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

• Edmund Burke’s View of History

  - John C. Weston, Jr., "Edmund Burke's View of History," The Review of Politics, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Apr., 1961), pp. 203-229.
  Excerpt: Most analyses of views of history resolve themselves into considerations of progress. We ask, does a particular man believe in progress? And since most modem thinkers do believe in some form of progress, the answer acquires significance for its… More

• Natural Law and Historicity: Burke and Niebuhr

  - Vigen Guroian, "Natural Law and Historicity: Burke and Niebuhr," Modern Age 25, no. 2 (June 1981).
  Excerpt: Edmund Burke and Reinhold Niebuhr have not often been made the subjects of a comparative inquiry. Yet, for the inquisitive, there is to be found a broad and deep confluence of their ideas on politics and the moral life. And one of the most… More

• The Value-Centered Historicism of Edmund Burke

  - Joseph Baldacchino, "The Value-Centered Historicism of Edmund Burke," Modern Age 27, no. 2 (1983).
  Excerpt: As he opposed the notion of a “geographical” morality, so, too, did Burke denounce the idea that man’s moral duty changes with the passage of time. “We know that we have made no discoveries,” he writes, “and we… 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

• 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 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

• The Prudent Irishman: Edmund Burke’s Realism

  - John Bolton, "The Prudent Irishman: Edmund Burke's Realism," The National Interest, Winter 1997-98.
  Excerpt: Edmund Burke’s insights into civil society seem strikingly apposite today to American foreign policy. Among those are his reliance on the accretion of experience and reasoning from empirical reality, his abhorrence of elevating abstract… More

• Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought

  - Uday S. Mehta. Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
  From the publisher: We take liberalism to be a set of ideas committed to political rights and self-determination, yet it also served to justify an empire built on political domination. Uday Mehta argues that imperialism, far from contradicting liberal tenets,… More

• Edmund Burke and Reason of State

  - David Armitage, "Edmund Burke and Reason of State," Journal of the History of Ideas 61.4 (2000), pp. 617-634.
  Excerpt: Edmund Burke has been one of the few political thinkers to be treated seriously by international theorists. According to Martin Wight, one of the founders of the socalled “English School” of international theory, Burke was “[t]he… More

• Edmund Burke: Modernity, Politics and Aesthetics

  - Stephen K. White. Edmund Burke: Modernity, Politics and Aesthetics, (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002).
  From the publisher: Edmund Burke: Modernity, Politics, and Aesthetics examines the philosophy of Burke in view of its contribution to our understanding of modernity. Burke’s relevance, until recently, has lain in how his critique of the French… 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

• 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