Major Works

• Reflections on the Revolution in France

  - Recommended edition: Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Edited by J. G. A. Pocock. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987. Originally published 1790.
  Excerpt: “It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon,… More

Commentary

• Conservatism as an Ideology

  - Samuel P. Huntington, "Conservatism as an Ideology" American Political Science Review, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Jun., 1957), pp. 454-473.
  Excerpt: Most writers agree, and it is assumed here, that Burke is properly called a conservative. The question, consequently, is: can Burke best be understood as the spokesman for the feudal aristocratic order, the expounder of values and ideals universally… More

• Review of Burke, Paine, and the Rights of Man

  - Harvey C. Mansfield, Review of Burke, Paine, and the Rights of Man: A Difference of Political Opinion, by R. R. Fennessy, The Burke Newsletter, vol. 6 (Spring 1965): 443-45.

• 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

  - Mansfield, Harvey C. "Edmund Burke." In History of Political Philosophy, edited by Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, 3rd ed., 638–658. 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… More

• Man’s Second Disobedience: a Vindication of Burke

  - Roger Scruton, "Man’s Second Disobedience: a Vindication of Burke" in Ceri Crossley and Ian Small (eds.), The French Revolution and British Culture (Oxford University Press, 1989).
  Excerpt: Tocqueville remarked that there is the greatest difference between a ‘revolution’ (such as that of 1688, or that which founded the United States of America) through which law and adjudication continue undisturbed and which has the… More

• A Vindication of Edmund Burke

  - Conor Cruise O'Brien, "A Vindication of Edmund Burke," National Review (December 17, 1990).
  Excerpt: What we have been witnessing in 1989-90, in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, is the bankruptcy of the greatest experiment in social and political innovation ever made. What stronger vindication could there be of the principles laid down, and… More

• Puzzling through Burke

  - Don Herzog, "Puzzling through Burke," Political Theory, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Aug., 1991), pp. 336-363
  Excerpt: There are, I suggest, three major lines of argument in Burke. One is a series of dead ends impossible to spell out coherently; another is sometimes incomplete, sometimes pernicious; the last and best offers a striking political sociology but is… 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

• The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography of Edmund Burke

  - Conor Cruise O'Brien. The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography of Edmund Burke (University of Chicago Press, 1992).
  Excerpt: Can this book properly be described as a biography? It is certainly nor a conventional biography, but it is a complete biography, extending from the circumstances – key Burkean word – of the subject’s birth in Ireland to those of… More

• The Great Edmund Burke

  - Harvey C. Mansfield, "The Great Edmund Burke," review of The Great Melody, by Conor Cruise O'Brien, New Criterion, November 1992.
  Excerpt: The publication of The Great Melody is an event not just in the small circle of Edmund Burke scholarship but also in the larger community of historians. Still more, and above all, it is a gift to anyone who wants to understand politics. Conor Cruise… More

• The Useful Cobbler: Edmund Burke and the Politics of Progress

  - James Conniff. The Useful Cobbler: Edmund Burke and the Politics of Progress (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994).
  Excerpt: For purpose of introduction, Burke’s contribution to the theory of representative government can be summarized in seven propositions. The first four provide a means of conceptualizing change. First, Burke argued that all abstract or… More

• Wollstonecraft as a Critic of Burke

  - David Bromwich, "Wollstonecraft as a Critic of Burke," Political Theory, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Nov., 1995), pp. 617-634.
  Excerpt: Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Men was the first published reply to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. Later replies from the radical side challenged and in a measure qualified Burke’s report… More

• The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments

  - Gertrude Himmelfarb. The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments (New York: Knopf, 2004).
  Excerpt: Burke’s views on economics suggest that there may be something like an “Edmund Burke Problem”- a “two Burkes” phenomenon comparable to the “Adam Smith Problem.” Just as the altruistic principles of the Theory… 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

• “The Monasteries of France” by Derek Beales

  - Beales, Derek. "Edmund Burke and the Monasteries of France." The Historical Journal 48, no. 2 (2005): 415–436.
  Abstract: Burke’s Reflections contains a section of about ten pages on the monasteries of France, deploring not only the confiscation of their property but also the destruction of the institutions themselves, which are defended for their contribution to… More

• The Great Debate by Yuval Levin

  - Levin, Yuval. The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left. New York: Basic Books, 2013.
  Excerpt: “This book seeks to examine Burke and Paine’s disagreement and to learn from it about both their era’s politics and ours. Using not only their dispute about the French Revolution but also the two men’s larger bodies of writing and… 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.

• Reflections on Burke’s Reflections

  - Gertrude Himmelfarb, "Reflections on Burke's Reflections," American Enterprise Institute, CSPAN, 6 October 2008.
  From CSPAN: Gertrude Himmelfarb spoke about the influence of the Irish political philosopher Edmund Burke and his book Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke, who died in 1797, served in the British Parliament and became a leading figure in the… More

• The Burkean Outlook

  - Ian Shapiro, "The Burkean Outlook," Open Yale course, 31 March 2010.
  Excerpt: [S]ociety is not subordinate to the individual, which is the most rock-bottom commitment of the workmanship idea. On the contrary, the individual is subordinate to society. Obligations come before rights. We only get rights as a consequence of the… More

• In Our Time: Edmund Burke

  - "In Our Time: Edmund Burke," BBC Radio 4, June 2010.
  Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of the eighteenth-century philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke. With: Karen O’Brien Professor of English at the University of Warwick Richard Bourke Senior Lecturer in History at Queen Mary,… More

• After Words: Yuval Levin

  - "After Words: Yuval Levin," CSPAN Book TV, 4 January 2014.
  The author of The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left, Mr. Levin discusses the origin of the political Left-Right divide, arguing that today’s partisanship began with the debates over the French Revolution. He… More