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Entry: The Pragmatism of Russell Kirk Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_pragmatism_of_russell_kirk#3585 Post contents: Paul is, of course, correct, though the problem isn't simply the artificiality of a particular attempt to create an American conservative tradition; it's the artificiality of all such attempts. In my own view, Kirk was aware of this--thus, his emphasis on imagination, because only through the building up of a proper imagination could we move beyond such artificiality. A related problem, however, lies in deciding what direction that imagination will take us. Kirk and John Lukacs, for instance (each in his own way), are Anglophiles, while Paul's sympathies lie more fully with the Continental thinkers. (Despite my admiration for both Kirk and Lukacs, my own lack of ethnic attachment to the British Isles puts me somewhere in between.) Kirk's conservative imagination was unabashedly British. That doesn't mean, as Sid suggests, that he was unaware of Continental thinkers; it simply means that he was more at home in the British Isles, and the conservative tradition he was trying to give life to draws its force from their. All that said, I have to agree with Patrick Royson: What does this have to do with Frank Purcell's article? As someone with an interest in C.S. Peirce myself (and someone who has noted the same affinities with Kirk), I'm disappointed that the comments thread never had the chance to examine the article. Sent at: 2008 12 01