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, decorating… More

Commentary

• Edmund Burke’s Conception of the Role of Reason in Politics

  - Francis J. Canavan, "Edmund Burke's Conception of the Role of Reason in Politics," The Journal of Politics, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Feb., 1959), pp. 60-79.
  Excerpt: British and American scholars have generally taken Edmund Burke for a utilitarian and an empiricist with a keen sense of historical development, qualified by certain religious prepossessions which inclined him to conservatism. … All of these… More

• Rationality and Representation in Burke’s Bristol Speech

  - Harvey C. Mansfield, "Rationality and Representation in Burke's Bristol Speech," in Rational Decision, C.J. Friedrich, ed., (AldineTransaction, 1964).

• 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.

• “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 grand… 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

• 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 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

• Burke Between Liberty and Tradition by Peter Berkowitz

  - Berkowitz, Peter. "Burke Between Liberty and Tradition." Policy Review, December 2012.
  Excerpt: 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… More

• The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left 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 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