Tag: Ideology

Topics

Major Works

  • Reflections on the Revolution in France

    - Recommended edition: Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. 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, decorating… More

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

  • 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

  • Burke and Machiavelli on Principles in Politics

    - Harvey C. Mansfield, "Burke and Machiavelli on Principles in Politics," Edmund Burke: The Enlightenment and the Modern World, P.H. Stanlis, ed., University of Detroit Press, 1967, pp. 49-79.

  • Burke

    - C.B. Macpherson, Burke (Oxford University Press, 1980).
    Excerpt: There is no doubt that in everything he wrote and did, he venerated the traditional order. But his traditional order was already a capitalist order. He saw that it was so, and wished it to be more freely so. He had no romantic yearning for a bygone… 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Liberty, Authority, and Trust in Burke’s Idea of Empire

    - Richard Bourke, "Liberty, Authority, and Trust in Burke's Idea of Empire," Journal of the History of Ideas 61.3 (2000), 453-471.
    When Edmund Burke first embarked upon a parliamentary career, British political life was in the process of adapting to a series of critical reorientations in both the dynamics of party affiliation and the direction of imperial policy. During the period of the… 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

  • Edmund Burke: The Political Actor Thinking

    - Frank M. Turner. "Edmund Burke: The Political Actor Thinking," introduction to Reflections on the Revolution in France (Yale University Press, 2003).
    Excerpt: The value of Burke’s analysis … does not really lie in what many from the 1790s onward have regarded as its prophetic insights into the eventual judicial murder of the French royal family, further terror against French citizens from all… More

  • The Burke-Wollstonecraft Debate: Savagery, Civilization, and Democracy

    - Daniel O'Neill. The Burke-Wollstonecraft Debate: Savagery, Civilization, and Democracy (University Park: Penn State Press, 2007).
    From the publisher: Many modern conservatives and feminists trace the roots of their ideologies, respectively, to Edmund Burke (1729–1797) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), and a proper understanding of these two thinkers is therefore important as a… 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

  • 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 Natural Law and Rights Traditions

    - Peter Stanlis, "Edmund Burke on Natural Law and Rights Traditions," Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, Mecosta, Michigan, 31 October 2009.

  • 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

  • Edmund Burke and the Origins of Modern Conservatism

    - David A. Norcross, "Edmund Burke and the Origins of Modern Conservatism," Lecture at The Citadel, 25 January 2012.
    From CSPAN: [F]ormer General Counsel to the Republican National Committee David Norcross looks at Edmund Burke and the Origins of Modern Conservatism. Mr. Norcross is a guest lecturer at The Citadel Military College in Charleston, South Carolina, in a… 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