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Reflections on the Revolution in France
This new and up-to-date edition of a book that has been central to political philosophy, history, and revolutionary thought for two hundred years offers readers a dire warning of the consequences that follow the mismanagement of change. Written for a generation presented with challenges of
terrible proportions--the Industrial, American, and French Revolutions, to name the most obvious--Burke's Reflections of the Revolution in France displays an acute awareness of how high political stakes can be, as well as a keen ability to set contemporary problems within a wider context of
political theory.
terrible proportions--the Industrial, American, and French Revolutions, to name the most obvious--Burke's Reflections of the Revolution in France displays an acute awareness of how high political stakes can be, as well as a keen ability to set contemporary problems within a wider context of
political theory.
252 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1790
919 people are currently reading
14450 people want to read
About the author
Edmund Burke
2,153books546followersEdmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher who served for many years in the British House of Commons as a member of the Whig party. He is mainly remembered for his support of the American colonies in the dispute with King George III and Great Britain that led to the American Revolution and for his strong opposition to the French Revolution. The latter made Burke one of the leading figures within the conservative faction of the Whig party (which he dubbed the "Old Whigs"), in opposition to the pro-French-Revolution "New Whigs", led by Charles James Fox. Burke also published a philosophical work where he attempted to define emotions and passions, and how they are triggered in a person. Burke worked on aesthetics and founded the Annual Register, a political review. He is often regarded by conservatives as the philosophical founder of Anglo-American conservatism.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 454 reviews
September 28, 2019
In this classic work, Burke--the father of modern conservatism--criticizes the architects of the French Revolution and the new revolutionary government for their unyielding radicalism and wanton destruction of society's institutions. In Burke's view, the traditions of a society should be respected and its institutions altered gradually; a tradition should be eliminated or an institution replaced only if there is a reasonable assurance that the society as a whole will benefit.
Some of this is pretty heavy-going (particularly the details about the composition of the Directory and the Cantons), but it is wise and well-written. Contemporary conservatism would benefit greatly from drinking deeply at the well of Burke.
June 15, 2016
What first attracted me to Edmund Burke was the endorsement of a friend. “Burke is such a good writer,� he told me, “that he momentarily convinced me that monarchy is a great idea.� A writer good enough to do that, I thought, was worth a read; and since I recently read Thomas Paine’s refutation of Burke’s attack on the French Revolution, The Rights of Man, it seemed like the perfect time to give Burke a go.
But now, after reading this book, I think it is far more than a dazzling piece of rhetoric. A dazzling piece of rhetoric it surely is; Burke’s writing style is in a league with Gibbon’s for eloquence, elegance, and power. He is a master of the written word, and a pleasure to read.
But, as I said, Burke is far more than a silver-tongued sophist. He is full of perspicacious insights into politics, and wise maxims of government. I feel slightly odd saying such things about a proud monarchist, and a founder of modern conservatism; but I cannot deny being captivated by his way of thinking. So permit me to jot down some of these ideas.
The first, and perhaps most important, tenet of Burke’s political advise is the importance of compromise:
Politics, as has been rightly said, is the art of compromise. This is a truism; but truisms are likely to be forgot. Take, for example Burke’s contemporary, Thomas Paine. I admire Paine for championing the liberty and rights of the common people, and for his tireless criticism of oppression. But it must be said that Paine is distinguished for his inability to compromise. If Paine had his way, every government the world over would have its own revolution in order to establish a representative democracy. A representative democracy is a very wonderful thing; yet even for such a prize I would be hesitant to advocate revolution in any and all circumstances. One wonders whether Paine’s goals could be equally accomplished through the slower but less bloody process of reform.
This brings me to the second of Burke’s tenets: gradualism. Burke is perhaps more aware than any other political writer I’ve come across (excepting Machiavelli) that a state is a complex organism. It is not animated by abstract principles, but by human wants—which are various, and which often intersect, overlap, and conflict with one another. This complex tapestry of desire makes the art of statecraft—like the art of medicine—one of balancing, adjusting, fine-tuning. To advocate a revolution for all political injustice is like advocating open heart surgery for all maladies.
Instead, the best policy is to begin slowly, cautiously, taking the political problem piecemeal, prescribing no cures too severe, and no reforms too immoderate. A good politician strives to keep what is good in a system, and to replace what is bad. A man’s heart might not be the most efficient organ that could be contrived for the purpose of pumping blood; but it does not follow that all hearts should be replaced by mechanical pumps. The trauma of the change might very well outweigh whatever gains in the abstract function of the organ.
This brings me to another of Burke’s points: politics is an attempt to solve a practical problem, not to realize an abstract system. In Burke’s words: “The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori.� This is not to say that all reflections on the nature of justice, of right, or of ethics ought to be discarded. This is just to say that such philosophical arguments should be regarded as means and not ends.
If you show me a politician bent on realizing an abstract system, I will show you a bad politician. Many, if not most, political decisions are between a greater and a lesser evil. The options are restrained by the exigencies of the moment; and if these quotidian problems are regarded as mere trifles by a politician, then that politician would be neglecting his duty. For better or for worse, we are not in the position to imagine the world anew; the world is not a blank page to be written on. There are no countries populated by abstract people seeking abstract justice; our world is the world of real people, with real habits and hostilities, people with their own customs, cultures, and conventions, their own provincial prejudices and preferences.
This leads naturally to another Burkean principle: the importance of concrete, specific circumstances. In his words: “Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principal its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.� This is why much philosophical speculation regarding ethics strikes me as limited—every situation is unique. One cannot abstract from a situation only the essential form; to do so would abstract away all of the pertinent information. If one were to unthinkingly apply the same criteria to every action in one’s life, the result would be absurd—perhaps abhorrent; the criteria must vary with the circumstances, the principle with the particulars.
Burke’s argument, as a whole, is an argument against radicalism. A radical is somebody who has more allegiance to a principle than to people, to a system than to a citizen. A radical is a doctor who would prescribe the same cure in all cases, the same government for all peoples in all times. A radical is somebody who cannot brook a delay in their plans—who believes every second their ideas aren’t put into practice is a second misspent. A radical is somebody who is averse to compromise, because they are sure they are right and good, while their opponents are wrong and wicked.
There are radicals on both the right and the left. There are those who would abolish all taxes and regulations, and those who would abolish all property; who would convert everyone to their religion, or would ban the worship of any religion; who would kill a man for an idea, and would starve a countryside for a scheme. Burke reminds us that our knowledge, our aims, our wisdom, is limited; deciding the right policy is not a matter of a simple theoretical criteria, but of the application of years of accumulated experience, and the balancing of multiple perspectives and desires. Government is not a product of sublime reason or abstract logic. Instead, “Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.�
_________________________________________
As a little postscript, I'd just like to point out that, whatever your politics, you must admit that Burke was right about the French Revolution. It did not end well. But the most striking of his insights into the political situation in France is a straightforward prediction of Napoleon:
But now, after reading this book, I think it is far more than a dazzling piece of rhetoric. A dazzling piece of rhetoric it surely is; Burke’s writing style is in a league with Gibbon’s for eloquence, elegance, and power. He is a master of the written word, and a pleasure to read.
But, as I said, Burke is far more than a silver-tongued sophist. He is full of perspicacious insights into politics, and wise maxims of government. I feel slightly odd saying such things about a proud monarchist, and a founder of modern conservatism; but I cannot deny being captivated by his way of thinking. So permit me to jot down some of these ideas.
The first, and perhaps most important, tenet of Burke’s political advise is the importance of compromise:
These opposed and conflicting interests, which you considered as so great a blemish in your old and in our present Constitution, interpose a salutary check to all precipitate resolutions. They render deliberation a matter, not of choice, but of necessity; they make all change a subject of compromise, which naturally begets moderation; they produce temperaments, preventing the sore evil of harsh, crude, unqualified reformations, and rendering all the headlong exertions of arbitrary power, in the few or in the many, forever impracticable.
Politics, as has been rightly said, is the art of compromise. This is a truism; but truisms are likely to be forgot. Take, for example Burke’s contemporary, Thomas Paine. I admire Paine for championing the liberty and rights of the common people, and for his tireless criticism of oppression. But it must be said that Paine is distinguished for his inability to compromise. If Paine had his way, every government the world over would have its own revolution in order to establish a representative democracy. A representative democracy is a very wonderful thing; yet even for such a prize I would be hesitant to advocate revolution in any and all circumstances. One wonders whether Paine’s goals could be equally accomplished through the slower but less bloody process of reform.
This brings me to the second of Burke’s tenets: gradualism. Burke is perhaps more aware than any other political writer I’ve come across (excepting Machiavelli) that a state is a complex organism. It is not animated by abstract principles, but by human wants—which are various, and which often intersect, overlap, and conflict with one another. This complex tapestry of desire makes the art of statecraft—like the art of medicine—one of balancing, adjusting, fine-tuning. To advocate a revolution for all political injustice is like advocating open heart surgery for all maladies.
Instead, the best policy is to begin slowly, cautiously, taking the political problem piecemeal, prescribing no cures too severe, and no reforms too immoderate. A good politician strives to keep what is good in a system, and to replace what is bad. A man’s heart might not be the most efficient organ that could be contrived for the purpose of pumping blood; but it does not follow that all hearts should be replaced by mechanical pumps. The trauma of the change might very well outweigh whatever gains in the abstract function of the organ.
This brings me to another of Burke’s points: politics is an attempt to solve a practical problem, not to realize an abstract system. In Burke’s words: “The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori.� This is not to say that all reflections on the nature of justice, of right, or of ethics ought to be discarded. This is just to say that such philosophical arguments should be regarded as means and not ends.
If you show me a politician bent on realizing an abstract system, I will show you a bad politician. Many, if not most, political decisions are between a greater and a lesser evil. The options are restrained by the exigencies of the moment; and if these quotidian problems are regarded as mere trifles by a politician, then that politician would be neglecting his duty. For better or for worse, we are not in the position to imagine the world anew; the world is not a blank page to be written on. There are no countries populated by abstract people seeking abstract justice; our world is the world of real people, with real habits and hostilities, people with their own customs, cultures, and conventions, their own provincial prejudices and preferences.
This leads naturally to another Burkean principle: the importance of concrete, specific circumstances. In his words: “Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principal its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.� This is why much philosophical speculation regarding ethics strikes me as limited—every situation is unique. One cannot abstract from a situation only the essential form; to do so would abstract away all of the pertinent information. If one were to unthinkingly apply the same criteria to every action in one’s life, the result would be absurd—perhaps abhorrent; the criteria must vary with the circumstances, the principle with the particulars.
Burke’s argument, as a whole, is an argument against radicalism. A radical is somebody who has more allegiance to a principle than to people, to a system than to a citizen. A radical is a doctor who would prescribe the same cure in all cases, the same government for all peoples in all times. A radical is somebody who cannot brook a delay in their plans—who believes every second their ideas aren’t put into practice is a second misspent. A radical is somebody who is averse to compromise, because they are sure they are right and good, while their opponents are wrong and wicked.
There are radicals on both the right and the left. There are those who would abolish all taxes and regulations, and those who would abolish all property; who would convert everyone to their religion, or would ban the worship of any religion; who would kill a man for an idea, and would starve a countryside for a scheme. Burke reminds us that our knowledge, our aims, our wisdom, is limited; deciding the right policy is not a matter of a simple theoretical criteria, but of the application of years of accumulated experience, and the balancing of multiple perspectives and desires. Government is not a product of sublime reason or abstract logic. Instead, “Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.�
_________________________________________
As a little postscript, I'd just like to point out that, whatever your politics, you must admit that Burke was right about the French Revolution. It did not end well. But the most striking of his insights into the political situation in France is a straightforward prediction of Napoleon:
“In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things. But the moment in which that event shall happen, the person who really commands the army is your master—the master (that is little) of your king, the master of your Assembly, the master of your whole republic.�
April 9, 2024
Scandalously unknown in France, this analysis of the Revolution, written around 1791, is exceptional. Of course, this is not a history book; Burke told it from a subjective point of view that does not hesitate to dramatize things. However, the interest lies in the profound understanding of the revolutionary process philosophy, led by ambitious and dogmatic theorists who prefer to destroy everything rather than compromise. In short, they do not know the art of politics, which can only bring chaos and destruction. He thus predicts Terror, massacres, and even the seizure of power by an army chief! It also exposes the conservative truths, which teach us that society is an ancient and complicated heritage that we cannot shape as we please and must reform very carefully in the face of the pain of collapse. Finally, the style, classic, perhaps a little emphatic, is dazzling, so read it in the original English speakers! This formula shows that Burke prophesied the moral degradation that is modernity: "But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe extinguished forever ... "
October 12, 2017
Burke is a moronic, ignorant, drama queen:
"All Circumstances taken together, The French Revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world."
Really Mr. Burke? Was it really that surprising when the French finally decided that they’d had enough of corruption, poverty and starvation?
He was hated by so many writers in his era because of this work. His contemporaries openly wrote against his opinions and satirised his stupidity. The main problem his readers had with him was his mixed condemnation of revolution. On one hand, he considered the French revolution to be an unnatural crime, which is fair enough if that’s his opinion, though on the other hand he justified the English reformation and the American war for independence. Both of which were revolutions. The reasons he gives for the latter being morally justifiable are, essentially, the reason why the French had their revolution in the first place: to break the shackles of tyranny.
Such words were mere hypocrisy for writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication for the Rights of Man and Thomas Paine in Rights of Man. They could not understand how a previously liberal thinking man could suddenly adopt an approach of such staunch conservatism. And I have to agree with them. Burke condemns the revolution in perfectly justifiable terms; he foresaw what would happen in its aftermath: something no other writer did so effectively but his opinions conflict with his previous ideas, ones he is arguing for here at the same time as condemning the French.
As such, I find it very hard to be persuaded by his ideas. He lives in a bubble and is completely unsympathetic to the plights of the French commoner, to those that suffered for years and were pushed towards change; yet, the English and the Americans were great victims when they had their respective wars. His views are inconsistent and his arguments pompous and out of touch with reality.
That being said though, as much as I dislike the work and the writer, it was informative to read an alternative perspective even if it was a hypocritical one.
"All Circumstances taken together, The French Revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world."
Really Mr. Burke? Was it really that surprising when the French finally decided that they’d had enough of corruption, poverty and starvation?
He was hated by so many writers in his era because of this work. His contemporaries openly wrote against his opinions and satirised his stupidity. The main problem his readers had with him was his mixed condemnation of revolution. On one hand, he considered the French revolution to be an unnatural crime, which is fair enough if that’s his opinion, though on the other hand he justified the English reformation and the American war for independence. Both of which were revolutions. The reasons he gives for the latter being morally justifiable are, essentially, the reason why the French had their revolution in the first place: to break the shackles of tyranny.
Such words were mere hypocrisy for writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication for the Rights of Man and Thomas Paine in Rights of Man. They could not understand how a previously liberal thinking man could suddenly adopt an approach of such staunch conservatism. And I have to agree with them. Burke condemns the revolution in perfectly justifiable terms; he foresaw what would happen in its aftermath: something no other writer did so effectively but his opinions conflict with his previous ideas, ones he is arguing for here at the same time as condemning the French.
As such, I find it very hard to be persuaded by his ideas. He lives in a bubble and is completely unsympathetic to the plights of the French commoner, to those that suffered for years and were pushed towards change; yet, the English and the Americans were great victims when they had their respective wars. His views are inconsistent and his arguments pompous and out of touch with reality.
That being said though, as much as I dislike the work and the writer, it was informative to read an alternative perspective even if it was a hypocritical one.
March 17, 2020
· Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790
· Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791
These two pamphlets represent the premier bare-knuckle political prize-fight of its time. In the blue corner � Irish statesman and Whig grandee, aesthetic theorist and small-C conservative, it's the Dublin Dynamo, Edmund ‘Berserk� Burke. And in the red corner � the stay-maker's son from rural Norfolk, the world's first true international revolutionary, delivering the right hooks of man, it's Thomas ‘Max� Paine.
I am a Photoshop master
So iconic has this confrontation become that it's difficult, now, to work out what exactly each side represented. There's a lot of people who want to interpret their polemic in modern terms: Right versus Left, Republican versus Liberal, Conservative versus Progressive. Those on the right like to see Burke as ‘the father of modern conservatism�, and view Paine by contrast as reckless and unrealistic; lefties see Paine as rational and empathetic, and consider Burke to be an apologist for inequality. None of these interpretations satisfies me much.
In many ways, this argument about how to understand the French Revolution is historically specific, and not a great analogue to right-v.-left debates today. Burke was certainly conservative in some ways, but he was not a Tory; he was a prominent and generally liberal Whig who had backed the American Revolution. Support for the dissenters and ‘republicans� (meaning then ‘anti-monarchists�, i.e. chiefly leftwing radicals) was coming from Burke's own party, and his book � which seems eloquent and well-reasoned today, even to its critics � was attacked almost across the board by his contemporaries, including by other Whigs (Fox, the party leader, hated it). At that point, before the Terror, the revolution in France was broadly welcomed not just by those to the left of Burke � the radicals � but also by those to his right, since Pitt and the Tories thought it represented an excellent opportunity for Britain.
Why did all these people care what was happening in France, anyway? The point was that the ideals animating the revolution in France might soon spread elsewhere. Paine talks eagerly of ‘general revolution in Europe�, and Burke too is less concerned with events in France than with how they're received in England.
For Burke, revolution is anathema: change should be effected incrementally, by building on a foundation of existing institutions. He justifies the revolution in America and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 as being matters of last resort, as means of connecting with pre-existing rights and duties, rather than complete novelties. What upsets him about the revolutionaries in France is their ‘total contempt…of all antient institutions, when set in opposition to a present sense of convenience, or to the bent of a present inclination�. ‘People will not look forward to posterity,� he intones, ‘who never look backward to their ancestors.�
Paine, on the other hand, could not care less about ancestors or their ancient institutions. His whole deal is that it is ‘the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated�, and talk of inherited rights and traditional privileges is, as far as he is concerned, a complete waste of breath:
This seems all very well in principle; but Burke's objection is precisely that acting according to abstract principles is a fatal error. It is not that he disagrees with Paine that men have a right to liberty or justice � but such concepts, he feels, are a matter of philosophy, not of politics. Paine can chatter all he likes about a ‘beam of light over the world, which reaches into man�; for Burke, ‘in proportion as [such things] are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false�:
Here we see the practical statesman set against the idealist. Burke's stance here represents a very British, liberal pragmatism, opposed to continental theory, which I personally find deeply appealing; in this limited area of disagreement, I much prefer his approach. But � with Burke as with many writers � care must be taken not to mistake eloquence for veracity. Behind his appeals to sensibleness, it has to be said that one can detect a note of personal alarm. Surveying the new Assemblée Nationale, he is outraged that there is ‘scarcely to be perceived the slightest traces of what we call the natural landed interest of the country�. France is being run by � shock horror! � normal people. For Burke, it's horrifying to see
It is not the é of revolutionary France that Burke objects to, but the éé. All titles have been abolished (‘It is by distortedly exalting some men, that others are distortedly debased,� Paine explains); every man is now as honourable as any other. Burke cannot contain himself:
Few people nowadays, no matter how much they admire Burke, will follow him into these arguments for what he calls ‘some decent, regulated pre-eminence�, but actually this is one of the cornerstones of his thesis. He wants titles, honours and the rest of the inherited privileges to stay � especially property, whose ‘characteristic essence�, as he admits, ‘is to be unequal�. So his argument often amounts to a defence of inequality.
Burke's snobbishness and antidisestablishmentarianism have become unfashionable; Paine has won these debates. But the key problem with criticising Burke now is that, of course, on the central facts he turned out to be right. His dire predictions about where the French Revolution would lead � ‘There must be blood� � came spectacularly true, and this has made it difficult to evaluate (or at any rate to dismiss) his argument. ‘Massacre, torture, hanging! These are your rights of men!� he predicted. At the time, he was seen as too sanguinary; now, we see that Paine was too sanguine.
Well that didn't age well. Paine's belief � based on those abstract ideals he was so fond of � was that because the revolution was ‘rational�, it had made a point of distinguishing ‘between persons and principles�. ‘It was not against Louis the XVIth, but against the despotic principles of the government, that the nation revolted,� he claims. But less than two years later they would cut Louis's head off. Paine's rhetorical questions now seem grimly ironic:
…A figure that would unfortunately rise to 16,594 official death sentences handed out before the fall of Robespierre three years later. Paine's own name was nearly on one of them, imprisoned as he was by the Jacobins and only freed at the insistence of the new American ambassador.How quickly radicals and republicans elsewhere would recognise the awfulness of the Terror became a key test for their politics � not unlike the situation for socialists looking to the Soviet Union in the twentieth century.
But throwing away either side of the argument seems like a mistake to me: it's true that Burke v. Paine may be seen as crystallising the ‘revolutionary tendencies of the left� or the ‘self-serving heartlessness of the right�, but more than either of those things it's a reminder that partisanship is unproductive. If Burke's pragmatism could be separated from his defence of privilege and allied, somehow, with Paine's idealism, then the appeal would be huge. In the pamphlet wars of the 1790s, there was still some good faith that this might be possible � more then, I think, than there is in many modern evaluations of the issues. They're both still very much worth reading, even if neither lands a knockout blow.
· Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791
These two pamphlets represent the premier bare-knuckle political prize-fight of its time. In the blue corner � Irish statesman and Whig grandee, aesthetic theorist and small-C conservative, it's the Dublin Dynamo, Edmund ‘Berserk� Burke. And in the red corner � the stay-maker's son from rural Norfolk, the world's first true international revolutionary, delivering the right hooks of man, it's Thomas ‘Max� Paine.
I am a Photoshop master
So iconic has this confrontation become that it's difficult, now, to work out what exactly each side represented. There's a lot of people who want to interpret their polemic in modern terms: Right versus Left, Republican versus Liberal, Conservative versus Progressive. Those on the right like to see Burke as ‘the father of modern conservatism�, and view Paine by contrast as reckless and unrealistic; lefties see Paine as rational and empathetic, and consider Burke to be an apologist for inequality. None of these interpretations satisfies me much.
In many ways, this argument about how to understand the French Revolution is historically specific, and not a great analogue to right-v.-left debates today. Burke was certainly conservative in some ways, but he was not a Tory; he was a prominent and generally liberal Whig who had backed the American Revolution. Support for the dissenters and ‘republicans� (meaning then ‘anti-monarchists�, i.e. chiefly leftwing radicals) was coming from Burke's own party, and his book � which seems eloquent and well-reasoned today, even to its critics � was attacked almost across the board by his contemporaries, including by other Whigs (Fox, the party leader, hated it). At that point, before the Terror, the revolution in France was broadly welcomed not just by those to the left of Burke � the radicals � but also by those to his right, since Pitt and the Tories thought it represented an excellent opportunity for Britain.
Why did all these people care what was happening in France, anyway? The point was that the ideals animating the revolution in France might soon spread elsewhere. Paine talks eagerly of ‘general revolution in Europe�, and Burke too is less concerned with events in France than with how they're received in England.
For Burke, revolution is anathema: change should be effected incrementally, by building on a foundation of existing institutions. He justifies the revolution in America and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 as being matters of last resort, as means of connecting with pre-existing rights and duties, rather than complete novelties. What upsets him about the revolutionaries in France is their ‘total contempt…of all antient institutions, when set in opposition to a present sense of convenience, or to the bent of a present inclination�. ‘People will not look forward to posterity,� he intones, ‘who never look backward to their ancestors.�
Paine, on the other hand, could not care less about ancestors or their ancient institutions. His whole deal is that it is ‘the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated�, and talk of inherited rights and traditional privileges is, as far as he is concerned, a complete waste of breath:
The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age, may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, Who is to decide, the living, or the dead?
This seems all very well in principle; but Burke's objection is precisely that acting according to abstract principles is a fatal error. It is not that he disagrees with Paine that men have a right to liberty or justice � but such concepts, he feels, are a matter of philosophy, not of politics. Paine can chatter all he likes about a ‘beam of light over the world, which reaches into man�; for Burke, ‘in proportion as [such things] are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false�:
What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or to medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them.
Here we see the practical statesman set against the idealist. Burke's stance here represents a very British, liberal pragmatism, opposed to continental theory, which I personally find deeply appealing; in this limited area of disagreement, I much prefer his approach. But � with Burke as with many writers � care must be taken not to mistake eloquence for veracity. Behind his appeals to sensibleness, it has to be said that one can detect a note of personal alarm. Surveying the new Assemblée Nationale, he is outraged that there is ‘scarcely to be perceived the slightest traces of what we call the natural landed interest of the country�. France is being run by � shock horror! � normal people. For Burke, it's horrifying to see
supreme authority placed in the hands of men not taught habitually to respect themselves; who had no previous fortune in character at stake; who could not be expected to bear with moderation, or to conduct with discretion, a power which they themselves, more than any others, must be surprized to find in their hands.
It is not the é of revolutionary France that Burke objects to, but the éé. All titles have been abolished (‘It is by distortedly exalting some men, that others are distortedly debased,� Paine explains); every man is now as honourable as any other. Burke cannot contain himself:
The occupation of an hair-dresser, or of a working tallow-chandler, cannot be a matter of honour to any person—to say nothing of a number of other more servile employments.
Few people nowadays, no matter how much they admire Burke, will follow him into these arguments for what he calls ‘some decent, regulated pre-eminence�, but actually this is one of the cornerstones of his thesis. He wants titles, honours and the rest of the inherited privileges to stay � especially property, whose ‘characteristic essence�, as he admits, ‘is to be unequal�. So his argument often amounts to a defence of inequality.
Burke's snobbishness and antidisestablishmentarianism have become unfashionable; Paine has won these debates. But the key problem with criticising Burke now is that, of course, on the central facts he turned out to be right. His dire predictions about where the French Revolution would lead � ‘There must be blood� � came spectacularly true, and this has made it difficult to evaluate (or at any rate to dismiss) his argument. ‘Massacre, torture, hanging! These are your rights of men!� he predicted. At the time, he was seen as too sanguinary; now, we see that Paine was too sanguine.
[W]hen the French Revolution is compared with the revolutions of other countries [Paine wrote], the astonishment will be, that it is marked with so few sacrifices.
Well that didn't age well. Paine's belief � based on those abstract ideals he was so fond of � was that because the revolution was ‘rational�, it had made a point of distinguishing ‘between persons and principles�. ‘It was not against Louis the XVIth, but against the despotic principles of the government, that the nation revolted,� he claims. But less than two years later they would cut Louis's head off. Paine's rhetorical questions now seem grimly ironic:
Whom has the National Assembly brought to the scaffold? None.
…A figure that would unfortunately rise to 16,594 official death sentences handed out before the fall of Robespierre three years later. Paine's own name was nearly on one of them, imprisoned as he was by the Jacobins and only freed at the insistence of the new American ambassador.How quickly radicals and republicans elsewhere would recognise the awfulness of the Terror became a key test for their politics � not unlike the situation for socialists looking to the Soviet Union in the twentieth century.
But throwing away either side of the argument seems like a mistake to me: it's true that Burke v. Paine may be seen as crystallising the ‘revolutionary tendencies of the left� or the ‘self-serving heartlessness of the right�, but more than either of those things it's a reminder that partisanship is unproductive. If Burke's pragmatism could be separated from his defence of privilege and allied, somehow, with Paine's idealism, then the appeal would be huge. In the pamphlet wars of the 1790s, there was still some good faith that this might be possible � more then, I think, than there is in many modern evaluations of the issues. They're both still very much worth reading, even if neither lands a knockout blow.
May 28, 2021
A Regal Masquerade
Portrait de l'artiste sous les traits d'un moqueur
Joseph Ducreux, circa 1793
What is it all about?
This essay from Irish-born British MP Edmund Burke deals with the measures passed by French National Assembly in the aftermath of the Revolution in 1789, with Richard Price's speech 'A Discourse on the Love of Our Country', with the activity of pro-revolution Constitution Society & Revolution Society in England and with Burke's views on the matter.
Although E. Burke betrays certain bias towards purported traditional European values inherited from chivalry(!)—that is, moralizing history—and towards landed aristocracy, as a whole, this text shows a solid command of both French political institutions before the Revolution and mechanisms used by the new revolutionary government.
The gist of this work:
E. Burke advocates a balanced system of powers more or less modelled after the unwritten British constitution. I deem this text a convincing analysis of the (many) flaws, inconsistencies and actual errors of revolutionary policy, and a reliable source of information about the meddling of the National Assembly with the 'monied' elite and burghers, shedding light on some important laws implemented at this time (1790) and afterwards, such as the . It also provides a valid prediction about the future rise of general Napoléon Bonaparte.
Link to the PDF on Wikisource:
Other works about the French Revolution and its legacy:
Non-fiction:
(review in English)
Fiction:
Contemporary Soundtrack:
Portrait de l'artiste sous les traits d'un moqueur
Joseph Ducreux, circa 1793
What is it all about?
This essay from Irish-born British MP Edmund Burke deals with the measures passed by French National Assembly in the aftermath of the Revolution in 1789, with Richard Price's speech 'A Discourse on the Love of Our Country', with the activity of pro-revolution Constitution Society & Revolution Society in England and with Burke's views on the matter.
Although E. Burke betrays certain bias towards purported traditional European values inherited from chivalry(!)—that is, moralizing history—and towards landed aristocracy, as a whole, this text shows a solid command of both French political institutions before the Revolution and mechanisms used by the new revolutionary government.
The gist of this work:
E. Burke advocates a balanced system of powers more or less modelled after the unwritten British constitution. I deem this text a convincing analysis of the (many) flaws, inconsistencies and actual errors of revolutionary policy, and a reliable source of information about the meddling of the National Assembly with the 'monied' elite and burghers, shedding light on some important laws implemented at this time (1790) and afterwards, such as the . It also provides a valid prediction about the future rise of general Napoléon Bonaparte.
Link to the PDF on Wikisource:
Other works about the French Revolution and its legacy:
Non-fiction:
(review in English)
Fiction:
Contemporary Soundtrack:
August 19, 2010
My copy of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France comes with a splendid introductory essay by Conor Cruise O’Brien, onetime academic, politician, journalist and writer. I understand that he also wrote a biography of Burke which his Wikipedia page describes as ‘unorthodox�, though I think he may have used that term himself to describe his interpretation. I’ve not read it so I can’t say if it is or not. What I can say, and say with assurance, is that his essay brings out aspects of Burke’s life and work that I might otherwise have missed, particularly in relation to Catholicism and Ireland, and the bearing this had on his perception of the upheavals in France.
Burke belonged politically to the English Whigs and - at least by outward association - to the Protestant Ascendency in Ireland; he could never have advanced his political career as far as he did if he had not. But O’Brien identifies a tension between what he calls the ‘outer Whig� and the ‘inner Jacobite�, between a Protestant gloss and a Catholic tradition. It was this friction that helped drive the irony in Burke’s critique. Here his first target was not the Parisian revolutionaries but the London rationalists, those who identified the Revolution as the triumph of Reason over Superstition and Tradition.
O’Brien’s point here is quite subtle, as subtle as Burke’s intellect. Protestant he may have been but the Irish Catholic tradition was there, part of his makeup and part of his background;
…if Burke as a Whig cherished, at least in theory, the Glorious Revolution, Burke as an Irishman, with close emotional bonds to the conquered, detested the Protestant ascendancy which that Revolution had riveted on the people of his country.
There are things here that could not be said openly, were not said openly, at least not until towards the end of his life. But there were things that could be said indirectly, if you like, things that could be said in the context of a critique of the French Revolution.
The crucial point of departure here is that events in France were welcomed by the likes of Dr Richard Price, a leading Protestant dissenter. In November 1789 he delivered a sermon entitled Discourse on the love of our country in which he compared the political transformations in France with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, a common theme in the early days.
But if the Glorious Revolution, the Whig touchstone, meant one thing in England it meant quite another in Ireland: it meant hostility to Catholicism; it meant the oppressive Penal Laws. It was the identification of the first event with the second, the English with the French, O’Brien maintains, that wakened the “slumbering Jacobite� in the elderly Whig. The creative tension here goes that one step further; for while in relation to England and France the Jacobite perspective was clearly counter-revolutionary, the opposite was true in the context of Ireland.
The Reflections begins, then, as a rebuttal to Price, begins as a way of getting the English establishment to see that their interests were bound up with Catholicism in Europe; that there Catholicism was the bastion of order, of property and of tradition. It’s a wonderful exercise in intellectual gymnastics, for Burke is getting people to see that it is the militant anti-Catholic Protestantism of the dissenters that is the natural ally of Jacobinism.
So, while preparing the most effective counter-revolutionary polemic ever penned Burke was also planting the seeds of sympathy for Catholicism in the minds of the English, the very antithesis of the message on the Glorious Revolution. Growing hostility towards the Jacobins was, with wonderful irony, accompanied with increasing sympathy towards the Jacobites. That is to say, it was in part thanks to Burke that English policy towards Ireland began to change, evidenced by the Catholic Relief Act of 1793 followed two years later by the foundation of Maynooth Seminary with state support.
In a letter written five years after the publication of the Reflections Burke made plain that his whole politics centred on anti-Jacobinism. He was particularly incensed by the hostility towards religion on which that movement was based. For him the practice of Catholicism “forms as things stand, the most effective barrier, against Jacobinism�. He further argues that in Ireland in particular “the Roman Catholic religion should be upheld in high respect and veneration.�
It’s an impressive argument, one which deepens, if such a thing is possible, the profound respect I already have for Burke as a thinker. My politics, my conservatism, begin with Burke and end with Burke, begin and end with words he wrote in a letter of March 1790, the most devastating critique of bloodlessly bloody ideology ever written. The emphasis here is in the original;
“I have no great opinion of that sublime abstract, metaphysic revisionary, contingent humanity, which in cold blood can subject the present time and those whom we daily see and converse with to immediate calamities in favour of the future and uncertain benefit of persons who only exist in idea.�
Here is the key to the horror of much of modern history, from Robespierre to Pol Pot and beyond.
Burke belonged politically to the English Whigs and - at least by outward association - to the Protestant Ascendency in Ireland; he could never have advanced his political career as far as he did if he had not. But O’Brien identifies a tension between what he calls the ‘outer Whig� and the ‘inner Jacobite�, between a Protestant gloss and a Catholic tradition. It was this friction that helped drive the irony in Burke’s critique. Here his first target was not the Parisian revolutionaries but the London rationalists, those who identified the Revolution as the triumph of Reason over Superstition and Tradition.
O’Brien’s point here is quite subtle, as subtle as Burke’s intellect. Protestant he may have been but the Irish Catholic tradition was there, part of his makeup and part of his background;
…if Burke as a Whig cherished, at least in theory, the Glorious Revolution, Burke as an Irishman, with close emotional bonds to the conquered, detested the Protestant ascendancy which that Revolution had riveted on the people of his country.
There are things here that could not be said openly, were not said openly, at least not until towards the end of his life. But there were things that could be said indirectly, if you like, things that could be said in the context of a critique of the French Revolution.
The crucial point of departure here is that events in France were welcomed by the likes of Dr Richard Price, a leading Protestant dissenter. In November 1789 he delivered a sermon entitled Discourse on the love of our country in which he compared the political transformations in France with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, a common theme in the early days.
But if the Glorious Revolution, the Whig touchstone, meant one thing in England it meant quite another in Ireland: it meant hostility to Catholicism; it meant the oppressive Penal Laws. It was the identification of the first event with the second, the English with the French, O’Brien maintains, that wakened the “slumbering Jacobite� in the elderly Whig. The creative tension here goes that one step further; for while in relation to England and France the Jacobite perspective was clearly counter-revolutionary, the opposite was true in the context of Ireland.
The Reflections begins, then, as a rebuttal to Price, begins as a way of getting the English establishment to see that their interests were bound up with Catholicism in Europe; that there Catholicism was the bastion of order, of property and of tradition. It’s a wonderful exercise in intellectual gymnastics, for Burke is getting people to see that it is the militant anti-Catholic Protestantism of the dissenters that is the natural ally of Jacobinism.
So, while preparing the most effective counter-revolutionary polemic ever penned Burke was also planting the seeds of sympathy for Catholicism in the minds of the English, the very antithesis of the message on the Glorious Revolution. Growing hostility towards the Jacobins was, with wonderful irony, accompanied with increasing sympathy towards the Jacobites. That is to say, it was in part thanks to Burke that English policy towards Ireland began to change, evidenced by the Catholic Relief Act of 1793 followed two years later by the foundation of Maynooth Seminary with state support.
In a letter written five years after the publication of the Reflections Burke made plain that his whole politics centred on anti-Jacobinism. He was particularly incensed by the hostility towards religion on which that movement was based. For him the practice of Catholicism “forms as things stand, the most effective barrier, against Jacobinism�. He further argues that in Ireland in particular “the Roman Catholic religion should be upheld in high respect and veneration.�
It’s an impressive argument, one which deepens, if such a thing is possible, the profound respect I already have for Burke as a thinker. My politics, my conservatism, begin with Burke and end with Burke, begin and end with words he wrote in a letter of March 1790, the most devastating critique of bloodlessly bloody ideology ever written. The emphasis here is in the original;
“I have no great opinion of that sublime abstract, metaphysic revisionary, contingent humanity, which in cold blood can subject the present time and those whom we daily see and converse with to immediate calamities in favour of the future and uncertain benefit of persons who only exist in idea.�
Here is the key to the horror of much of modern history, from Robespierre to Pol Pot and beyond.
May 10, 2012
A turgid, incoherent, mean-spirited confusion of barely readable proto-teabaggery and ancient dogmatic douchebaggery. Written in the form of a letter to a Frenchman, without captions or other markers of manifest internal organization. Best part of this volume is the academic's lengthy introduction. Text is top tier anti-semitism, with frequent references to "Old Jewry" and Jews in general when he needs a negative example.
He opens by implying that he is unable to congratulate France on its new post-revolutionary liberty: "[A]m I seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate an highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights?" (90). The association of the ancien regime with prison is significant.
Dismisses as either nonsense or "a most unfounded, dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional position" the thesis that "if his majesty does not owe his crown to the choice of the people, then he is no lawful king" (97). Rather, the good people of England "look upon the legal hereditary succession of their [!] crown as among their rights, not as among their wrongs; as a benefit, not as a grievance; as a security for liberty, not as a badge of servitude" (111).
Even though he has distaste for revolutions, Burke's at pains to preserve the British revolution of 1688--and so suggests that it was "made to preserve our antient indisputable laws and liberties, and that antient constitution of government" (117), which strikes me as a fairly self-serving and silly statement. But, on the contrary, the "very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror" (id.). Instead, "we wished at the period of the [Glorious] Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers" (id.). This is the famous inheritance thesis of civil rights, which he seeks to establish by cherry-picked and misconstrued references to British legal history. The upshot is that "by constitutional policy, working after the pattern of nature [!], we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives" (120). Perhaps it's persuasive to know-nothings, but his presentation of the legal history leaves much to be desired, unless it's simply intended as sophistry targeted at the weak-minded. The government-as-property is however key to his understanding, and much of the Reflections is a property-owners' jittery subliterate manifesto.
(Comical side note: he attempts to dismiss the French Revolution as the work "not of distinguished magistrates," "not of leading advocates," "not of renowned professors," but "for the greater part, as it must in such a number, of the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession" (129-30). I think that means "the ambulance chasers have taken over OH NOS!" So: this is basically an early version of the limbicile complaint that "the trial lawyers are ruining America!!!1")
Next worthy of comment is the famous defense of property inequality: "Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a state, that does not represent its ability, as well as its property. But as ability is a vigorous and active principle, and as property is sluggish, inert, and timid, it can never be safe from the invasions of ability, unless it be, out of proportion, predominant in the representation. It must be represented too in great masses of accumulation, or it is not rightly protected. The characteristic essence of property, formed out of the combined principles of its acquisition and conservation, is to be unequal. The great masses therefore which excite envy and tempt rapacity must be put out of possibility of danger" (140). And so on. It's like Ayn Rand complaining that rich people are oppressed--but older and accordingly possessing a higher and greater lineage of stupidity.
Burke shows himself to be anti-evidence by declaring "our representation has been found perfectly adequate to all purposes for which a representation of the people can be desired or devised. I defy the enemies of our constitution to shew the contrary" (146). Nevermind the problems in Ireland that were otherwise dear to Burke; this formulation appears to ignore the very recent war for independence that the British lost to the United States.
After complaining so much about innovative rights in France, he gives us an inventory of those "real rights of men," which he likes: the right to live by the rule of law, the right to justice, right to fruits of industry and to making industry fruitful, the right to acquisitions of their parents, to the improvement of offspring, to instruction in life and consolation in death--"whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself," leaving trespass undefined (149). He declaims that "in this partnership, all men have equal rights, but not to equal things. He that has but five shillings in the partnership has as good a right to it as he that has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend of the product of the joint stock; and as to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society" (150). So, there's the philistine libertarian idea that rich votes are better than poor votes because the government is a joint stock corporation, &c.
Burke generally has nothing pleasant to say about atheists, but he is very similar to Marx in statements such as "religion is the basis of civil society and the source of all good and all comfort" (186) and "They must labour to obtain what by labour can be obtained; and when they find, as they commonly do, the success disproportioned to the endeavor, they must be taught their consolation in the final proportions of eternal justice. Of this consolation, whoever deprives them, deadens their industry, and strikes at the root of all acquisition and all conservation. He that does this is a cruel oppressor, the merciless enemy of the poor and wretched; at the same time that by his wicked speculations he exposes the fruits of successful industry, and the accumulations of fortune, to the plunder of the negligent, the disappointed, and the unprosperous" (372). This is an amzing piece of proto-fascist crap--it is the contrary of marxism's "opiate of the people" argument insofar as it recognizes the role of religious lies in placating the impoverished, keeping them at work, and thereby allowing them to be exploited by the wealthy--but Burke recommends this as the proper state of affairs, and designates as oppressors those who would correct the lies with truths and liberate the minds of the impoverished, who might thereafter disposses the wealthy of their ill-gotten gains. It's nasty sophistry, and exposes well Burke's true interests.
Like our own daily Fox News screechings, Burke whines, in the face of disagreement with his superstitious bullshit, that the "literary cabal had some years ago formed something like a regular plan for the destruction of the Christian religion" (211). We are told that this is a "new religious persecution," carried our by "atheistic levellers" (246), after a lengthy description of alleged taxations and confiscation of ecclesiastical properties in France. (He has the good taste to discuss Henry VIII's Dissolution Acts, at least.) They are ultimately "philosophical fanatics" (256) and the "spirit of atheistical fanaticism" (262)--but people who believe that government is properly founded on a single person who is appointed by a guy born of a virgin and resurrected and so on--that's just reasonable common sense.
He also sounds like a marxist in diagnosing class warfare: "In the state of real, though not always perceived warfare between noble ancient landed interest, and the new monied interest, the greatest because the most applicable strength was in the hands of the latter" (211).
That aside, he appears to be a proponent of social contract theory: "Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure [!] - but the state ought not be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in the trade of pepper and coffee," but rather it is "a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of the partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by inviolable oath [&c.] [&c.]" (195-96). Goodness, what a load of shit.
Whatever else he thinks, he is a proponent of brainwashing: "Church and state are ideas inseparable in [English] minds. Our education is so formed as to confirm and fix this impression. Our education is in a manner wholly in the hands of ecclesiastics, and in all stages from infancy to manhood" (198). So, yeah, right?
He denies "that the nobility had any considerable share in the oppression of the people, in cases in which real oppression existed" (244). Later, of course, he has no problem admitting that "they worked from dawn to dark in the innumerable servile, degrading, unseemly, unmanly, and often most unwholesome and pestiferous occupations, to which by the social economy so many wretches are inevitably doomed" (271). Apparently that's not oppression, or, even if it is, it's not the fault of the aristocracy. Of course, he later suggests that "if the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest," i.e., regarding good governance (285). Hard to reconcile these statements, it seems--unless we just ignore the working class.
Also famous is the tolerance argument: "Are the decorations of temples an expenditure less worthy a wise man than ribbons, and laces, and national cockades, and petits maisons, and petit soupers, and all the innumerable fopperies and follies in which opulence sports away the burthen of its superfluity? We tolerate even these; not from love of them, but for fear of worse. We tolerate them, because property and liberty, to a degree, require that toleration" (273). Yeah, so that's the rightwing origin of the modern "tolerance" argument. Leftists shouldn't touch it. Like much of the prior discussions of property, it essentially asks for special dispensation for rich persons. Typical. (Needless to add that the "temple decorations" are fopperies and follies equivalent to the other luxury goods that he does not like.)
The Refllections otherwise have much local description of events in France and the revolutionary constitution (Burke doesn't like any of it). The revolution treats "France exactly like a country of conquest. Acting as conquerors, they have imitated a policy of the harshest of that harsh race" (297-98). So, a locus classicus for the rightwing notion that certain ideas are "unamerican" or "anti-american" or somehow evil & foreign, or whatever.
It is also an ancient source for the objection to paper currency (306 ff.). It also makes objection to the centrality of Paris in the new constitution (314 ff.), which reminds one of the "Washington DC is corrupt and evil" jeremiads that we get all of the time in the US from the rightwing.
Overall, super-religious, simultaneously adherent to authority, especially executive authority, but distrustful of "mob rule" in the assembly, and also very jealous of property, anti-taxation, ignorant to real abuses, ready to cry about imagined abuses, desirous of special rights for rich persons and dismissive of equal rights for poor persons, and so on. It's a catalogue of rightwing policy objectives, an inventory of loss. That any non-aristocrat would like this stuff indicates the power of ruling class ideology over the mind.
Nothing really redeemable overall--some folks like his writing, but it strikes me as aesthetically consistent with the period.
Required reading for serious persons.
He opens by implying that he is unable to congratulate France on its new post-revolutionary liberty: "[A]m I seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate an highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights?" (90). The association of the ancien regime with prison is significant.
Dismisses as either nonsense or "a most unfounded, dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional position" the thesis that "if his majesty does not owe his crown to the choice of the people, then he is no lawful king" (97). Rather, the good people of England "look upon the legal hereditary succession of their [!] crown as among their rights, not as among their wrongs; as a benefit, not as a grievance; as a security for liberty, not as a badge of servitude" (111).
Even though he has distaste for revolutions, Burke's at pains to preserve the British revolution of 1688--and so suggests that it was "made to preserve our antient indisputable laws and liberties, and that antient constitution of government" (117), which strikes me as a fairly self-serving and silly statement. But, on the contrary, the "very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror" (id.). Instead, "we wished at the period of the [Glorious] Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers" (id.). This is the famous inheritance thesis of civil rights, which he seeks to establish by cherry-picked and misconstrued references to British legal history. The upshot is that "by constitutional policy, working after the pattern of nature [!], we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives" (120). Perhaps it's persuasive to know-nothings, but his presentation of the legal history leaves much to be desired, unless it's simply intended as sophistry targeted at the weak-minded. The government-as-property is however key to his understanding, and much of the Reflections is a property-owners' jittery subliterate manifesto.
(Comical side note: he attempts to dismiss the French Revolution as the work "not of distinguished magistrates," "not of leading advocates," "not of renowned professors," but "for the greater part, as it must in such a number, of the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession" (129-30). I think that means "the ambulance chasers have taken over OH NOS!" So: this is basically an early version of the limbicile complaint that "the trial lawyers are ruining America!!!1")
Next worthy of comment is the famous defense of property inequality: "Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a state, that does not represent its ability, as well as its property. But as ability is a vigorous and active principle, and as property is sluggish, inert, and timid, it can never be safe from the invasions of ability, unless it be, out of proportion, predominant in the representation. It must be represented too in great masses of accumulation, or it is not rightly protected. The characteristic essence of property, formed out of the combined principles of its acquisition and conservation, is to be unequal. The great masses therefore which excite envy and tempt rapacity must be put out of possibility of danger" (140). And so on. It's like Ayn Rand complaining that rich people are oppressed--but older and accordingly possessing a higher and greater lineage of stupidity.
Burke shows himself to be anti-evidence by declaring "our representation has been found perfectly adequate to all purposes for which a representation of the people can be desired or devised. I defy the enemies of our constitution to shew the contrary" (146). Nevermind the problems in Ireland that were otherwise dear to Burke; this formulation appears to ignore the very recent war for independence that the British lost to the United States.
After complaining so much about innovative rights in France, he gives us an inventory of those "real rights of men," which he likes: the right to live by the rule of law, the right to justice, right to fruits of industry and to making industry fruitful, the right to acquisitions of their parents, to the improvement of offspring, to instruction in life and consolation in death--"whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself," leaving trespass undefined (149). He declaims that "in this partnership, all men have equal rights, but not to equal things. He that has but five shillings in the partnership has as good a right to it as he that has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend of the product of the joint stock; and as to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society" (150). So, there's the philistine libertarian idea that rich votes are better than poor votes because the government is a joint stock corporation, &c.
Burke generally has nothing pleasant to say about atheists, but he is very similar to Marx in statements such as "religion is the basis of civil society and the source of all good and all comfort" (186) and "They must labour to obtain what by labour can be obtained; and when they find, as they commonly do, the success disproportioned to the endeavor, they must be taught their consolation in the final proportions of eternal justice. Of this consolation, whoever deprives them, deadens their industry, and strikes at the root of all acquisition and all conservation. He that does this is a cruel oppressor, the merciless enemy of the poor and wretched; at the same time that by his wicked speculations he exposes the fruits of successful industry, and the accumulations of fortune, to the plunder of the negligent, the disappointed, and the unprosperous" (372). This is an amzing piece of proto-fascist crap--it is the contrary of marxism's "opiate of the people" argument insofar as it recognizes the role of religious lies in placating the impoverished, keeping them at work, and thereby allowing them to be exploited by the wealthy--but Burke recommends this as the proper state of affairs, and designates as oppressors those who would correct the lies with truths and liberate the minds of the impoverished, who might thereafter disposses the wealthy of their ill-gotten gains. It's nasty sophistry, and exposes well Burke's true interests.
Like our own daily Fox News screechings, Burke whines, in the face of disagreement with his superstitious bullshit, that the "literary cabal had some years ago formed something like a regular plan for the destruction of the Christian religion" (211). We are told that this is a "new religious persecution," carried our by "atheistic levellers" (246), after a lengthy description of alleged taxations and confiscation of ecclesiastical properties in France. (He has the good taste to discuss Henry VIII's Dissolution Acts, at least.) They are ultimately "philosophical fanatics" (256) and the "spirit of atheistical fanaticism" (262)--but people who believe that government is properly founded on a single person who is appointed by a guy born of a virgin and resurrected and so on--that's just reasonable common sense.
He also sounds like a marxist in diagnosing class warfare: "In the state of real, though not always perceived warfare between noble ancient landed interest, and the new monied interest, the greatest because the most applicable strength was in the hands of the latter" (211).
That aside, he appears to be a proponent of social contract theory: "Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure [!] - but the state ought not be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in the trade of pepper and coffee," but rather it is "a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of the partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by inviolable oath [&c.] [&c.]" (195-96). Goodness, what a load of shit.
Whatever else he thinks, he is a proponent of brainwashing: "Church and state are ideas inseparable in [English] minds. Our education is so formed as to confirm and fix this impression. Our education is in a manner wholly in the hands of ecclesiastics, and in all stages from infancy to manhood" (198). So, yeah, right?
He denies "that the nobility had any considerable share in the oppression of the people, in cases in which real oppression existed" (244). Later, of course, he has no problem admitting that "they worked from dawn to dark in the innumerable servile, degrading, unseemly, unmanly, and often most unwholesome and pestiferous occupations, to which by the social economy so many wretches are inevitably doomed" (271). Apparently that's not oppression, or, even if it is, it's not the fault of the aristocracy. Of course, he later suggests that "if the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest," i.e., regarding good governance (285). Hard to reconcile these statements, it seems--unless we just ignore the working class.
Also famous is the tolerance argument: "Are the decorations of temples an expenditure less worthy a wise man than ribbons, and laces, and national cockades, and petits maisons, and petit soupers, and all the innumerable fopperies and follies in which opulence sports away the burthen of its superfluity? We tolerate even these; not from love of them, but for fear of worse. We tolerate them, because property and liberty, to a degree, require that toleration" (273). Yeah, so that's the rightwing origin of the modern "tolerance" argument. Leftists shouldn't touch it. Like much of the prior discussions of property, it essentially asks for special dispensation for rich persons. Typical. (Needless to add that the "temple decorations" are fopperies and follies equivalent to the other luxury goods that he does not like.)
The Refllections otherwise have much local description of events in France and the revolutionary constitution (Burke doesn't like any of it). The revolution treats "France exactly like a country of conquest. Acting as conquerors, they have imitated a policy of the harshest of that harsh race" (297-98). So, a locus classicus for the rightwing notion that certain ideas are "unamerican" or "anti-american" or somehow evil & foreign, or whatever.
It is also an ancient source for the objection to paper currency (306 ff.). It also makes objection to the centrality of Paris in the new constitution (314 ff.), which reminds one of the "Washington DC is corrupt and evil" jeremiads that we get all of the time in the US from the rightwing.
Overall, super-religious, simultaneously adherent to authority, especially executive authority, but distrustful of "mob rule" in the assembly, and also very jealous of property, anti-taxation, ignorant to real abuses, ready to cry about imagined abuses, desirous of special rights for rich persons and dismissive of equal rights for poor persons, and so on. It's a catalogue of rightwing policy objectives, an inventory of loss. That any non-aristocrat would like this stuff indicates the power of ruling class ideology over the mind.
Nothing really redeemable overall--some folks like his writing, but it strikes me as aesthetically consistent with the period.
Required reading for serious persons.
September 11, 2018
Though not a Tory, Burke is a Monarchist, supports inheritance*, argues even the Magna Carta was an earlier European inheritance. He abhors, distrusts revolution…and this was 1790, after Versailles fell, but well before Marie Antoinette was beheaded in 1793. Elsewhere he supports the American Revolution, even opposing England’s taxes, because he saw the Americans as largely supporting forms that had grown through England’s representative parliament, whereas the French began with a moderate revolution which became radicalized, and eventually a bloodbath (a bit like Russia in 1917, the Mensheviks versus the Bolsheviks).
Two groups in London support the French Revolution in 1790, one addressed by Dr Richard Price, a non-conformist minister who rejected his dour father’s Calvinism to become a Unitarian (somewhat like Giordano Bruno who was executed two centuries before partly for his support of Arius, 3rdC bishop who lost to the Trinitarians at Nicaea, Turkey--the Nicene Creed). Price corresponded with Ben Franklin. Burke disapproves of Price’s support for new church houses, no matter what they teach. In contrast to France, America began from churches, which Burke applauds, “All other nations have begun the fabric of a new government, or the reformation of an old..by enforcing …some rites of religion.� But French revolutionaries have rejected the divines.
Over and over, Burke’s portrayal of ethics and politics reminds us of our current state, say the fall of Versailles on 6 Oct 1789, “As things stand now with everything destroyed without us [outside], and an attempt to destroy within us every principle of respect, one is almost forced to apologize for harboring the common feelings of men.�(175, O’Brien ed.)
*He demurs, “You do not imagine I want to confine power.. to blood, names and titles. No, Sir. There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive�.Woe to that country considers a low education, a mean contracted view of things, a sordid mercenary occupation as a preferable title to command.�(139) Two centuries later, Burke has exactly described woe to the U.S under our non-reading, mercenary President.
Two groups in London support the French Revolution in 1790, one addressed by Dr Richard Price, a non-conformist minister who rejected his dour father’s Calvinism to become a Unitarian (somewhat like Giordano Bruno who was executed two centuries before partly for his support of Arius, 3rdC bishop who lost to the Trinitarians at Nicaea, Turkey--the Nicene Creed). Price corresponded with Ben Franklin. Burke disapproves of Price’s support for new church houses, no matter what they teach. In contrast to France, America began from churches, which Burke applauds, “All other nations have begun the fabric of a new government, or the reformation of an old..by enforcing …some rites of religion.� But French revolutionaries have rejected the divines.
Over and over, Burke’s portrayal of ethics and politics reminds us of our current state, say the fall of Versailles on 6 Oct 1789, “As things stand now with everything destroyed without us [outside], and an attempt to destroy within us every principle of respect, one is almost forced to apologize for harboring the common feelings of men.�(175, O’Brien ed.)
*He demurs, “You do not imagine I want to confine power.. to blood, names and titles. No, Sir. There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive�.Woe to that country considers a low education, a mean contracted view of things, a sordid mercenary occupation as a preferable title to command.�(139) Two centuries later, Burke has exactly described woe to the U.S under our non-reading, mercenary President.
January 23, 2021
"But we find you pay more regard to their fancies than to our necessities."
- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
There were parts of this pamphlet that I found obnoxious (his fawning over kings, queens, Popes, royals, etc.) But there were also brilliant flecks through out it. It is also an important book to understand modern conservatism (not to be confused with Trumpian and Christianist Conservatism). This is, for good and bad, the politics of Romney, Flake, Sasse, etc., and most the never-Trump Republicans.
As I read this, I kept wondering what he would have made of the last four years:
"The resources of public folly are soon exhausted."
"These politicians have been cruel, not economical."
"They cannot raise supplies, but they can raise mobs."
"Every honest mind, every true lover of liberty and humanity, must rejoice to find that injustice is not always good policy, nor rapine the high road to riches."
"They rob only to enable them to cheat, but in a very short time they defeat the ends both of the robbery and the fraud by making out accounts for other purposes which blow up their whole apparatus of force and of deception."
"But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint."
I originally gave this book 3-stars because 1/2 of it drove me nuts. But he did accurately predict Napoleon's rise and might have saved both the US and Great Britian some grief if more of his colleagues has listened to him.
- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
There were parts of this pamphlet that I found obnoxious (his fawning over kings, queens, Popes, royals, etc.) But there were also brilliant flecks through out it. It is also an important book to understand modern conservatism (not to be confused with Trumpian and Christianist Conservatism). This is, for good and bad, the politics of Romney, Flake, Sasse, etc., and most the never-Trump Republicans.
As I read this, I kept wondering what he would have made of the last four years:
"The resources of public folly are soon exhausted."
"These politicians have been cruel, not economical."
"They cannot raise supplies, but they can raise mobs."
"Every honest mind, every true lover of liberty and humanity, must rejoice to find that injustice is not always good policy, nor rapine the high road to riches."
"They rob only to enable them to cheat, but in a very short time they defeat the ends both of the robbery and the fraud by making out accounts for other purposes which blow up their whole apparatus of force and of deception."
"But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint."
I originally gave this book 3-stars because 1/2 of it drove me nuts. But he did accurately predict Napoleon's rise and might have saved both the US and Great Britian some grief if more of his colleagues has listened to him.
May 26, 2024
I think I said in an update that this book reads like you are trapped listening to your crazy uncle hog all the oxygen at the thanksgiving table, except that said uncle has read all of classical antiquity's greatest hits, and is a world-historically significant philosopher, and constantly reminds you of this while expatiating about political realities which he himself has never witnessed and which, because of his pique (and his literal and metaphorical distance, of course!), he cannot see but through a glass, and darkly...
Well, it mostly got quite a bit worse after that update, I'm afraid, though it does get a BIT better about two-thirds of the way through, when Burke runs out of breath in terms of his rather Olympian "theoretical" defense of the pre-1789 property (a term which appears 128 times in this screed) relations in general and allows the sub-lunary a bit of a look-in, condescending to address some specific political realities in France, concerning which he certainly makes a number of valid criticisms—e.g. the the financialized nouveau-riche ("moneyed interests") simply displacing the landed aristocracy under the banner of universal liberty, whilst neither providing real liberty for the masses and also denuding the nation of certain ancient practices or institutions which did provide some real benefit).
All in all it was a most desultory experience. Normally I would just abandon a book destined to be 1 or 2 stars in my estimation, but I am trying to read the 1790s at the moment, so I soldiered on.
But I won't waste any more breath or your time here attempting to convince you of this books demerits, other than:
(1) to say that I have never encountered so many abstract universal nouns in my life (and so few concrete particulars);
(2) I shall leave it to Mary Wollstonecraft (up next in my reading list) to dismantle his "arguments";
(3) the 2nd star is for those late specific criticisms, plus his Johnsonian way with a sentence—which, alas, when gathered in paragraphs, provided precious little Johnsonian delight, somehow...
(3a) Another reviewer called Burke'sprose "turgid, incoherent, and mean-spirited." I did not think it turgid, exactly, but it certainly felt centripetal in its apparent incoherence, and I would call it patrician rather than mean-spirited, though perhaps the former is merely the latter but with sterling-plate manners. In any event, if you read the irascibly garrulous, yet benevolent Johnson, a Tory's Tory, you will experience none this—and indeed come to love him much more than the aforementioned, wholly fictional uncle!
(4) I shall leave you with the tiniest taste of what I've just been through, below.
(5) I really recommend reading Cory Robin's instead... Here's my review of that book:
Well, it mostly got quite a bit worse after that update, I'm afraid, though it does get a BIT better about two-thirds of the way through, when Burke runs out of breath in terms of his rather Olympian "theoretical" defense of the pre-1789 property (a term which appears 128 times in this screed) relations in general and allows the sub-lunary a bit of a look-in, condescending to address some specific political realities in France, concerning which he certainly makes a number of valid criticisms—e.g. the the financialized nouveau-riche ("moneyed interests") simply displacing the landed aristocracy under the banner of universal liberty, whilst neither providing real liberty for the masses and also denuding the nation of certain ancient practices or institutions which did provide some real benefit).
All in all it was a most desultory experience. Normally I would just abandon a book destined to be 1 or 2 stars in my estimation, but I am trying to read the 1790s at the moment, so I soldiered on.
But I won't waste any more breath or your time here attempting to convince you of this books demerits, other than:
(1) to say that I have never encountered so many abstract universal nouns in my life (and so few concrete particulars);
(2) I shall leave it to Mary Wollstonecraft (up next in my reading list) to dismantle his "arguments";
(3) the 2nd star is for those late specific criticisms, plus his Johnsonian way with a sentence—which, alas, when gathered in paragraphs, provided precious little Johnsonian delight, somehow...
(3a) Another reviewer called Burke'sprose "turgid, incoherent, and mean-spirited." I did not think it turgid, exactly, but it certainly felt centripetal in its apparent incoherence, and I would call it patrician rather than mean-spirited, though perhaps the former is merely the latter but with sterling-plate manners. In any event, if you read the irascibly garrulous, yet benevolent Johnson, a Tory's Tory, you will experience none this—and indeed come to love him much more than the aforementioned, wholly fictional uncle!
(4) I shall leave you with the tiniest taste of what I've just been through, below.
(5) I really recommend reading Cory Robin's instead... Here's my review of that book:
April 3, 2018
Human flourishing is embedded in historical traditions, and any total revolution that intends to strip away this necessary embedment is dangerous. Actually, if we strip away historical traditions, Burke believed that there is nothing solid beneath. What is left is sheer violence and beastly force. Progression might not be as desirable as it sounds. Great insight, and highly relevant today!
July 11, 2020
4 June 2018
I read this book for a Government (Political Science) independent study class in college my senior year, either 1976 or 7.
I remember finding the book fascinating and a bit frustrating, since it was not what I thought it would be. It did not deal directly with the Terror, the Guillotine, the carnage, etc. It dealt with the form of the new republic, the distance from democratic controls on the bureaucracy and government powers, the lack of limits on governmental powers, etc.
Burke was a Whig, but a very moderate one (American 20th century type conservative?), not a radical (classical) liberal, so his critique of the French Revolution was not the same as mine or the authors I admire most. But, it seems to me that he did get at some quite fundamental problems with the French Revolution, and the later ideas of various reformers/revolutionaries, namely the German Social Democrats and American "progressives."
So how prescient is that - calling out some major flaws in ideologies that were developed 50-100-200 years later!?
I need to reread the paper I did in college summarizing and critiquing Burke again, as well as re-reading Burke's classic book itself.
I read this book for a Government (Political Science) independent study class in college my senior year, either 1976 or 7.
I remember finding the book fascinating and a bit frustrating, since it was not what I thought it would be. It did not deal directly with the Terror, the Guillotine, the carnage, etc. It dealt with the form of the new republic, the distance from democratic controls on the bureaucracy and government powers, the lack of limits on governmental powers, etc.
Burke was a Whig, but a very moderate one (American 20th century type conservative?), not a radical (classical) liberal, so his critique of the French Revolution was not the same as mine or the authors I admire most. But, it seems to me that he did get at some quite fundamental problems with the French Revolution, and the later ideas of various reformers/revolutionaries, namely the German Social Democrats and American "progressives."
So how prescient is that - calling out some major flaws in ideologies that were developed 50-100-200 years later!?
I need to reread the paper I did in college summarizing and critiquing Burke again, as well as re-reading Burke's classic book itself.
March 12, 2025
A timeless critique of revolutionary idealism. Burke offers profound insights into the dangers of radical change and the importance of preserving tradition. One thing that especially struck me was Burke's ability to foresee the chaos and violence that would follow the French Revolution. His warnings against the unchecked pursuit of abstract ideals, such as liberty and equality, without regard for historical context and societal stability, draw eerie parallels with the militant, anti-white leftism we see being promulgated today. Burke's emphasis on the value of gradual reform over abrupt upheaval strikes at the very root of what it really means to be a “nation� and the subtle intricacies that bind a people together. In today’s world, where the credibility of the post-WW2 liberal world order seems to be at its most fragile state in its existence, his defense of inherited institutions, customs, and the "wisdom of the ages" challenges readers to reconsider the merits of tradition in maintaining social order.Some passages require careful rereading to fully grasp Burke's meaning, which may deter those looking for a more accessible text. Nonetheless, the effort is well worth it. In sum,Reflections on the Revolution in Franceis a brilliant and enduring critique of revolutionary fervor and a powerful defense of prudence, tradition, and incremental progress; all of the ideas that make up what we now associate with modern day conservatism.
November 17, 2015
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Burke's Prefatory Note
--Reflections on the Revolution in France
Notes
Bibliographical Note
Curriculum Vitae of Edmund Burke
Introduction
Burke's Prefatory Note
--Reflections on the Revolution in France
Notes
Bibliographical Note
Curriculum Vitae of Edmund Burke
March 23, 2023
If I didn't despise the French Revolution before, the following would be enough (and to be clear, I don't particularly dislike Protestants): "on 24 December 1789, French Jews and Protestants had been accorded full civil rights by a decree of the National Assembly."
December 17, 2018
In 1789, the French people decided enough was enough. Famine made food prices soar to unknown heights, culminating in revolts, particularly violent in the Paris region. This eruption of violence didn’t take place in a vacuum. For centuries, the landed nobility and the church sides with the crown in a parasitical oppression of the people at large.
France, from Louis XIV to Louis XVI was a bankrupt country. Absolute monarchy had resulted in a series of expensive and lost colonial wars against the English, the ravages of financial Ponzi schemes (the Mississippi scandal trumping all), and a centralized bureaucracy, seated in Paris, that controlled all of France’s regions, in effect starving all industrial development and keeping France in the state of a backward agricultural country.
This was a feudal country, were landed wealth determined power relationships and the church, in their alliance with the crown, reaped huge benefits in land and money from the French state. For the past one and a half century, France saw the gradual rise of a new middle class, rooted in money capital, consisting of small tradesmen, speculators, money lenders and successful merchants and producers.
When the people literally starved to death and rose in revolt against the powers that be, the new middle class smelled opportunity and joined forces. In effect, the bourgeoisie used the mob as a tool to usurp power and become the new rulers. When the Bastille was stormed and Louis XVI arrested and was humiliatingly marched through Paris, the fate of France was sealed.
The French Revolution saw the destruction of the church, the old elites and the crown. Land and property was confiscated by the new state, partly as reward to new elites but mostly to pay off the national debt. A new constitution was drawn up, a new elective system erected from scratch, in short: a whole new state was created. The builders of this constitution and form of this state were highly inspired by the intellectuals we know as the philosophes. Atheist, anticlerical, rational, liberal self-made men; men like Voltaire, Diderot, Condorcet and d’Alembert.
In practice, this meant that the new French state, the National Assembly, was founded on the Enlightenment principles of liberty, equality and fraternity � with reason and science as the method and means to achieve this. Of course, the mob is less reasonable than the lonely philosophy, so the atheism and anticlericalism of the philosophes quickly resulted in anti-religious violence. The same pattern can be seen in the treatment of the old nobility and the king and his court.
Enter Edmund Burke.
Burke, an Irishman who joined the British Whigs and a highly controversial politician, looked around him and thought he could identify the same causes of the French Revolution in his own society. Afraid that the revolutionary sentiments would jump across the Channel, he decided to publish a letter he wrote to a family affiliation living in France. In this letter, Reflections on the French Revolution (1790) he states his own thoughts on the Revolution and its dangers and future consequences.
Basically, Burke saw a combination of similar conditions and the presence of similar persons as a potential fuse to spark off the Revolution. Just like France, Great Britain was facing national bankruptcy and political dislocations. And just like France, Great Britain saw the presence of religious dissenters, rebellious public intellectuals, and money lenders and speculators.
His hope lay in the fact that the British were pragmatists, as opposed to the French idealists. He calls the French metaphysical � in the sense that the ideas of liberty and equality were deemed to be universal, existing things, ideas, that should determine society. Building society from metaphysical principles (such as the Rights of Man) leads to chaos, violence, and ultimately, a coup d’etat by the new power-hungry elites. According to Burke, respect for history and existing institutions should be the guiding principles for politics � pragmatism instead of idealism.
Burke sees humanity as the guardians of institutions, morality, religion and traditions. We inherit those from our predecessors and should be cautious and respectful towards this inheritance, so as to pass these to posterity. Who are we to start from scratch and mess up our children’s future?
This, in essence, is the eternal battle between conservatism (Burke) and progressivism (Condorcet). The Enlightenment fostered hopes of human progression: through science, reason and humanism, man could better the world and make it a better place for his offspring. But change brings dangers; destruction of existing power structures leads to power vacuums in which new elites will step in, leading to chaos and war. Burke is seen as the founder of modern conservatism, which is spot on (in my opinion), but his thoughts should be placed firmly in the context of the French Revolution, its dire consequences, and the contemporary fear of imitation in Great Britain.
(Just like with Adam Smith, who is always hailed by capitalists and anti-capitalists alike; Burke is usually mentioned by conservatists and progressives alike. Smith’s liberalism can’t be understood without rooting his ideas in the contemporary mercantile system; just like Burke’s conservatism can’t be understood without taking the French Revolution into consideration.)
Burke’s ideas can be summarized fairly easy:
- The most stable, prosperous and just society is a constitutional monarchy through inheritance.
- In such a society, the landed nobility, and its interests in the status quo, act like a bulwark against despotism and anarchy.
- Religion is the foundation of civil society, offering moral principles to the people.
- The people should revere both the crown, the nobility, as well as the church.
If change is necessary � Burke wasn’t as stagnant and backward-looking as some progressives claim � it should be through deliberation by those who understand the matters at hand. Time is important, gradual change at a slow pace is to be preferred to chaos and conflict. Also, past conflicts should not be used to decide matters in the here and now: revenge for religious persecution or anticlericalism are to be avoided. For example, Protestant revenge for the Bartholomew Massacre in the sixteenth century is no principle for Catholic persecution in the eighteenth century. Both points � change through deliberation and avoidance of historicity � are usually left out of any criticism of Burke’s ideas. This is flawed analysis � the man said, so should be credited for it.
After setting out his principles (very lengthy, very boring), Burke ventures to criticize the situation in France. He does this, with continuous comparison with England. As his yardstick, he uses three criteria: (1) population growth, (2) national wealth, and (3) cultivation (of land, architecture, philosophy, defence, etc.). According to him, France scores bad on all accounts, at least compared to England; and scored much better under the Ancien Regime than under the new National Assembly � he specifically fears for France’s future. He somewhere says France needs many years, decades, to recover from the damage done by the revolutionaries.
Burke criticizes the new French constitution (very metaphysical, very unjust); the flaws in France’s executive power (a king without power and reverence); judiciary system (corrupt); the army (a disloyal rabble, easily falling prey to usurpers); the revenue of the French state (less income, less prosperity); and the reciprocal relationship between all these factors.
According to him, the confiscation of the lands of religious and aristocratic elites by the National Assembly is the worst evil. Together with the new constitution, this led to the destruction of the clerical and noble classes. What remains? People with money. Pretty soon, this will result in an oligarchy, in which money reigns supreme and morality is corrupted. The bourgeois, the new rulers, don’t care about civil society, all they care about is profit. This, at least according to Burke, is the inevitable result of the French Revolution, and it will, again according to Burke, herald the degeneration of the French people.
This, in short, is the most representative summary of Burke’s ideas and criticisms I can offer.
I immediately agree with his fear of revolution and his insistence on realism and conserving the important. I also agree with him on his (not often mentioned) nuances about change through deliberation and the need to leave the past be the past (at least in religious and philosophical matters).
But this is as far as I can go. I’m more of an Enlightenment guy than a reactionary. And I certainly am not a religious guy � at all. In my opinion, Burke’s ideas easily and quickly lead into apathy. Keeping the status quo for status quo’s sake, looking away from injustice in the act. Change is necessary, progression is what offers us hope, guidance and motivation to continue. Sometimes, change is needed instantaneously; not acting or acting too slow will have consequences as well. In a time where change � technological, economic, scientific � happens ever faster and the changes themselves have ever more impact on how we live our lives, conservatism might be a brake on adaptation � with all its dire consequences. Then again, not minding Burke’s warning might have dire consequences as well. Ah, the ultimate paradox�
While giving Burke due credit for his caution, I cannot at all agree with his own ideal society. His picture of a just society is a stagnant pool of stinking water. Of course a conservative member of the nobility is for keeping the status quo. It’s just, most of us aren’t part of the nobility or the clerical elites. In this sense, I sympathize more with the French philosophes Burke so despises, than with the Irish Whig. At least well-off intellectuals in France could see the justice in liberty and equality for all, notwithstanding inherited wealth. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness� is incompatible with either monarchy or aristocracy, in my opinion.
Reading Burke’s Reflections has brought the conservative-progressive-dilemma again to the fore in my mind. It is a very interesting book, even if you don’t agree with any, most or all of his thoughts. It still has lessons to teach us in the twenty-first century, and as a historical document it has its significance in the Enlightenment dialectic. It is pretty unreadable if one isn’t aware of contemporary events and ideas, though.
France, from Louis XIV to Louis XVI was a bankrupt country. Absolute monarchy had resulted in a series of expensive and lost colonial wars against the English, the ravages of financial Ponzi schemes (the Mississippi scandal trumping all), and a centralized bureaucracy, seated in Paris, that controlled all of France’s regions, in effect starving all industrial development and keeping France in the state of a backward agricultural country.
This was a feudal country, were landed wealth determined power relationships and the church, in their alliance with the crown, reaped huge benefits in land and money from the French state. For the past one and a half century, France saw the gradual rise of a new middle class, rooted in money capital, consisting of small tradesmen, speculators, money lenders and successful merchants and producers.
When the people literally starved to death and rose in revolt against the powers that be, the new middle class smelled opportunity and joined forces. In effect, the bourgeoisie used the mob as a tool to usurp power and become the new rulers. When the Bastille was stormed and Louis XVI arrested and was humiliatingly marched through Paris, the fate of France was sealed.
The French Revolution saw the destruction of the church, the old elites and the crown. Land and property was confiscated by the new state, partly as reward to new elites but mostly to pay off the national debt. A new constitution was drawn up, a new elective system erected from scratch, in short: a whole new state was created. The builders of this constitution and form of this state were highly inspired by the intellectuals we know as the philosophes. Atheist, anticlerical, rational, liberal self-made men; men like Voltaire, Diderot, Condorcet and d’Alembert.
In practice, this meant that the new French state, the National Assembly, was founded on the Enlightenment principles of liberty, equality and fraternity � with reason and science as the method and means to achieve this. Of course, the mob is less reasonable than the lonely philosophy, so the atheism and anticlericalism of the philosophes quickly resulted in anti-religious violence. The same pattern can be seen in the treatment of the old nobility and the king and his court.
Enter Edmund Burke.
Burke, an Irishman who joined the British Whigs and a highly controversial politician, looked around him and thought he could identify the same causes of the French Revolution in his own society. Afraid that the revolutionary sentiments would jump across the Channel, he decided to publish a letter he wrote to a family affiliation living in France. In this letter, Reflections on the French Revolution (1790) he states his own thoughts on the Revolution and its dangers and future consequences.
Basically, Burke saw a combination of similar conditions and the presence of similar persons as a potential fuse to spark off the Revolution. Just like France, Great Britain was facing national bankruptcy and political dislocations. And just like France, Great Britain saw the presence of religious dissenters, rebellious public intellectuals, and money lenders and speculators.
His hope lay in the fact that the British were pragmatists, as opposed to the French idealists. He calls the French metaphysical � in the sense that the ideas of liberty and equality were deemed to be universal, existing things, ideas, that should determine society. Building society from metaphysical principles (such as the Rights of Man) leads to chaos, violence, and ultimately, a coup d’etat by the new power-hungry elites. According to Burke, respect for history and existing institutions should be the guiding principles for politics � pragmatism instead of idealism.
Burke sees humanity as the guardians of institutions, morality, religion and traditions. We inherit those from our predecessors and should be cautious and respectful towards this inheritance, so as to pass these to posterity. Who are we to start from scratch and mess up our children’s future?
This, in essence, is the eternal battle between conservatism (Burke) and progressivism (Condorcet). The Enlightenment fostered hopes of human progression: through science, reason and humanism, man could better the world and make it a better place for his offspring. But change brings dangers; destruction of existing power structures leads to power vacuums in which new elites will step in, leading to chaos and war. Burke is seen as the founder of modern conservatism, which is spot on (in my opinion), but his thoughts should be placed firmly in the context of the French Revolution, its dire consequences, and the contemporary fear of imitation in Great Britain.
(Just like with Adam Smith, who is always hailed by capitalists and anti-capitalists alike; Burke is usually mentioned by conservatists and progressives alike. Smith’s liberalism can’t be understood without rooting his ideas in the contemporary mercantile system; just like Burke’s conservatism can’t be understood without taking the French Revolution into consideration.)
Burke’s ideas can be summarized fairly easy:
- The most stable, prosperous and just society is a constitutional monarchy through inheritance.
- In such a society, the landed nobility, and its interests in the status quo, act like a bulwark against despotism and anarchy.
- Religion is the foundation of civil society, offering moral principles to the people.
- The people should revere both the crown, the nobility, as well as the church.
If change is necessary � Burke wasn’t as stagnant and backward-looking as some progressives claim � it should be through deliberation by those who understand the matters at hand. Time is important, gradual change at a slow pace is to be preferred to chaos and conflict. Also, past conflicts should not be used to decide matters in the here and now: revenge for religious persecution or anticlericalism are to be avoided. For example, Protestant revenge for the Bartholomew Massacre in the sixteenth century is no principle for Catholic persecution in the eighteenth century. Both points � change through deliberation and avoidance of historicity � are usually left out of any criticism of Burke’s ideas. This is flawed analysis � the man said, so should be credited for it.
After setting out his principles (very lengthy, very boring), Burke ventures to criticize the situation in France. He does this, with continuous comparison with England. As his yardstick, he uses three criteria: (1) population growth, (2) national wealth, and (3) cultivation (of land, architecture, philosophy, defence, etc.). According to him, France scores bad on all accounts, at least compared to England; and scored much better under the Ancien Regime than under the new National Assembly � he specifically fears for France’s future. He somewhere says France needs many years, decades, to recover from the damage done by the revolutionaries.
Burke criticizes the new French constitution (very metaphysical, very unjust); the flaws in France’s executive power (a king without power and reverence); judiciary system (corrupt); the army (a disloyal rabble, easily falling prey to usurpers); the revenue of the French state (less income, less prosperity); and the reciprocal relationship between all these factors.
According to him, the confiscation of the lands of religious and aristocratic elites by the National Assembly is the worst evil. Together with the new constitution, this led to the destruction of the clerical and noble classes. What remains? People with money. Pretty soon, this will result in an oligarchy, in which money reigns supreme and morality is corrupted. The bourgeois, the new rulers, don’t care about civil society, all they care about is profit. This, at least according to Burke, is the inevitable result of the French Revolution, and it will, again according to Burke, herald the degeneration of the French people.
This, in short, is the most representative summary of Burke’s ideas and criticisms I can offer.
I immediately agree with his fear of revolution and his insistence on realism and conserving the important. I also agree with him on his (not often mentioned) nuances about change through deliberation and the need to leave the past be the past (at least in religious and philosophical matters).
But this is as far as I can go. I’m more of an Enlightenment guy than a reactionary. And I certainly am not a religious guy � at all. In my opinion, Burke’s ideas easily and quickly lead into apathy. Keeping the status quo for status quo’s sake, looking away from injustice in the act. Change is necessary, progression is what offers us hope, guidance and motivation to continue. Sometimes, change is needed instantaneously; not acting or acting too slow will have consequences as well. In a time where change � technological, economic, scientific � happens ever faster and the changes themselves have ever more impact on how we live our lives, conservatism might be a brake on adaptation � with all its dire consequences. Then again, not minding Burke’s warning might have dire consequences as well. Ah, the ultimate paradox�
While giving Burke due credit for his caution, I cannot at all agree with his own ideal society. His picture of a just society is a stagnant pool of stinking water. Of course a conservative member of the nobility is for keeping the status quo. It’s just, most of us aren’t part of the nobility or the clerical elites. In this sense, I sympathize more with the French philosophes Burke so despises, than with the Irish Whig. At least well-off intellectuals in France could see the justice in liberty and equality for all, notwithstanding inherited wealth. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness� is incompatible with either monarchy or aristocracy, in my opinion.
Reading Burke’s Reflections has brought the conservative-progressive-dilemma again to the fore in my mind. It is a very interesting book, even if you don’t agree with any, most or all of his thoughts. It still has lessons to teach us in the twenty-first century, and as a historical document it has its significance in the Enlightenment dialectic. It is pretty unreadable if one isn’t aware of contemporary events and ideas, though.
June 1, 2023
Edmund Burke, the conservative philosopher, held back his congratulations on the newfound liberty in France. He advocated for a cautious approach to change, desiring a deeper understanding of how it harmonized with governance, morality, and religion. For Burke, these elements were essential; without their embrace, liberty could not truly endure. The efficacy of liberty, as he observed, resided in individuals' ability to act as they pleased. Therefore, prudence dictated that we first discern their inclinations before offering our felicitations. Burke ardently pursued a happiness rooted in virtue, attainable by all regardless of social standing—a genuine moral equality that bound humanity together. In his wisdom, he acknowledged that government, a testament to human ingenuity, existed to fulfill human needs, and individuals had the right to have those needs addressed through wise governance. One such need was the desire for restraints on passions, a safeguard crucial beyond the boundaries of civil society. Thus, both the limitations on individuals and their liberties were to be regarded as rights.
The rights of men may be elusive, but not impossible to perceive. Society inevitably calls for a regulating force to curb the caprices of will and desire, for as internal control weakens, external control must correspondingly strengthen. Immutable, like the cosmic order, intemperate minds are destined to be shackled, their passions forging the very chains that bind them.
Yet, what is liberty without wisdom and virtue? It assumes the guise of a most grievous calamity, a manifestation of folly, vice, and insanity devoid of restraint. One may justifiably question Burke's conception of freedom and be drawn to an alternative vision that encompasses not only negative liberties but also the essential resources and opportunities that empower individuals to realize their full potential.
The rights of men may be elusive, but not impossible to perceive. Society inevitably calls for a regulating force to curb the caprices of will and desire, for as internal control weakens, external control must correspondingly strengthen. Immutable, like the cosmic order, intemperate minds are destined to be shackled, their passions forging the very chains that bind them.
Yet, what is liberty without wisdom and virtue? It assumes the guise of a most grievous calamity, a manifestation of folly, vice, and insanity devoid of restraint. One may justifiably question Burke's conception of freedom and be drawn to an alternative vision that encompasses not only negative liberties but also the essential resources and opportunities that empower individuals to realize their full potential.
July 19, 2011
How decayed is contemporary political discourse? So decayed that libertarians and small market conservatives consider Burke to be their forebear, and Marx to be the forebear of Democrats. I imagine that Marx and Burke would much rather have a beer with each other than with any of their lilliputian, soi-disant followers.
So, just to be clear. Burke claims that a society functions best when it has a completely stable set of institutions as its base: civil society, landed property, and a state/church marriage. Only if these persist will liberty give us worthwhile projects, rather than muck; only if they persist is capitalism and financial speculation anything other than a casino in which the rich get richer and the poor get shafted.
These institutions necessarily require what today we think of as 'government intervention.' The poor should be cared for; the benefits of social life should accrue to all, and not just the rich; the profits of the wealthy should be re-invested in productive enterprise and not frittered away on luxury or the aforementioned casino.
Burke is no more compatible with contemporary, so-called 'conservatism' than Marx is. They both saw the dangers of unrestrained capitalism. They both saw the dangers of 'utopian' revolutionary planning (although neither conservatives nor Marxist read those bits of Marx, for obvious reasons). Admittedly, Burke was a sycophantic, power-hungry hack; and Marx went from being a lunatic pamphleteer to an impressive but ineffectual research academic. Neither of them are role-models. But at least they were willing and able to think - actually *think* - about politics, rather than just spouting party line drivel.
All that aside, Burke's analysis of the French Revolution's violence is tendentious, sometimes slipping over into yellow journalism rather than convincing critique. He's not always wrong, but he is always hyper-polemical, and that's never very constructive. His praise of English political institutions is far more interesting, as is his defense of landed property, although it's hard to distinguish the philosophical claims (need for stability in society) from the class-based ideology (stability is produced by Whig aristocrats). And his rhetoric with regard to the dangers of democracy (and, therefore, the libertarianism of the contemporary right) needs to be taken on board by anyone who cares that we're about to destroy our economic, social and environmental heritage: "The will of the many and their interest must very often differ, and great will be the difference when they make an evil choice� government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions." "The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints� liberty, when men act in bodies, is power."
The solution for the problems of democracy is not, alas, more democracy, as nice as it would be to think so.
Also, the introduction to this Hackett edition is great, although Pocock doesn't really *show* that Burke wasn't in a rage against a proto-bourgeoisie. He does state it over and over again, but it doesn't seem important enough a point to make, considering that Burke most certainly was in a rage against some people an awful lot like the bourgeoisie of the later nineteenth century.
So, just to be clear. Burke claims that a society functions best when it has a completely stable set of institutions as its base: civil society, landed property, and a state/church marriage. Only if these persist will liberty give us worthwhile projects, rather than muck; only if they persist is capitalism and financial speculation anything other than a casino in which the rich get richer and the poor get shafted.
These institutions necessarily require what today we think of as 'government intervention.' The poor should be cared for; the benefits of social life should accrue to all, and not just the rich; the profits of the wealthy should be re-invested in productive enterprise and not frittered away on luxury or the aforementioned casino.
Burke is no more compatible with contemporary, so-called 'conservatism' than Marx is. They both saw the dangers of unrestrained capitalism. They both saw the dangers of 'utopian' revolutionary planning (although neither conservatives nor Marxist read those bits of Marx, for obvious reasons). Admittedly, Burke was a sycophantic, power-hungry hack; and Marx went from being a lunatic pamphleteer to an impressive but ineffectual research academic. Neither of them are role-models. But at least they were willing and able to think - actually *think* - about politics, rather than just spouting party line drivel.
All that aside, Burke's analysis of the French Revolution's violence is tendentious, sometimes slipping over into yellow journalism rather than convincing critique. He's not always wrong, but he is always hyper-polemical, and that's never very constructive. His praise of English political institutions is far more interesting, as is his defense of landed property, although it's hard to distinguish the philosophical claims (need for stability in society) from the class-based ideology (stability is produced by Whig aristocrats). And his rhetoric with regard to the dangers of democracy (and, therefore, the libertarianism of the contemporary right) needs to be taken on board by anyone who cares that we're about to destroy our economic, social and environmental heritage: "The will of the many and their interest must very often differ, and great will be the difference when they make an evil choice� government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions." "The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints� liberty, when men act in bodies, is power."
The solution for the problems of democracy is not, alas, more democracy, as nice as it would be to think so.
Also, the introduction to this Hackett edition is great, although Pocock doesn't really *show* that Burke wasn't in a rage against a proto-bourgeoisie. He does state it over and over again, but it doesn't seem important enough a point to make, considering that Burke most certainly was in a rage against some people an awful lot like the bourgeoisie of the later nineteenth century.
May 10, 2024
The foundational text of Anglo-conservatism. Burke made some good observations. He saw that the French Revolution would end disastrously because its abstract foundations, purportedly rational, ignored the complexities of human nature and society. He advocated central roles for private property, tradition, and 'prejudice' (adherence to values regardless of their rational basis) to give citizens a stake in their nation's social order. He argued for gradual, constitutional reform, not revolution. Still, this book is confused, rambling, and a piece of intellectual jingoism. Here is a list if its shoddy observations:
There is a defense of nobility and clergy. Nobles are actually the best men and talented. This was later proven wrong on the battlefields of Europe.
Britain has not changed in 400 years.
The Revolution is the product of vain and dangerous intellectuals.
Revolution is illegal.
Britain’s Constitution should be the model for all others, while Britain ignores the ideas of all others.
Burke failed to see the value of revolution, how the revolution was in keeping with French traditions, and that human passions and violence are part of that complex human nature he supposedly swoons over. I doubt Burke's intentions though. After all, this is a man who said famine relief was an affront to god's laws, which are coincidentally the laws of the emerging British capitalist order. Robert Filmer was at least a better writer and suffered from fewer holes in his reasoning.
There is a defense of nobility and clergy. Nobles are actually the best men and talented. This was later proven wrong on the battlefields of Europe.
Britain has not changed in 400 years.
The Revolution is the product of vain and dangerous intellectuals.
Revolution is illegal.
Britain’s Constitution should be the model for all others, while Britain ignores the ideas of all others.
Burke failed to see the value of revolution, how the revolution was in keeping with French traditions, and that human passions and violence are part of that complex human nature he supposedly swoons over. I doubt Burke's intentions though. After all, this is a man who said famine relief was an affront to god's laws, which are coincidentally the laws of the emerging British capitalist order. Robert Filmer was at least a better writer and suffered from fewer holes in his reasoning.
November 20, 2024
This is a wonderful experience to read through this. It certainly is nice to get some opposing views of the French Revolution. There are even references made towards the American constitution and government to compare and contrast the somewhat odd mistakes the National Assembly made in their constitution. Truly a masterpiece as well, very well written. In my edition is an additional correspondence sent to a member of the National Assembly who responded to the original letter sent to the man in Paris. This additional correspondence is nice because it gives you a bit of an insight into the mind of Edmund Burke and the grievances he had with Rousseau’s political philosophy. I am always cautious because Rousseau, as Burke says, said a lot of good and beneficial things, but I honestly cannot see a Whig empathizing with ANY of Rousseau’s philosophy. But particularly I think it was that Rousseau disliked the Catholic convent, but for reasons unlike the Atheistic reasons for which Edmund Burke suggests. Regardless of this somewhat groundless controversy (which I cannot align myself with, due to Rousseau’s theories of government being very wise) and a few other principles espoused by Burke that I can’t reconcile, I still think this is a wonderfully well writtten document, particularly for some very philosophical passages regarding the nature of power overall.
Would recommend. 5/5
Would recommend. 5/5
April 11, 2020
"...the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever."
The seminal text of contemporary Anglo-American conservatism and a continuing inspiration to classical liberals everywhere. Burke channeled his outrage over the French Revolution into a broadside against the horrors of the barbarous and destructive revolutionaries and the tyranny of their democratic majorities. He instead revered the 1689 Bill of Rights and the tradition of English constitutionalism embodied by the Magna Carta, Coke and Blackstone as "the fixed form of a constitution whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of long experience and an increasing public strength and national prosperity." Essential to any reading of the Western tradition.
The seminal text of contemporary Anglo-American conservatism and a continuing inspiration to classical liberals everywhere. Burke channeled his outrage over the French Revolution into a broadside against the horrors of the barbarous and destructive revolutionaries and the tyranny of their democratic majorities. He instead revered the 1689 Bill of Rights and the tradition of English constitutionalism embodied by the Magna Carta, Coke and Blackstone as "the fixed form of a constitution whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of long experience and an increasing public strength and national prosperity." Essential to any reading of the Western tradition.
August 6, 2008
Burke published this book before Napoleon took power, before the bloodbath of the purges, before the French had beheaded their king. Yet, he predicted that all of that would happen. At first blush, I thought that the man must be a prophet. He fortold it all, in the exact order it would occur, and understood exactly why it would happen. Since that first reading, I have read quite a bit of history, and have learned how Burke did it. He was a genius for certain, but his extraordinary insight came from his extensive study of history. Similar events have occured more than once, under similar circumstances. As Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Burke remembered a broad span of the past.
His genius extends to more than just prediction. His breadth of understanding of political forces is astounding. He was a British Whig, which was the liberal party of the time, yet he has been claimed by Conservatives as their founding father! He understood the full breadth of political philosophy, and explained it all with crystal clerity. Here is a sample from either end:
From the liberal side--"The world on the whole will gain by liberty, without which virtue cannot exist."
From the conservative side--"The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please. We ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints."
How true that last quote proved, as the British (and Americans) went from fawning admiration of the French Revolution, to appalled repugnance, within very few years. Read him. It doesn't get any better than this.
His genius extends to more than just prediction. His breadth of understanding of political forces is astounding. He was a British Whig, which was the liberal party of the time, yet he has been claimed by Conservatives as their founding father! He understood the full breadth of political philosophy, and explained it all with crystal clerity. Here is a sample from either end:
From the liberal side--"The world on the whole will gain by liberty, without which virtue cannot exist."
From the conservative side--"The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please. We ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints."
How true that last quote proved, as the British (and Americans) went from fawning admiration of the French Revolution, to appalled repugnance, within very few years. Read him. It doesn't get any better than this.
August 12, 2016
- با این کتاب در مجله� مهرنامه آشنا شدم. البته، به دلیل علاقها� که به محافظهکار� پیدا کردهام� با نام ادموند برک آشنایی داشتم و وقتی دیدم که مجله� مهرنامه پروندها� در مورد او کار کرده خیلی خوشحال شدم، هر چند به نظرم رسید که به جز مترجم کتاب، هیچ کدام از نویسندگان مقالات این پرونده آشناییا� با محافظهکار� و ادموند برک ندارند و اصلاً داخل موضوع حرف نزدهان�. مترجم کتاب، آقای سهیل صفاری، معلوم بود که به موضوع آگاهی دارند و محافظهکار� را با انقلاب ایران هم تطبیق داده بودند، منتهی اشکال کار ایشان در ترجمه� خود کتاب است که اصلاً روان نیست.
- کتاب فصلبند� ندارد. در واقع یک نامه� بلند است، بدون هر نوع تقسیمبند� و فاصلهگذار�.
- یکی از نکات مهم این کتاب این است که در مورد امور واقعی حرف میزن�. نکته به نکته� امور واقعی را مطرح میکن� و مشکلات آنه� را بیان میکن�. محافظهکاری� همان طور که حسین بشیریه در کتاب لیبرالیسم و محافظهکار� از قول محافظهکارا� میگوید� ایدوئولوژی نیست. در این کتاب هم ادموند برک بر ضد طرحه� و نقشهها� کلی، که از عقل نظری برمیخیزد� موضع میگیر�. محافظهکار� یعنی اینکه قرار نیست دنیا را بر اساس یک طرح کلی منظم کنیم. دانه به دانه� امور واقعی باید بررسی شود و در مورد تکت� آنه� فکر کرد و با توجه به شرایط واقعی تصمیم گرفت.
به همین خاطر، خیلی از قسمتها� کتاب را، به خصوص اواخر کتاب که وارد مسائل مالی و گندکاریا� میشو� که انقلابیون فرانسوی در این زمینه به بار آوردهاند� چندان برای من مفهوم نیست. چون من اطلاعاتی در این زمینه ندارم که بتوانم از نقد آن شرایط سردربیاروم.
نقل قول:
«شرایط (که برای بسیاری آقایان محلی از اعراب ندارد) در واقعیت، به هر اصل سیاسی تمایز میبخش� و اثرات آن را تعیین میکن�.» ص 22
- کتاب فصلبند� ندارد. در واقع یک نامه� بلند است، بدون هر نوع تقسیمبند� و فاصلهگذار�.
- یکی از نکات مهم این کتاب این است که در مورد امور واقعی حرف میزن�. نکته به نکته� امور واقعی را مطرح میکن� و مشکلات آنه� را بیان میکن�. محافظهکاری� همان طور که حسین بشیریه در کتاب لیبرالیسم و محافظهکار� از قول محافظهکارا� میگوید� ایدوئولوژی نیست. در این کتاب هم ادموند برک بر ضد طرحه� و نقشهها� کلی، که از عقل نظری برمیخیزد� موضع میگیر�. محافظهکار� یعنی اینکه قرار نیست دنیا را بر اساس یک طرح کلی منظم کنیم. دانه به دانه� امور واقعی باید بررسی شود و در مورد تکت� آنه� فکر کرد و با توجه به شرایط واقعی تصمیم گرفت.
به همین خاطر، خیلی از قسمتها� کتاب را، به خصوص اواخر کتاب که وارد مسائل مالی و گندکاریا� میشو� که انقلابیون فرانسوی در این زمینه به بار آوردهاند� چندان برای من مفهوم نیست. چون من اطلاعاتی در این زمینه ندارم که بتوانم از نقد آن شرایط سردربیاروم.
نقل قول:
«شرایط (که برای بسیاری آقایان محلی از اعراب ندارد) در واقعیت، به هر اصل سیاسی تمایز میبخش� و اثرات آن را تعیین میکن�.» ص 22
August 23, 2024
In this book, Burke makes a comprehensive censure of both the hypothetical and applied aspects of the Revolution. He points out the hazards of intangible and abstract theorising, but is faithful enough to provide for an alternative mode of social progression. Unlike Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) and Louis Gabriel de Bonald (1754-1840), who outrightly protect orthodoxy and totalitarianism, Burke provides a framework for change with continuity.
He says: "A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. Without such means it might even risk the loss of that part of the constitution which it wished the most religiously to preserve."
As Burke points out, these two principles of conservation and correction are operational in England during the critical periods of the Restoration and the Revolution, when England did not have a king. But in both these critical times, a totally new one did not replace the entire edifice of the old order.
Instead, a corrective mechanism is achicved to rectify the deficiencies within the existing constitutional framework. As such, it balances the old and the new.
Burke criticises Jacobinism for its blanket assault on established religion, outdated constitutional preparations and the institution of property, which he sees as the source of political astuteness in a country. He often uses the term "prejudice", by which he means attachment to conventional practices and institutions.
These provide a bulwark against sweeping changes, particularly those that follow from a rational critique. He does not support everything that is ancient, but only those that hold society together by providing order and stability.
His chief audience in this book is the aristocracy and the upper middle class of English society, which he perceived to be the upholders of stability and order.
He confronted the English ruling class to retort correctly to the predicament of the French Queen, or else it would reflect the lack of gallantry and validate that the British political order was not more ostentatious to that of the Continent.
2024 addendum: This book incorporates the staple of Burke's philosophic concepts. He assaults the theory of natural rights, absolute freedom, egalitarianism, social equality, popular sovereignty, general will, and nonfigurative ethics of change and revolution based on reason. He places crucial stress on prescription, presumption and prejudice as being more important than reason for the functioning of government. Reason is integrally preventive, powerless to untie the enigma of the universe, for it discounts the roles played by desire, prejudgment and custom. Burke further goes on to emphasize that society is not a process of cognizant creation, but characterizes permanence and conglomeration between generations. He also dismisses atomistic individualism as hollow, for individuals are born within a society. The individual finds serenity and a sense of ‘fitting� only in a society, hence, more than the individual, it is the family which is seen as the rudimentary social component. He also supports discrimination among human beings, and supports the usual assembling of things. Like Adam Smith, he stresses the importance of preserving and protecting property. He favours accretion of wealth, rights of inheritance and the need to empower property owners. While Burke is socially conventional, he is open-minded in economics, the two being glued together rather awkwardly. Very awkwardly, I’d say.
Burke was never exposed to mass-society, and hence his distrust for democracy. He was a prisoner of his age. One must be mindful of his times before putting him up to the sword.
He says: "A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. Without such means it might even risk the loss of that part of the constitution which it wished the most religiously to preserve."
As Burke points out, these two principles of conservation and correction are operational in England during the critical periods of the Restoration and the Revolution, when England did not have a king. But in both these critical times, a totally new one did not replace the entire edifice of the old order.
Instead, a corrective mechanism is achicved to rectify the deficiencies within the existing constitutional framework. As such, it balances the old and the new.
Burke criticises Jacobinism for its blanket assault on established religion, outdated constitutional preparations and the institution of property, which he sees as the source of political astuteness in a country. He often uses the term "prejudice", by which he means attachment to conventional practices and institutions.
These provide a bulwark against sweeping changes, particularly those that follow from a rational critique. He does not support everything that is ancient, but only those that hold society together by providing order and stability.
His chief audience in this book is the aristocracy and the upper middle class of English society, which he perceived to be the upholders of stability and order.
He confronted the English ruling class to retort correctly to the predicament of the French Queen, or else it would reflect the lack of gallantry and validate that the British political order was not more ostentatious to that of the Continent.
2024 addendum: This book incorporates the staple of Burke's philosophic concepts. He assaults the theory of natural rights, absolute freedom, egalitarianism, social equality, popular sovereignty, general will, and nonfigurative ethics of change and revolution based on reason. He places crucial stress on prescription, presumption and prejudice as being more important than reason for the functioning of government. Reason is integrally preventive, powerless to untie the enigma of the universe, for it discounts the roles played by desire, prejudgment and custom. Burke further goes on to emphasize that society is not a process of cognizant creation, but characterizes permanence and conglomeration between generations. He also dismisses atomistic individualism as hollow, for individuals are born within a society. The individual finds serenity and a sense of ‘fitting� only in a society, hence, more than the individual, it is the family which is seen as the rudimentary social component. He also supports discrimination among human beings, and supports the usual assembling of things. Like Adam Smith, he stresses the importance of preserving and protecting property. He favours accretion of wealth, rights of inheritance and the need to empower property owners. While Burke is socially conventional, he is open-minded in economics, the two being glued together rather awkwardly. Very awkwardly, I’d say.
Burke was never exposed to mass-society, and hence his distrust for democracy. He was a prisoner of his age. One must be mindful of his times before putting him up to the sword.
January 31, 2012
Ce livre a été édité à l'aube même de la révolution française, en 1790, par un anglais inquiet de la possible propagation des désordres continentaux sur son île. La Bastille a été prise et le roi est à Paris, suite à la marche des femmes d'octobre 89. Burke fait la somme de tout ce qu'un contempteur partial et acharné pouvait réunir comme arguments propre à flétrir l'honneur de la jeune assemblée constituante. Tout son ouvrage est un immense procès d'intention: les partisans de la Révolution sont soit des imbéciles aveuglés par des principes sans rapports avec la réalité et les circonstances, soit d'infâmes opportunistes, animés des plus noirs desseins sous couleur de é; mais tous sont invariablement traités avec le même mépris et la même haine. Tous les faits qu'il relate sont éclairés par le même angle, par la même lumière, ou plutôt les mêmes ténèbres. On pourrait facilement se laisser abuser par sa faconde, tant il maîtrise la rhétorique: en particulier l'éthos et le pathos, car pour le logos, il n'y a rien qui lie cette longue litanie désordonnée d'injures et de larmes. Toutes les actions de l'assemblée sont guidées selon lui par quelque conspiration secrète servant les intérêts occultes des puissances d'argent: les banquiers et les juifs sont ses cibles favorites, suivis de près par les philosophes et les écrivains. Au contraire, le roi, l'aristocratie et le clergé ne comptent dans leurs rangs que des individus mus par les intentions les plus pures et les plus nobles, et sont victimes d'une atroce secte d'athées qui n'aura de repos que lorsqu'elle aura ébranlé l'univers, et qu'on ne réduira à résipiscence sauf par l'extermination. Certaine de ses piques et ses saillies ne manquent pas de sel, et parviennent même à arracher des sourires, mais l'entêtement acharné, acrimonieux et aveugle qu'ils soutiennent fatiguent et irritent le lecteur pour de bon! Je comprends mieux les éclats de Michelet contre ce personnage. Et quelle différence avec la hauteur de vue d'un Tocqueville !
March 2, 2017
This is one of the key books I think everyone ought to read, if they want to understand the roots of the present crisis; the obsession with "equality"; and the revolutionary egalitarian spirit.
Burke was the real "conservative" (to be distinguished from the modern Tory!), and here he sets out his stall. This is a key book for all of us, for in this book you will find out what real "conservatism" (with a lowercase C) really is, and how it stands in contrast to the modern deviation. Modern Conservatives are really liberals (by which I mean full on social liberals) who have adopted the full liberal agenda and the revolutionary spirit.
Burke was the real "conservative" (to be distinguished from the modern Tory!), and here he sets out his stall. This is a key book for all of us, for in this book you will find out what real "conservatism" (with a lowercase C) really is, and how it stands in contrast to the modern deviation. Modern Conservatives are really liberals (by which I mean full on social liberals) who have adopted the full liberal agenda and the revolutionary spirit.
July 26, 2023
Edmund Burke was a smart man and a good writer. Had I been his contemporary, I would have enjoyed his company. However, his arguments against the French revolution are almost uniformly wrong and are presented in an entirely partisan manner, filled with appeals to religion, tradition and authority, dismissing the revolutionaries with scorn and taking positions that are more emotional than rational. Mr. Burke knows all of the tricks of lawyers and rhetoricians and doesn't hesitate to deploy them to make his case by hook or by crook. He cites inconsistencies and irrationalities in the English system of government as strengths and then turns around and complains about irrationalities in the French republican government. He acknowledges the Glorious Revolution in England, but makes excuses for it and then cites the antiquity of English sovereignty since it had been well over a hundred years since the English had murdered their king. He argues that the French revolutionaries were not "people of quality," but I wouldn't give a fig for most of the "people of quality" they replaced, the majority of whom were bloodsucking hedonistic narcissists who contributed nothing positive to society and put a heavy weight on the people who financed their self-indulgence.
Mr. Burke has a point in advocating for stability, tradition and gradual reform. It is important to get up in the morning knowing more or less where things stand so that we can all go about the business of living, but when the government is rotten to the core, is out of touch, is run by boobs, is broke and oppresses the people, all of which were true in France right before the Revolution, then change is needed, and sometimes the only way to get change is to throw the bums out and start over from scratch. Yes, there was a lot of turmoil, a lot of people died, and many more suffered, and the suffering was made worse by the reactionary monarchies surrounding the French Republic. But it got sorted out after a few years and many of our modern ideas of equality and democratic government owe a debt to revolutionary France. Mr. Burke reacted in horror because he couldn't comprehend how massive change is sometimes not only a good thing but is entirely necessary.
Mr. Burke has a point in advocating for stability, tradition and gradual reform. It is important to get up in the morning knowing more or less where things stand so that we can all go about the business of living, but when the government is rotten to the core, is out of touch, is run by boobs, is broke and oppresses the people, all of which were true in France right before the Revolution, then change is needed, and sometimes the only way to get change is to throw the bums out and start over from scratch. Yes, there was a lot of turmoil, a lot of people died, and many more suffered, and the suffering was made worse by the reactionary monarchies surrounding the French Republic. But it got sorted out after a few years and many of our modern ideas of equality and democratic government owe a debt to revolutionary France. Mr. Burke reacted in horror because he couldn't comprehend how massive change is sometimes not only a good thing but is entirely necessary.
January 24, 2022
Some interesting ideas and insights. Otherwise just kill me. Our teacher made us write a paper on this book 😑 like I can'ttttt
May 9, 2011
It was not so much the politics--I've over the years read any number of authors with whom I disagree vehemently. It was not so much the use of ornate, complicated language--last year I thoroughly enjoyed Vanity Fair and The Odyssey in epic poem form. Perhaps it was just a bit of that plodding, say-it-once-then-say-it-again (and again and again and again!) way that philosophers have about them. Whatever it was, in whatever combination, it was enough to render this book, for me, as one of the most painful, disappointing and unsatisfying reading experiences I have ever had, and I have read books written by Chuck Barris, for Christ's sake.
After suffering through an introduction that assured me Burke was a Great Man, I arrived at the words of the conservative, monarchist thinker with relief. Surely the writing itself would redeem; alas, it did not. But it did deliver unintentional humor. I enjoyed the irony of this father of modern conservatism railing against "intellectual presumption," yet spawning a movement that has culminated in Glenn Beck's chalkboard. I smirked at his early assertion that all his views were dependent on unfolding, but as yet unknown, "circumstances." Sounded like some kind of liberal situational ethics to me, but then again modern Great Man William Bennett has assured me that hypocrisy is better than having no standards at all.
It wasn't until Burke began his Brobdingnagian look at the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that the conservative talent for circular reasoning really took off, and from then on out it was just one knee-slapper after another. Because direct election of rulers was not instituted in 1688, that was proof enough that direct election of leaders would ever be unneeded and unwanted. The biggest shame in deposing a king? Why, the king would no longer trust his subjects, of course. And sprinkled throughout the book were Burke's sneering references to "the rights of man," as if there could be nothing more self-evidently ridiculous.
Diligently did I labor to find points with which to agree with Mr. Burke, and I did find a couple. Like the anti-democratic old buzzard, I think it's a good idea to have some sort of idea about what type of government you want, before you go overrunning fortresses and chopping off heads. I also agree that leaders of any would-be political movement look upon the lower classes—those they would use as foot soldiers—with utter contempt, all the while pretending to revere (or at least respect) them.
A famous description of Marie Antoinette at midpoint read to me like the no doubt uncharacteristic, but nevertheless fairly plain, rantings of a man in mourning for his own ficticious creation—Burke was just another conservative carrying on about an idealized, subservient woman who was, in real life, anything but. And the equally famous "prediction" of the rise of Napoleon was a mere couple of paragraphs foretelling a power vacuum that would surely be filled by a military man, nothing more.
Plus, many of Burke's assertions would get him thrown out of today's Teabagger movement. Term limits? They like 'em; Burke ridiculed them. Spending for pomp and circumstance? Why, that's a necessity in Burke's world, the better to make happy, entertained slaves. Paying good money to stand for public office? Laughable in Burke's world, but to today's conservatives, money is free speech itself, not to be limited in any way.
I could go on and on, but why? Like all the property-worshippers who came after him, Burke tries to make a logical, moral, religious, intellectual, and natural case for inequality, selfishness, cruelty and greed. And like today's conservative warriors, he fails.
After suffering through an introduction that assured me Burke was a Great Man, I arrived at the words of the conservative, monarchist thinker with relief. Surely the writing itself would redeem; alas, it did not. But it did deliver unintentional humor. I enjoyed the irony of this father of modern conservatism railing against "intellectual presumption," yet spawning a movement that has culminated in Glenn Beck's chalkboard. I smirked at his early assertion that all his views were dependent on unfolding, but as yet unknown, "circumstances." Sounded like some kind of liberal situational ethics to me, but then again modern Great Man William Bennett has assured me that hypocrisy is better than having no standards at all.
It wasn't until Burke began his Brobdingnagian look at the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that the conservative talent for circular reasoning really took off, and from then on out it was just one knee-slapper after another. Because direct election of rulers was not instituted in 1688, that was proof enough that direct election of leaders would ever be unneeded and unwanted. The biggest shame in deposing a king? Why, the king would no longer trust his subjects, of course. And sprinkled throughout the book were Burke's sneering references to "the rights of man," as if there could be nothing more self-evidently ridiculous.
Diligently did I labor to find points with which to agree with Mr. Burke, and I did find a couple. Like the anti-democratic old buzzard, I think it's a good idea to have some sort of idea about what type of government you want, before you go overrunning fortresses and chopping off heads. I also agree that leaders of any would-be political movement look upon the lower classes—those they would use as foot soldiers—with utter contempt, all the while pretending to revere (or at least respect) them.
A famous description of Marie Antoinette at midpoint read to me like the no doubt uncharacteristic, but nevertheless fairly plain, rantings of a man in mourning for his own ficticious creation—Burke was just another conservative carrying on about an idealized, subservient woman who was, in real life, anything but. And the equally famous "prediction" of the rise of Napoleon was a mere couple of paragraphs foretelling a power vacuum that would surely be filled by a military man, nothing more.
Plus, many of Burke's assertions would get him thrown out of today's Teabagger movement. Term limits? They like 'em; Burke ridiculed them. Spending for pomp and circumstance? Why, that's a necessity in Burke's world, the better to make happy, entertained slaves. Paying good money to stand for public office? Laughable in Burke's world, but to today's conservatives, money is free speech itself, not to be limited in any way.
I could go on and on, but why? Like all the property-worshippers who came after him, Burke tries to make a logical, moral, religious, intellectual, and natural case for inequality, selfishness, cruelty and greed. And like today's conservative warriors, he fails.
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