Reflections on the Revolution in France
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Reflections on the Revolution in France
The pamphlet has not been easy to classify. Before seeing this work as a pamphlet, Burke wrote in the mode of a
Background
Burke served in the
Soon after the
Burke wrote that he did not like abstract thinking, that freedom and equality were different, that genuine equality must be judged by God and that liberty was a construct of the law and no excuse to do whatever one would like.[8] He was not comfortable with radical change and believed that the revolutionaries would find themselves further in trouble as their actions would cause more problems. In his opinions, the revolutionaries did not understand that "there are no rights without corresponding duties, or without some strict qualifications".[9]
With his view of what he believed would happen to the revolutionaries, one can see why Burke did not like change. Burke believed that people such as the revolutionaries cannot handle large amounts of power. "When men play God", Burke said, "presently they behave like devils".[10]
Arguments
In the Reflections, Burke argued that the French Revolution would end disastrously because its abstract foundations, purportedly rational, ignored the complexities of human nature and society. Further, he focused on the practicality of solutions instead of the
As a Whig, Burke expressly repudiated the belief in divinely appointed monarchic authority and the idea that a people have no right to depose an oppressive government. However, he advocated central roles for private property, tradition and prejudice (i.e. adherence to values regardless of their rational basis) to give citizens a stake in their nation's social order. He argued for gradual, constitutional reform, not revolution (in every case, except the most qualified case), emphasizing that a political doctrine founded upon abstractions such as liberty and the rights of man could be easily abused to justify tyranny. He saw inherited rights, restated in England from the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Right, as firm and concrete providing continuity (like tradition, prejudice and inheritable private property). By contrast, enforcement of speculative abstract rights might waver and be subject to change based on currents of politics. Instead, he called for the constitutional enactment of specific, concrete rights and liberties as protection against governmental oppression.
In the phrase, "[prejudice] renders a man's virtue his habit", Burke defends people's cherished, but untaught, irrational prejudices (the greater it behooved them, the more they cherished it). Because a person's moral estimation is limited, people are better off drawing from the "general bank and capital of nations and of ages" than from their own intellects.[12]
Burke predicted that the Revolution's concomitant disorder would make the army "mutinous and full of faction" and then a "popular general", commanding the soldiery's allegiance, would become "master of your assembly, the master of your whole republic".
Most of the
After trying to loosen the Protestant minority's control of Irish government, he was voted out of the House of Commons with a great pension. He later adopted French and Irish children, believing himself correct in rescuing them from government oppression. Before dying, he ordered his family to bury him secretly, believing his cadaver would be a political target for desecration should the Jacobins prevail in England.
Intellectual influence
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Reflections on the Revolution in France was read widely when it was published in 1790, although not every Briton approved of Burke's kind treatment of their historic enemy or its royal family. His English enemies speculated he either had become mentally unbalanced or was a secret Catholic, outraged by the democratic French government's anti-clerical policies and expropriation of Church land. The publication of this work drew a swift response, first with
Historically, Reflections on the Revolution in France became the founding philosophic opus of
In the 19th century, positivist French historian Hippolyte Taine repeated Burke's arguments in Origins of Contemporary France (1876–1885), namely that centralisation of power is the essential fault of the Revolutionary French government system; that it does not promote democratic control; and that the Revolution transferred power from the divinely chosen aristocracy to an "enlightened" heartless elite more incompetent and tyrannical than the aristocrats.
In the 20th century, Western conservatives applied Burke's anti-revolutionary Reflections to popular
However, historians have regarded Burke's arguments as inconsistent with the actual history of the events. Despite being the most respected conservative historian of the events, Alfred Cobban acknowledged that Burke's pamphlet in so far as it "deals with the causes of the Revolution [...] they are not merely inadequate, but misleading" and that its main success is as a "violent parti pris". Cobban notes that Burke was extremely well informed on America, Ireland and India, but in the case of the French Revolution relied on weak information and poor sources and as a result his thesis does not cohere to the ground reality of France at the onset of the Revolution, where the situation was indeed dire enough to sweep existing institutions. Cobban concludes: "As literature, as political theory, as anything but history, his Reflections is magnificent".[15]
In 2020, Reflections on the Revolution in France was banned in China.[16]
Quotes from Reflections on the Revolution in France
All circumstances taken together, the French revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world. The most wonderful things are brought about in many instances by means the most absurd and ridiculous; in the most ridiculous modes; and apparently, by the most contemptible instruments. Every thing seems out of nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies.
In viewing this tragi-comic scene, the most opposite passions necessarily succeed, and sometimes mix with each other in the mind; alternate contempt and indignation; alternate laughter and tears; alternate scorn and horror.
A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
They are surrounded by an army not raised either by the authority of their crown or by their command, and which, if they should order to dissolve itself, would instantly dissolve them. Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts; wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenour of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve we are never wholly new; in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete.
If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. [...] Men have a right to [...] justice; as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in politic function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry; and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents; to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring; to instruction in life, and to consolation in death.
All the pleasing illusions, which made power gentle, and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off.
Where trade and manufactures are wanting to a people, an the spirit of nobility and religion remains, sentiment supplies, and not always ill supplies their place; but if commerce and the arts should be lost in an experiment to try how well a state may stand without these old fundamental principles, what sort of a thing must be a nation of gross, stupid, ferocious, and at the same time, poor and sordid barbarians, destitute of religion, honor, or manly pride, possessing nothing at present, and hoping for nothing hereafter? I wish you may not be going fast, and by the shortest cut, to that horrible and disgustful situation. Already there appears a poverty of conception, a coarseness and vulgarity in all the proceedings of the assembly and of all their instructors. Their liberty is not liberal. Their science is presumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and brutal.
Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure – but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.[17]
See also
- Considerations on France (1796) by Joseph de Maistre
Notes
- ^ Full title: Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to That Event. In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris
References
- ^ Burke, Edmund (1790). Reflections on the Revolution in France, And on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris (1 ed.). London: J.Dodsley in Pall Mall. Retrieved 1 July 2015. via Gallica
- ^ ISBN 978-0-39391252-4.
- ^ Mazlish 1958, p. 21
- ISBN 978-1-4039-9482-0.
- ^ Armitage 2000, p. 619
- ^ Bruyn 2001, p. 577
- ISBN 978-0-39391252-4.
- ^ Burke, Edmund (1965). Reflections on the Revolution in France. New York: Arlington House. pp. xi.
- ^ Burke, Edmund (1965). Reflections on the Revolution in France. New York: Arlington House. pp. xix.
- ^ Burke, Edmund (1965). Reflections on the Revolution in France. New York: Arlington House. pp. xix.
- ^ Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France [1790] (Pearson Longman, 2006), p. 144.
- ^ Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France [1790] (Penguin Classics, 1986), p. 183.
- ^ Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France [1790] (Penguin Classics, 1986), p. 342.
- ^ Hitchens, Christopher (April 2004). "Reactionary Prophet". theatlantic.com. The Atlantic. Retrieved 24 December 2014.
- ISBN 978-0393005127.
- ^ Mudie, Luisetta, ed. (18 August 2020). "Chinese Publisher Removes Burke's French Revolution Book From Shelves". Radio Free Asia. Archived from the original on 19 August 2020. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
- ISBN 9780300099799.
Bibliography
- Armitage, Dave (2000). "Edmund Burke and Reason of State" (PDF). Journal of the History of Ideas. 61 (4). University of Philadelphia Press: 617–634. S2CID 171026778.
- Bruyn, Frans De (2001). "Anti-Semitism, Millenarianism, and Radical Dissent in Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France". Eighteenth-Century Studies. 34 (4). Johns Hopkins University Press: 577–600. S2CID 162166315.
- Cobban, Alfred (1968). Aspects of the French Revolution. New York: George Braziller.
- Hampsher-Monk, Ian (2005). "Edmund Burke's Changing Justification for Intervention". The Historical Journal. 48 (1). Cambridge University Press: 65–100. S2CID 145680137.
- Mazlish, Bruce (1958). "The Conservative Revolution of Edmund Burke". The Review of Politics. 20 (1). Cambridge University Press: 21–23. S2CID 144225315.
- Macpherson, C. R. (1980). Burke. New York: Hilland Wang.
- Spinner, Jeff (1991). "Constructing Communities: Edmund Burke on Revolution". Polity. 23 (3). Palgrave Macmillan Journals: 395–421. S2CID 147079449.
External links
- An online facsimile of the first edition from the Internet Archive
- A brief excerpt from the text, from the Internet History Sourcebooks Project
- A complete online edition of the text, from Project Gutenberg
- Reflections on the Revolution in France public domain audiobook at LibriVox
- "Reactionary Prophet: Edmund Burke understood before anyone else that revolutions devour their young—and turn into their opposites" by Christopher Hitchens, The Atlantic Monthly, April 2004.