Commentary
Aesthetics and Politics in Edmund Burke
- Terry Eagleton, "Aesthetics and Politics in Edmund Burke," History Workshop, No. 28 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 53-62.Excerpt: What the aesthetic in Burke sets its face most firmly against is the notion of natural rights. It is precisely that dryly theoretic discourse, a revolutionary one in his day, that the appeal to the intimate habits of the body is out to worst. The… MorePuzzling through Burke
- Don Herzog, "Puzzling through Burke," Political Theory, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Aug., 1991), pp. 336-363Excerpt: 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… MoreThe 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… MoreThe Great Debate by Yuval Levin
- Yuval Levin. 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
The Heart of Edmund Burke
- Audio. Vigen Guroian, "The Heart of Edmund Burke," lecture hosted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 9 January 1988.Excerpt: Burke was a man of great compassion. … His conservatism was a justice-seeking conservatism for the sake of a humanity which often times lives under conditions unsuited to a creature made in the image and likeness of God. His conservatism did… More