​Oikophilia: The Love of Home

​“Human beings, in their settled condition, are animated by oikophilia: the love of the oikos, which means not only the home but the people contained in it, and the surrounding settlements that endow that home with lasting contours and an enduring smile. The oikos is the place that is not just mine and yours but ours. It is the stage-set for the first-person plural of politics, the locus, both real and imagined, where ‘it all takes place’. Virtues like thrift and self-sacrifice, the habit of offering and receiving respect, the sense of responsibility – all those aspects of the human condition that shape us as stewards and guardians of our common inheritance – arise through our growth as persons, by creating islands of value in the sea of price. To acquire these virtues we must circumscribe the ‘instrumental reasoning’ that governs the life of Homo oeconomicus. We must vest our love and desire in things to which we assign an intrinsic, rather than an instrumental, value, so that the pursuit of means can come to rest, for us, in a place of ends. That is what we mean by settlement: putting the oikos back in the oikonomia. And that is what conservatism is about.”

― Roger Scruton, How to Be a Conservative

​Scruton believed that culture—understood broadly—forms the moral ecology in which political life takes place. By “culture,” he did not mean only opera houses or universities. He meant:

• Shared customs
• Local traditions
• Religious practices
• Family structures
• Architecture
• Folk music
• Literature
• Everyday manners

These generate what he often called “oikophilia”—the love of home. Without this prior affection for a shared way of life, political institutions become abstract mechanisms without loyalty or trust behind them.

Politics, then, rests on pre-political attachments.

​Oikophilia and Edmund Burke

​Oikophilia and the Conservative Imagination

​For many conservatives, oikophilia—“love of home”—is not merely an emotion but a foundational political principle. The term was popularized in contemporary thought by Roger Scruton, who argued that political order grows out of affection for particular places, traditions, and institutions rather than from abstract universal ideals.

Oikophilia stands in contrast, in this framing, to classical and modern liberalism. Liberal political theory tends to begin with the autonomous individual and with universal rights applicable everywhere. The ideal liberal citizen is often described as cosmopolitan—capable of identifying with humanity at large and guided by principles that transcend local attachment. For conservatives, this outlook risks weakening the concrete loyalties that sustain social trust.

By contrast, the conservative insists that the health of society depends on rootedness. In the American context, this typically means love of:

• Family
• Church or religious congregation
• Workplace and professional communities
• Local civic associations
• Neighborhood and town

These are not merely lifestyle preferences; they are formative institutions. They shape moral character, transmit cultural memory, and cultivate habits of responsibility.

---

​Edmund Burke and the “Little Platoons”

The intellectual lineage of this view reaches back to Edmund Burke (1729–1797), the Anglo-Irish statesman and political thinker best known for his critique of the French Revolution in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).

Burke did not reject reform, but he rejected revolutionary abstraction. He believed that political reasoning detached from inherited custom and practical experience becomes dangerous. Society, in his view, is not a machine to be redesigned according to theory; it is an organic inheritance shaped over generations.

It is in this context that Burke introduced the idea of “little platoons.” He wrote that to love the small group to which one belongs—family, parish, local association—is “the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections.” Larger loyalties, including loyalty to the nation, grow outward from these smaller attachments. Civic virtue is learned locally before it is extended universally.

Several themes in Burke are crucial here:

1. Society as Partnership Across Generations
   Burke described society as a partnership “not only between those who are living, but between those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” This emphasizes continuity, gratitude, and stewardship.
2. Prejudice as Moral Inheritance
   By “prejudice,” Burke meant inherited moral habits and dispositions that guide conduct prior to explicit reasoning. These are not irrational biases but accumulated wisdom embedded in custom.
3. Mediating Institutions
   Burke believed that freedom is preserved not by isolated individuals confronting the state, but by strong intermediate institutions—churches, guilds, local governments—that mediate power and cultivate responsibility.
4. Skepticism Toward Abstract Rights Detached from Context
   He worried that appeals to universal “rights of man,” when detached from historically developed institutions, would destabilize social order and lead to tyranny.

For many conservatives, oikophilia is the contemporary expression of this Burkean insight: healthy societies are built from the bottom up, beginning with affection for concrete communities.

The Deeper Disagreement

At stake is not merely policy but anthropology:
​

• Liberalism (in this portrayal) begins with autonomy and universal principle.
• Conservatism begins with belonging and inherited obligation.

The conservative fears that cosmopolitan abstraction, if severed from rooted affection, dissolves the moral ecology that makes freedom sustainable. The liberal fears that excessive attachment to home can become exclusionary or parochial.

The debate, therefore, is not between love and justice, but over which kind of love—and which level of loyalty—should ground public life.
​

Tables

Oikophilia and Cosmopolitanism

Two Moral Starting Points in Political Philosophy

Oikophilia (Conservative)	Cosmopolitanism (Liberal)
Loyalty begins locally	Loyalty begins universally
Identity largely inherited	Identity chosen and revisable
Emphasis on duties and belonging	Emphasis on rights and autonomy
Continuity and tradition valued	Reform and universal principle valued
Culture as a moral ecology	Law and universal justice as framework

Mutual Anxieties: Liberal and Conservative Concerns

Each side fears what the other may neglect.

What Troubles Liberals about Oikophilia	What Troubles Conservatives about Cosmopolitanism
Parochialism	Eroding cultural continuity
Exclusion of outsiders	Weakening social trust
Ethnic nationalism	Producing atomized individuals
Resistance to reform	Expanding centralized power to replace local bonds

Rootedness and Universality

An Integrated Political Vision

Rootedness (Oikophilia)	Universality (Cosmopolitan Concern)
Moral formation begins locally	Moral concern extends globally
Culture transmits accumulated wisdom	Human dignity transcends culture
Loyalty grows outward from home	Justice constrains and refines loyalty
Identity shaped by inherited bonds	Identity open to revision and encounter
Local institutions cultivate virtue	Global principles protect against exclusion