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Politics Notes Political Theory From Hobbes Notes

Edmund Burke Historical Legitimacy Notes

Updated Edmund Burke Historical Legitimacy Notes

Political Theory From Hobbes Notes

Political Theory From Hobbes

Approximately 13 pages

Ontology; epistemology; philosophical approach to political theory; historical approach to political theory Thomas Hobbes; Leviathan; state of nature; obligation in foro interno; obligation in foro externo; geometric reasoning; totalitarianism; Rousseau Edmund Burke; Reflections on the Revolution in France; precedent vs. abstract rationalism; justifying revolution; intergenerational contract Thomas Paine; Rights of Man; priority of the present; consent; generational democracy...

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EDMUND BURKE & HISTORICAL LEGITIMACY

QUESTIONS

  1. On what grounds does Burke reject the French Revolution?

  2. Is Burke’s defense of tradition coherent? [2014]

‘Burke advocates following traditions, but he does not explain why traditions are valuable’. Assess this judgement. [2015]

  1. In what ways, if any, is Burke’s ‘intergenerational contract’ a contract? [2017]

Is Burke’s contrast between generations plausible? [2013]

  1. Does Burke have a political theory? [2016]

Is there a coherent political theory in Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France or simply a rhetorically inflated preference for the way things are?

  1. How far is Paine’s Rights of Man appropriately understood as an answer to Burke’s Reflections?

QUOTES FROM REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE, 1790

‘The idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation, and a sure principle of transmission; without at all excluding a principle of improvement. It leaves acquisition free; but secures what it acquires’.

‘We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages.’

‘Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which exist in total independence of it... and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection; but their abstract perfection is their practi`1cal defect. By having a right to everything, they want everything. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.’

‘All the pleasing illusions, which made power gentle... are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off...’

They should not think it among their rights to... commit waste on the inheritance by destroying at their pleasure the whole fabric of society, hazarding to leave to those who come after them, a ruin instead of a habitation’.

‘Society is indeed a contract... 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 such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born’.

BACKGROUND

  • Burke was born in Dublin on January 12, 1729 to a Protestant solicitor and Catholic mother. This was significant given the anti-Catholic sentiment which pervaded Northern Ireland.

  • In 1774, Burke was elected to the British House of Commons where he became a proficient commentator on major issues of his time; especially those pertaining to British colonialism in North America, India and Ireland:

  • East India Company* – led impeachment proceedings against Warren Hastings, Governor-General of Bengal, on grounds of misrule and corruption.

  • American Revolution – sympathized with the grievances of American Colonies (inflicted by British taxation policies) and supported their ‘right of rebellion’ against metropolitan authority.

  • Catholic emancipation in Ireland

  • Critical of patronage politics, of loose housekeeping in the Royal exchequer, and of colonial exploitation; Burke was an agent for change, rationalization and reform. It is ironic, then, that his greatest work – Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) – is the paragon of modern conservatism, marshalling one of the best-known intellectual attacks against the French Revolution.

REFLECTIONS

  • Reflections opens with a vehement condemnation of Richard Price’s sermon entitled ‘A Discourse on the Love of Our Country’, in which he drew bold (causal) parallels between the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and French Revolution of 1789. Price exhorted the public to divest themselves of national prejudices and embrace ‘universal benevolence/patriotism’; a cosmopolitan ideal implying support for the French Revolution and its ‘enlightened’ premises.

  • Liberty, for Price, was a blessing to be advocated with patriotic zeal, and defended from both external and internal oppression: ‘If you love your country, you cannot be zealous enough in promoting the cause of liberty in it’ [Price].

  • However, Burke maintains that 1688 and 1789 were fundamentally different:

Glorious Revolution

1688-89

 A political revolution led by members of the aristocracy that saw the dethroning of King James II and establishment of a Whig-dominated Protestant constitutional monarchy, whereby the sovereign exercises authority within the limits prescribed by parliament.

French Revolution

1789-99

A class revolution led by the people that sought – if not from the outset, then certainly in its subsequent phrases – to uproot centuries-old institutions (e.g. the absolute monarchy of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, feudalism) and build an entirely new political landscape founded on abstract rational principles: ‘Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité’.

  • In 1688, the institutions were preserved, though the personnel changed. In 1789, the institutions changed and the person preserved.

The Revolution degenerated into a chaotic bloodbath, culminating in a brutal dictatorship under Napoleon Bonaparte. Whilst unsuccessful, it was pivotal in shaping modern nations by demonstrating the power inherent in the will of the people.

PRECEDENT VS. ABSTRACT RATIONALISM

  • By a kind-of Darwinian process of natural selection, the survival of certain ‘habits’, ‘customs’ and ‘prejudices’ is a presumption of their utility and intricate congruence with one another to form a unified social whole (a.k.a. ‘society’). The ‘utility’ of tradition is not derived from a rational basis (e.g. contributions to private convenience or the enjoyment of individual rights) but as ‘a repository of all civilization, the source of religion and morality, and the arbiter of reason itself’ [Vincent].

  • This is not to say that prejudices are irrational. Although they are not chosen or...

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