Tim Stanley’s Whatever Happened to Tradition: History, Belonging and the Future of the West is both thoroughly informative and occasionally humorous. Stanley attempts to define and promote the unpopular idea of tradition. His aim is not to convince us of his tradition nor is the book a nostalgic dream of some golden age in the past. Rather, he wishes to “stress the ways in which tradition can be useful to those looking for ballast, which I think a lot of us are” (8). If I have a pulse on my students, this is a worthy goal, and one that resonates with young people.

According to Stanley, a robust tradition has three characteristics. First, it ties the individual to collective. Rather than being atomic individuals, we all inherit systems of family, thought, and culture. These connect us with past generations and give us something to pass on to the next. Second, tradition imposes order on the way we behave. It’s something akin to Alasdair MacIntyre’s “I can only answer the question of ‘What am I to do?’, if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories am I a part?’” Tradition gives us a story, and therefore, a moral framework of what to do and how to act. Lastly, a good tradition affects how a human experiences time. Alan Jacobs argues something similar in Breaking Bread with the Dead. One’s historical consciousness affects one’s ability to understand and live in the moment. you are only living in the news cycle or Twitter feed, you won’t have stability to navigate the current world..

I’ve always felt split between tradition and innovation. On one hand, Wendell Berry seems like a generational wise sage, and he rejects most modern innovations (imagine never owning a computer). At the same time, I’m sympathetic to a more culturally engaged innovation. To borrow Andy Crouch’s distinctions, we need to create culture rather than merely consume or critique it.

Stanley’s book resolved my split desires. A few times, he discusses the power and purpose of craft. In craft, the ideal labor is skilled and talented, aimed at collective gain under guilds rather than personal profit through ingenuity. Craft is traditioned, yet good craftsmen advance their craft forward. For craftsmen, work is done, if not in the home, then nearby. The unit of family matters most rather than individual economic units.

I’ve long been interested in craft. My barber in Austin and my plumber in Asheville exhibit a deep understanding of the tradition of their trades, a concern to do the job well, a care for the person involved, and yet an adaption to the best practices of the day. As such, concern for craft is not a longing for return to some imagined golden age, but a historical understanding that allows you to do your job well in today’s world.

However, there were few questions the book raised for me. In defending tradition, Stanley argues that history bends toward justice: “This implies that there is an almost Darwinian quality to tradition, that the most attractive and useful—the fittest—survive, and that while fundamentalism is rigid and sterile, tradition outlasts it precisely because it demonstrates adaption and growth” (28). While I hope that’s the case, it’s hard to know when to measure. Tradition waxes and wanes between health and unhealth, and without a standard to measure tradition against, it’s hard to know if the “fittest” does survive.

Second, I was not clear on the relationship between freedom and individualism. Here’s what I mean: we live in a world where liberalism has fostered individuals who believe they can be whatever they want to be. We’re never content with our life but always pursuing some greater thing we ought to become—and we are free to do it. No one can stop you. Stanley argues that this Enlightenment liberalism is the root of most of our problems. And I tend to agree.

But in response to a lecture by Stanley Hauerwas, philosopher Zena Hitz argues for the benefits of liberalism. In a world prone to tyranny, liberalism isn’t perfect but it’s the best thing we got. The alternative is a tyrant or the state taking over our choices, so individual freedom ought to be preserved, so that dissent can war against oppressing power. (Full disclosure: I still don’t know who I agree with).

The hard thing about a book that defends tradition is that, more than likely, it will be read primarily by people who are already sympathetic to tradition. The final lines of the book are a call for a revolution to the classical liberalitas: not freedom but generosity. And if there’s anything our age needs, it’s a generous and charitable people. For that, we may just need some tradition.