The Use and Abuse of History
In his 1790 treatise Reflections on the Revolution in France, English statesman Edmund Burke writes to a young French aristocrat, “The very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill [the English] with disgust and horror. We wished at the period of the [1688] Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers.” While the English people’s purported “horror” is grounded in a…
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Nature, Tradition, and Wisdom
Part of Burke’s rationale for adhering to tradition is his preference for a kind of intergenerational wisdom grounded in nature. He describes the superiority of English government thus: “This policy [of an inherited crown, inherited properties and privileges, etc.] appears to me to be the result of profound reflection; or rather the happy effect of following nature, which is wisdom without reflection, and above it.” Burke upholds the hereditary monarchy of England, in other…
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Revolution and Reform
When writing his Reflections, Burke was not only concerned for the future of revolutionary France, but for English factions who saw the French Revolution as a potential precedent for similar principles and actions in England. Because of this, Burke is eager to demonstrate that England’s own history—like its Glorious Revolution of 1688—was not meant to establish a pattern for a series of revolutions, but was a response limited to specific circumstances at the time…
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Theory vs. Practicality
Early in the Reflections, Burke writes, “But I cannot […] give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns […] in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction […] Circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.” In keeping with his emphasis on the importance of history and the natural order, Burke believes that government is particular and specific, not general…
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