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
Other Works
On Empire, Liberty and Reform: Speeches and Letters
- On Empire, Liberty and Reform: Speeches and Letters, ed. David Bromwich (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).From the publisher: The great British statesman Edmund Burke had a genius for political argument, and his impassioned speeches and writings shaped English public life in the second half of the eighteenth century. This anthology of Burke’s speeches,… More
Commentary
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).The Concept of Representation
- Hanna Pitkin. The Concept of Representation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967).Excerpt: What happens to the idea of representation when a writer concentrates on the representing of unattached abstractions is nowhere shown more clearly than in the thought of Edmund Burke. For Burke, political representation is the representation of… MoreBurke 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.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