CartThe Right Wing Instructor: Matt McManusProgram: Sociopolitical Thought, Critical Philosophy, Transdiciplinary StudiesCredit(s): 1Date: July 18, 25, August 1, 8Time: 14:00-16:30 ET
DESCRIPTION: This Seminar introduces students to the broad parameters of right-wing thought. This includes discussions of some of its seminal figures (Burke, de Maistre, Hayek, and Nietzsche) alongside more modern movements and figures like Yoram Hazony and the National Conservative movement and post-liberal “aristopopulists” like Patrick Deneen. The Seminar unpacks the throughline between different right-wing thinkers in their commitment to hierarchy and the principle that there are “recognizably superior” persons and groups in society. It also situates right-wing intellectuals alongside contemporary developments like the rise of MAGA.
Session One: What is the Right? / This class introduces students to the debate around the nature of right-wing thought, with different explanations given by conservative authors like Russell Kirk and leftists like Corey Robin. We will also touch on the right’s nostalgia for “pre-modern social imaginaries” centered around hierarchical complementarity and symbolized in the great chain of being.
Readings: Don Herzog, Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders, Introduction and Chapter One
Session Two: Early Right-Wing Thinkers / This class introduces students to early right-wing thinking, focusing heavily on the twinned influence of Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre. Burke and de Maistre embody variations of right-wing thought. Both opposed the French Revolution, but Burke did so from a more moderate and less staunchly reactionary standpoint. His bourgeois inclinations made Burke open-minded about reform in a way an aristocratic royalist like de Maistre couldn’t countenance.
Readings: Selections from Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, and Joseph de Maistre, The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions
Session Three: The Rise of the Radical Right / This class looks at thinkers that belong on the “radical right.” These are those who regard society as so decayed by the forces of liberalism, socialism, and democracy that there is nothing left to “conserve.” Only radical change via a “conservative revolution” or “refounding” will work. This includes some of the right’s more interesting, but also disturbing, thinkers. We’ll discuss the alignment of these figures with fascism and other far-right movements.
Readings: Selections from Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, and Bronze Age Pervert, Bronze Age Mindset
Session Four: The Modern Illiberal Right / We conclude the Seminar with a discussion of the contemporary illiberal and in many ways “postmodern” right that is currently ascendant. This focuses particularly on the United States as the current locus of world reaction. We will look at various MAGA intellectuals and see how and whether they wield substantial influence as they hope.
IMAGE: Erika Kirk, CEO of Turning Point USA speaking at the memorial service for her slained husband Charlie Kirk, 2025, Getty Images.
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