Commentary

• Conservatism Revisited

  - Peter Viereck. Conservatism Revisited (New York: The Free Press, 1962 [1949]).
  Excerpt from 1962 edition: …it is imprecise to call conservative those counter-revolutionary ideologues of the right who defy the conservative principles of continuity with the past by trying to wrench American life out of its liberal and New Deal past.… More

• The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot

  - Russell Kirk. The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1960). First edition originally published 1953.
  Excerpt: Conscious conservatism, in the modern sense, did not manifest itself until 1790, with the publication of Reflections on the Revolution in France. In that year the prophetic powers of Burke fixed in the public consciousness, for the first time, the… More

• Edmund Burke and the Argument from Circumstance

  - Richard Weaver, "Edmund Burke and the Argument from Circumstance" in The Ethics of Rhetoric (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1953).
  Excerpt: Burke is widely respected as a conservative who was intelligent enough to provide solid philosophical foundations for his conservatism. It is perfectly true that many of his observations upon society have a conservative basis; but if one studies the… More

• Conservatism: Dream and Reality

  - Robert Nisbet. Conservatism: Dream and Reality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986).
  From Amazon: Nisbet holds that although political philosophers are often conceived in terms of their views of the individual and the state, a more useful approach adds the factor of social groups or communities mediating between the individual and the state.… More

• Edmund Burke by Harvey Mansfield

  - Harvey C. Mansfield, "Edmund Burke," History of Political Philosophy, Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds., 3rd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
  Excerpt: For almost all his adult life, Burke was a politician; for almost thirty years he was a member of the House of Commons, busy with the affairs of his party in the daily management of men and issues. His speeches, pamphlets, and books sound the grand… More

• Strauss’s Three Burkes: The Problem of Edmund Burke in Natural Right and History

  - Steven J. Lenzer, "Strauss's Three Burkes: The Problem of Edmund Burke in Natural Right and History," Political Theory, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Aug., 1991), pp. 364-390.
  Excerpt: Although Leo Strauss’s critique of Edmund Burke’s political theory in Natural Right and History is not the most famous ever written (it suffices to mention Paine’s Rights of Man), it is doubtless the most challenging. In part, this… More

• Reactionary Prophet

  - Christopher Hitchens, "Reactionary Prophet," The Atlantic Monthly (April 2004).
  Excerpt: It is a frequent vice of radical polemic to assert, and even to believe, that once you have found the lowest motive for an antagonist, you have identified the correct one. And such reductionism makes a sort of rough partnership with the simplistic… More

• Burke’s Conservatism

  - Harvey C. Mansfield. "Burke's Conservatism," in An Imaginative Whig: Reassessing the Life and Thought of Edmund Burke, ed. Ian Crowe (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005).
  Excerpt: In this essay, I will approach the question of Burke’s conservatism by considering the thought of two scholars whom it has been my pleasure to know and learn from: Peter J . Stanlis and Leo Strauss. … Stanlis presents Burke as “our… More

• Edmund Burke for Our Time: Moral Imagination, Meaning, and Politics

  - William F. Byrne. Edmund Burke for Our Time: Moral Imagination, Meaning, and Politics (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2011)
  Excerpt: Although the term “moral imagination” originated with Edmund Burke, much Burke scholarship fails to mention it. Two notable early and mid-twentieth-century thinkers, Irving Babbitt and Russell Kirk, do pick up on Burke’s concept and… More

• Strauss, Voegelin, and Burke: A Tale of Three Conservatives

  - Robert P. Kraynak, "Strauss, Voegelin, and Burke: A Tale of Three Conservatives," Modern Age, Fall 2011, Vol. 53 Issue 4.
  Abstract: The article explores the political beliefs of twentieth-century philosophers Leo Strauss, Eric Vogelin, and eighteenth-century British politician Edmund Burke. It considers the books “New Science of Politics” by Vogelin and… More

• Edmund Burke: The First Conservative

  - Jesse Norman, Edmund Burke: The First Conservative, (London: 2012).
  Written by British Member of Parliament Jesse Norman, this lively work of biography and intellectual history traces Burke’s intellectual development, and how he came to be regarded as the first conservative—a distinctly modern political position.… More

• Burke Between Liberty and Tradition by Peter Berkowitz

  - Peter Berkowitz, "Burke Between Liberty and Tradition," Policy Review, December 2012.
  Feuding among American conservatives for the title True Conservative is nothing new. Ever since conservatism in America crystallized as a recognizable school in the 1950s, more than a few limited-government conservatives, or libertarians as they have come to… More

• Edmund Burke in America: The Contested Career of the Father of Modern Conservatism

  - Drew Maciag. Edmund Burke in America: The Contested Career of the Father of Modern Conservatism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013).
  From the publisher: The statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke (1729–1797) is a touchstone for modern conservatism in the United States, and his name and his writings have been invoked by figures ranging from the arch Federalist George Cabot to… More

• The Brooklyn Burkeans

  - Jonathan Bronitsky, "The Brooklyn Burkeans," National Affairs (Winter 2014), pp 121-136.
  Excerpt: “[I]f I were to say what neo-conservatism is as an intellectual impulse,” [Irving] Kristol stated in 1983, “I’d say it’s an effort to link these two conservative traditions represented on the one hand by Edmund Burke, on… More

Multimedia

• Edmund Burke on Politics

  - Audio. Richard Bourke, "Edmund Burke on Politics," Philosophy Bites, 20 January 2008.
  For this episode of Philosophy Bites Richard Bourke of Queen Mary, London,  puts Edmund Burke in his historical context and outlines his key ideas.