Edmund Burke ― Appraisals and Applications

The century of the American War of Independence and the French Revolution remains contemporary 200 years later because the fundamental questions raised then about politics still speak to us. The writings of Edmund Burke on these and other political events of his time are today acknowledged as the basis of modern conservative thought. This volume brings together an outstanding collection of interpretative essays on Burke, and serves as a basic introduction to this seminal thinker.

A member of the British Parliament from 1766 to 1794, Edmund Burke had sympathized with the American War of Independence and argued for reform of British policy towards Ireland and India, but he surprised many of his friends by his early, vehement opposition to the French Revolution. This volume brings together assessments of these and other statements by Buke by contemporaries such as Coleridge and William Hazlitt, along with essays by Irving Babbitt and Russell Kirk, who established his significance for twentieth-century conservatism. Influential dissents by Raymond Williams and by Conor Cruise O’Brien demonstrate the continuing appeal of Burke’s descriptions of society and social change to radical thinkers. Alexander Bickel and Harvey Mansfield offer essays that explain the theory of party government (originated by Burke) and its continuing relevance, while a young scholar, Steven Blakemore, applies Burke’s critique of revolutionary language to deconstruction. Together, these essays reveal many of the enduring themes and inner tensions of current conservatism: empirical analysis and natural law, a process of change that preserves while it reforms, and a dual emphasis on practical politics and its place in the divine, cosmic order.

Although many books have been written on Burke, there is no single volume of biography or criticism that is essential to those who wish to study him, nor has there been, until now, a collection of the best, previously published interpretive essays on Burke. This volume fills this need, and will be of interest to all those interested in the philosophical roots of conservatism, in the history of political thought, in revolution, and in modern political ideologies.