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    Reflections on the Revolution in France (Barnes & Noble Library of Esssential Reading)
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    Reflections on the Revolution in France (Barnes & Noble Library of Esssential Reading)
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    Reflections on the Revolution in France (Barnes & Noble Library of Esssential Reading)
    Ebook346 pages7 hours

    Reflections on the Revolution in France (Barnes & Noble Library of Esssential Reading)

    By Edmund Burke and Camil Ungureanu

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    About this ebook

    “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 tradition or restraint.”— Edmund Burke

     

    Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) is the undisputed foundation of modern conservatism. It is a brilliant pamphlet against the French Revolution, one rooted in the solid ground of a practical political philosophy. Burke’s central argument is that the French Revolution was driven by a utopian egalitarianism, which was dangerously disconnected from the actual experience of politics. A conservative, he grants centrality to the practical rationality of existing socio-political traditions and institutions, criticizes radical changes at all costs, and advocates gradual political reforms.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarnes & Noble
    Release dateApr 19, 2011
    ISBN9781411438293
    Unavailable
    Reflections on the Revolution in France (Barnes & Noble Library of Esssential Reading)
    Author

    Edmund Burke

    Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was an Irish philosopher and member of parliament in the British House of Commons. The son of a Catholic mother and Anglican father, Burke was raised between Dublin and rural County Cork. In 1744, he began studying at Trinity College Dublin, where he founded a debating society and graduated in 1748. Burke traveled to London in 1750 to become a lawyer, but soon abandoned his legal studies in favor of a life of professional writing. His first work, A Vindication of Natural Society: A View of the Miseries and Evils Arising to Mankind (1756) was an ironic reworking of Lord Bolingbroke’s infamous arguments for reason over religion. This satire earned Burke the reputation of fearless firebrand and intellectual skeptic which would carry him throughout his career. His two most important publications, arguably, are A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) and Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Although a member of the historically liberal Whig Party, Burke is now frequently seen as a foundational figure in the development of modern conservative thought.

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    Reviews for Reflections on the Revolution in France (Barnes & Noble Library of Esssential Reading)

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    • 1/5
      Not nearly what I was expecting!
    • 3/5
      Edmund Burke does NOT like what he sees in Paris-be warned there are graphic descriptions of horrific atrocities being meted out on the Citizens; the phrase 'reign of terror' is a apt description'. He hits out at the political instruments of the Jacobins in the most searing of ways. One to read alongside others happening at that time like Mary Wollestonecraft, Thomas Paine Rights of Man (both need to be read by me)
    • 2/5
      Ur-text of modern conservatism. Well, he has a good writing style. I'll give him that.

      For all of his self-righteous condemnations, which are so often repeated by conservatives and reactionaries today, I note how so very few of them tend to notice his conspiratorial wailing about international finance and the Jews.
    • 2/5
      Boring, overwritten, and way too authoritative.
    • 1/5
      I cannot wait till I have finished this book: Burke's style is horrible, and his reflections are boring. Cannot say more.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      An unofficial name for this could be "The Social Contract: A Critique" or "Rosseau Part 2". Edmund Burke's famous treatise is a refutation of the "Rights of Man" declaration, and the populist democracy that emerged in France and eventually turned into anarchy followed by dictatorship.A common misconception among the laypeople is that Burke's Reflections is a defense of aristocracy. Burke actually championed the cause of the American Revolutionaries during the War of 1776, and actually was disowned by Thomas Jefferson (who had participated in drafting the Rights of Man declaration) for his work. Burke's critique of the French Revolution was not a defense of aristocracy, but a refutation of universal rights. It was entirely consistent of him to support the American revolution because the American revolution was a reaction against the infringement of the rights of Englishmen in America enshrined (as William Blackstone stated in his Commentaries) in Engish Common Law. The French system of government had always been autocratic, on the other hand and entirely arbitrary, and the introduction of democratic principles and rule of law to a populace with no concept of the responsibilities that those rights entailed was a recipe for disaster.Again, highly recommended for political science undergraduates. Otherwise unbearably dry for most people.
    • 5/5
      A classic, perhaps indeed the single classic, of conservative political thought, this book beautifully clarified the difference between Britain & the European Continent. In addition to Burke's original text, this edition also benefits from a good intro, & from 4 remarkable essays by modern scholars. Recommended.
    • 3/5
      Edmund Burke, MP was not in favour of popular enthusiasms, and when they rise to actual violence, well that is beyond the pale. Even though there may well have been reasons for the uprising, there should not have been this unseemly tumult. When oppressed, the populace should be able to find some non-violent way of changing their condition. After all the English have managed to avoid all this fuss....Well, haven't we? Burke was a prescient Conservative, and saw that the /French were embarked on a road that would lead to violence, to finally dictatorship, and perhaps a deeper tyranny than before. Gradual improvement on an evolutionary course would serve the french better, but they are only Latins, and therefore, the worst can be expected.