Republic of the Philippines

State Colleges and Universities

Guimaras State College
Graduate School
Mclain, Buenavista, Guimaras

POLITICAL THEORIES OF EDMUND BURKE

Learning Objectives:

 At the end of the discussion, the class can

 Explained and discuss the works of Edmund Burke.
 Discuss the Political life during the time of Edmund Burke.
 Discuss the work of Edmund Burke.

Life and Works of Edmund Burke:

We also study Machiavelli because he took a stand on political matters that still evokes our
thought. He clearly stated that politics had nothing to do with religion. Burke’s views of
French Revolution and role of people’s representative are still remembered by students of
Western political thought. Edmund Burke was born in Dublin in 1729. His father was an
attorney and a Protestant by faith. His mother was a Roman Catholic. These two streams of
religious faith met together in the family of Burke. Burke’s two brothers followed father’s
religion, while their sister followed the faith of mother. He was educated at Trinity College,
Dublin, and received his degree from this college. In 1750 he went to London to study law,
but as it was against his liking he gave up the study of law, and devoted himself to literary
work. Two Essays—a Vindication of Natural Society and Philosophical Inquiry into the
Origin on our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful— were published and he came to be
known in the academic circles of England.
His father, Richard Burke, was a prosperous, professional solicitor, who had converted to
the Church of Ireland from the Roman Catholicism of his Munster lineage.
His mother, Mary (née Nagle), came from a genteel Roman Catholic family of County
Cork. He was raised in the Church of Ireland (although his sister, Juliana, was brought up
as and remained a Roman Catholic) and would remain throughout his life a
practicing Anglican, although his political enemies would later repeatedly accuse him of
harbouring secret Catholic sympathies at a time when membership in the Catholic church
would have disqualified him from public office.
Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797) was an Anglo-Irish philosopher, statesman and political
theorist of the Age of Enlightenment.
BURKE Enlightenment was an intellectual movement, developed mainly in France,
Britain and Germany, which advocated freedom, democracy and reason as the primary
values of society. It started from the standpoint that men's minds should be freed
from ignorance, from superstition and from the arbitrary powers of the State, in order to
allow mankind to achieve progress and perfection. The period was marked by a
further decline in the influence of the church, governmental consolidation and greater
rights for the common people. Politically, it was a time of revolutions and turmoil and of
the overturning of established traditions.

Political Theories of Edmund Burke

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 Republic of the Philippines
State Colleges and Universities
Guimaras State College
Graduate School
Mclain, Buenavista, Guimaras

Also claimed that man is unable to understand the many ways in which inherited behaviors
influence their thinking, and so trying to judge society objectively is futile. Often
considered the father of Conservatism in Anglo-American circles. He argued
forcefully against the French Revolution, especially in his "Reflections on the Revolution
in France" of 1790, (although he sympathized with some of the aims of the American
Revolution of 1776 - 1783).
There is little doubt that Edmund Burke is the most influential conservative thinker of all
time. His thoughts and comments deliver a fundamental set of ideas for conservativism.
Burke provides a wide-ranging contribution to political theory, although he is best-known
for his reflections on the revolution in France. Along with other conservative philosophers
of the time such as Joseph de Maistre, Burke belongs in the counter-enlightenment school
of thought. Burke rejected the Enlightenment view that humans are rational entities.
Instead, Burke claimed we are both imperfect and imperfectible. Any attempt to create a
system based upon the perfectibility of man is thereby contrary to our innate character.
Burke’s critique of the French revolution centres primarily upon its flawed attempt to
create a utopian society based upon the slogans of ‘liberty, fraternity and equality.’ This is
to ignore the social bonds that keep us together, and marks an attempt to replace the
accumulated wisdom of previous generations with abstractions. The hot-headed idealists
who manned the barricades were entirely wrong to believe they could construct a new
world from the ashes of the old. They placed their faith in destruction rather than
preservation; thereby acting contrary to what Burke claimed should be the guiding
principles of society.
The term "conservatism" is derived from the Latin "conservare" (meaning to "protect" or
"preserve") and from the French derivative "conservateur". Its usage in a political
sense began to appear only after the French Revolution of 1789, and then only hesitantly,
only taking its characteristic political connotation in the1820s.
He argued instead for the value of inherited institutions and customs, including
the time-honored development of the state (built on the wisdom of many
generations), piecemeal progress through experience, and the continuation of other
important societal institutions such as the family and the Church, rather than what he
called "metaphysical abstractions"
Political Life After an unsuccessful first venture into politics, Burke was appointed
secretary in 1765 to the Marquess of Rockingham, leader of one of the Whig groups, the
largely liberal faction in Parliament, and he entered the House of Commons that year.
Burke remained Rockingham’s secretary until the latter’s death in 1782. Burke worked to
unify the group of Whigs that had formed around Rockingham; this faction was to be the
vehicle of Burke’s parliamentary career.

TYPES OF CONSERTIVISM:

Cultural Conservatism is a philosophy that supports preservation of the heritage of a

nation or culture (or sometimes of language traditions), usually by the adaptation
of norms handed down from the past.

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 Republic of the Philippines
State Colleges and Universities
Guimaras State College
Graduate School
Mclain, Buenavista, Guimaras

Social Conservatism is a subset of Cultural Conservatism where the norms may also
be moral (e.g. opposition to homosexuality, covering of women's faces, etc). In Europe,
however, it usually refers to "Liberal" Conservatives, who support modern
European welfare states.
Religious Conservatism seeks to preserve the teachings of particular religious ideologies,
either by example or by law. Religious Conservatives may promote broad campaigns for a
return to traditional values, or they may go the radical route, looking to preserve a belief in
its original or pristine form.
Fiscal Conservatism is the economic philosophy of prudence in government
spending and debt, arguing that a government does not have the right to run up large
debts and then throw the burden on the taxpayer.
Paleo-Conservatism is a moderate to extreme form of Conservatism, popular in the Bible
Belt states of the USA, which emphasizes religious heritage, national and Western
identity, tradition, civil society, anti-interventionist policies and classical federalism. It
specifically opposes illegal immigration, communism, authoritarianism, social democracy
and entitlement programs.
Neo-Conservatism is the "new" Conservative movement which emerged in the United
States in opposition to the perceived Liberalism of the 1960s. It emphasizes
an interventionist foreign policy, free trade and free marketeconomics and a
general disapproval of counterculture.
Bio-Conservatism is a stance of hesitancy about technological development, and a
skepticism about medical and other biotechnological transformations of the living world
(genetic engineering), especially if it is perceived to threaten a given social order.

INTELLECTUAL ORIENTATION:

- BURKE’S mind ,by the time he left Trinity,had two facets: 1. was an orientation towards
religions ,improvement and politics ,the other a philosophical method. The latter derived
from hif university education,the former from reflection on the Irish situation.Burke was
born into an Ireland where reflective intellect had its social setting in a small educational
elite, much of it connected with the Church of Ireland .This elite contemplated a political
class which owned much of the land ,and consisted primarily of a gentry and peerage
headed by the King representative, the LOrd-Lieutenant;but it saw too a tiny professional
class, and a huge illiterate,impoverished peasantry.
2. The aim of educational elite,which is shared with some of the Political; class ,was
improvement in the broadest sense,this is to say it connected self improvement throught the
influence of the Arts & Sciences and through the development of intellectual skill , with
moral culture and with economic development.The ability of the educated ,the politicians
and the rich to take constructive initiatives constrasted starkly with the inability of the
peasantry to help itself;peasants releived their misery principally through spasm of
savagery againstthier landlord’s representatives, but such violence was repressed sternly

Political Theories of Edmund Burke

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 Republic of the Philippines
State Colleges and Universities
Guimaras State College
Graduate School
Mclain, Buenavista, Guimaras

and helped nobody.The Irish situation suggested a general rationale of practice to those
who wished to improve themeselves and others: improvement,if it was to spread the
educational elite , must spring from the guidance and goodwill of the possessing
classes;from the landlord who developed his property, from the priest wgo instructedand
consoled the poor,and from the lord lieutenant who used his powerbenevolently. The only
obvious alternative was violence and that was both destructive and fruitless. Burke retained
all his life a sense of the responsibility of the educated ,rich and powerful to improve the lot
of those whom they directed;asense that existing arrangements were valuable in so far as
they were the necessary preconditions for improvement; a strong sense of the importance
of educated people as agents foe constructive change , Change which he often constructed
with the use of force , whether as method or as result.

WORK OF EDWARD BURKE

SUBLIME - Theory developed by EDMUND BURKE in the mid eighteenth century
where he defined sublime art as art that refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of
calculation, measurement or imitation. Burke then turns to his observations on the sublime.
He asserts that ideas of pain are much more powerful than those of pleasure, and that the
strongest pain of all is the fear of death, which causes terror. Edmund Burke makes it clear
that both political and social life are extremely complex and their problems cannot be
solved with the help of any easy formula or technique in the tradition of political
organization, the attitude and temperament of people and many other things are to be
brought under active consideration before suggesting any solution.
Of BEAUTY Burke's distinction between the sublime and the beautiful rests upon an
understanding of sexual difference in which the "masculine" passions of self-preservation,
which stem from ideas of terror, pain, and danger, are linked to the sublime, while the
"feminine" emotions of sympathy, tenderness, affection, and imitation are the preserve of
the beautiful. The sublime amalgamates such conventionally masculine qualities as power,
size, ambition, awe, and majesty; the beautiful collects the equally conventional feminine
traits of softness, smallness, weakness, docility, delicacy, and timidity. The former always
includes intimations of power, majesty, and brute male force—a storm at sea, a raging bull,
a ruler or sovereign, greatness of dimension—while the latter connotes smallness, delicacy,
and serenity: "it is the flowery species," such as, perhaps, a lily, "so remarkable for its
weakness and momentary duration, that gives us the liveliest idea of beauty, and elegance"
. Beauty, like femininity, is inseparable from a certain weakness. In part three of
the Enquiry Burke observes that "the beauty of women is considerably owing to their
weakness, or delicacy, and is even enhanced by their timidity, a quality of mind analogous
to it". He argues against the prevailing view that perfection is the cause of beauty:
Beautiful things might amaze and rouse us, but the sublime affects us in a more profound
way. It’s overwhelming, even frightening, and can leave us with a deep and lasting sense of
wonder. But why do potential dangers, such as a foreboding storm on the horizon or the
view from the edge of a cliff, exhilarate the human mind? The 18th-century philosopher
and writer Edmund Burke thought that the sublime involves the possibility of pain, which
triggers feelings of self-preservation – a visceral response that moves from the body to the
mind.

Political Theories of Edmund Burke

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 Republic of the Philippines
State Colleges and Universities
Guimaras State College
Graduate School
Mclain, Buenavista, Guimaras

Observe that part of a beautiful woman where she is perhaps the most beautiful, about the
neck and breasts; the smoothness; the softness; the easy and insensible swell; the variety of
the surface, which is never for the smallest space the same; the deceitful maze, through
which the unsteady eye slides giddily, without knowing where to fix, or whither it is
carried.
Here the feminine body, supposedly the symbol of the beautiful, instead produces the
effects of the sublime. Rather than securing boundaries and limits, its very "smoothness,"
"softness," and "variety" instill "unsteadiness": this body does not provide a site where
distinctions can be fixed but rather represents the point at which they come apart, and the
observer, seeking a resting place, "slides giddily." The absence of a fixed point of view or
visual focus produces disorientation; unlike the male, the beautiful female body defeats our
expectation of a center and instead becomes the occasion of a giddiness, or vertigo.
Vertigo, of course, is a typically sublime feeling connected with the falling away of ground
or center; it is what we feel when an abyss opens up before us. It is important to emphasize
that feminine sexual difference, which provides the foundation for the distinction between
the sublime and the beautiful, here becomes the figure for that distinction's instability,
eliciting a moment of textual dizziness in which the beautiful takes on the characteristics of
the sublime.

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