked into my mind that I am unable to distinguish what I have learned from others from the results of my own meditation.
It is on some such principles that the majority of the people of England, far from thinking a religious national establishment unlawful, hardly think it lawful to be without one. In France you are wholly mistaken if you do not believe us above all other things attached to it, and beyond all other nations;and when this people has acted unwisely and unjustifiably in its favor (as insome instances they have done most certainly), in their very errors you will at least discover their zeal.
So tenacious are we of the old ecclesiastical modes and fashions ofinstitution that very little alteration has been made in them since thefourteenth or fifteenth century; adhering in this particular, as in all thingselse, to our old settled maxim, never entirely nor at once to depart fromantiquity. We found these old institutions, on the whole, favorable to moralityand discipline, and we thought they were susceptible of amendment withoutaltering the ground. We thought that they were capable of receiving andmeliorating, and above all of preserving, the accessions of science andliterature, as the order of Providence should successively produce them. Andafter all, with this Gothic and monkish education (for such it is in thegroundwork) we may put in our claim to as ample and as early a share in all theimprovements in science, in arts, and in literature which have illuminated andadorned the modern world, as any other nation in Europe. We think one maincause of this improvement was our not despising the patrimony of knowledgewhich was left us by our forefathers.
