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When, during and after the Reformation, the universities lost their status as so many autonomous parts of the universal church, they lost their indep… - Russell Kirk
" "When, during and after the Reformation, the universities lost their status as so many autonomous parts of the universal church, they lost their independence correspondingly. In Protestant Europe, they came under the jurisdiction of the national churches and of the rapacious national monarchies; in Catholic Europe — although to a lesser extent — they came under the jurisdiction of the reinvigorated and consolidated Papacy, and of the sovereigns who, as in Spain and France, made royal influence over the church establishment within their realms a condition of their support for the Roman cause. The dissolution of medieval universalism meant that learning, like nearly everything else, was forced to submit to new or more rigid denominations. With the complete or partial secularization of society which followed upon the French Revolutionary era, in nearly every country except Britain, the universities were stripped of what remained of their old rights and became little better than state corporations.
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About Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk (October 19 1918 – 29 April 1994) was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post-World War II conservative movement. It traced the development of conservative thought in the Anglo-American tradition, giving special importance to the ideas of Edmund Burke. Kirk was also considered the chief proponent of traditionalist conservatism.
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Alternative Names:
Russell Amos Kirk
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Additional quotes by Russell Kirk
Our problem is how to reconcile respect for true human dignity, personality, with the demands of social cooperation. And that is a most difficult problem. Very few people really are interested in true freedom, in any era; most folk always go for security, secular conformity, and enforced routine, at the price of independence. But the freedom of the few who really deserve freedom — and they are fewer in our time than ever they were before, I am inclined to believe — is infinitely precious; and in the long run, the security and contentment of the whole of humanity depends upon the survival of that freedom for a few. The great danger just now is that, in the name of general security, we shall neglect altogether the claims of the minority who need and deserve freedom. We seem bent on establishing a universal equalitarian domination which will call itself free and democratic, but which will have made existence almost impossible for those natures that seek to obey the will of God and to abjure desire.
If you turn toward O'Connell Street, an easy stroll takes you to the noble façade of Trinity College and the statues of Burke and Goldsmith; northward, near Parnell Square, you may hear living Irish orators proclaiming through amplifiers that they have succeeded in increasing sevenfold the pensions of widows, a mere earnest of their intent. And you may reflect, with Burke, "What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!"
The careful study of history is of high value - among other reasons because it may instruct us, sometimes, concerning ways to deal our present discontents. I do not mean simply hat history repeats itself, or repeats itself with variations - although there is something in that, and particularly in the history of revolutions on the French model, which devour their own children. I am suggesting, rather, that deficiency in historical perspective leads to the ruinous blunders of of ideologues, whom Burckhardt call "the terrible simplifiers," while sound historical may diminish the force of Hegel's aphorism that "we Learn from history that we learn nothing from history."
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