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Reflections on the Revolution in France (World's Classics)

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Edmund Burke is considered by many to be the first to expound upon Conservative principles. And this book provides plenty of justification for that view. Burke's "reflections" are especially potent since they not only provide a common sense defense of Conservative values but allow one to examine the consequences of ignoring those values, vis-à-vis the French Revolution. Burke defends the stability that comes with constancy and aged wisdom and derides those that embrace variability and experimentation as virtues. However, the reader is not left with the impression that Burke is opposed to all change. Quite the contrary. Recognizing the fallibility of Man, Burke fully expects that there is to be changes in our habits and prejudices as part of the normal course of human endeavors in order to improve upon established wisdom. But he forthrightly rejects the wholesale dismissal of knowledge and wisdom accumulated over vast periods of time. And he holds no punches in castigating the French Revolutionaries who were so presumptuous and arrogant as to count their vernacular wisdom wiser than that of all generations preceding them. He uses example after example of failures in the French experiment to demonstrate the futility and imbecility of starting afresh instead of building upon an existing foundation. This book is an absolute must read for conservatives.

In Life of Johnson, Boswell brings up the name of Johnson's one-time sparing partner, Edmund Burke. Johnson, being quite sick, and not given to easy praise, admits, "Yes, Burke is an extraordinary man." Boswell tries to coax a more quotable reply, and Johnson, who thought argument the sole end of conversation, finally noted, "That fellow calls forth all my powers. Were I to see Burke now, it would kill me."

Reflections on the Revolution in France should not be a killer read for most, but is difficult in spots. Many of the sentences are long and complex, written in an age when thought and rhetoric had not yet been corroded by sound bites. Some of the topics may seem a bit obscure now. But this is undoubtedly a great book, by a great man, thinking lucidly and passionately about great issues. It is indeed a work of great intellectual power. At the same time, it is also a work of moral passion, balance, and foresight, often eloquently and sometimes simply expressed.

Much of it is also remarkably timely. Not only did Burke seem to anticipate the extremes to which the French Revolution was tending, the great Marxist revolutions of our times also often greatly resemble his remarks. "It is a suffient motive to destroy an old scheme of things, because it is an old one." "Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle." "Criminal means once tolerated are soon preferred. . . Justifying perfidy and murder for the public benefit, public benefit will soon become the pretext, and perfidy and murder the end." Examples could be multiplied. Reading the book, the subsequent history not only of communism, but also of progressive social cults in the West, becomes more comprehensible.

I prefer to think of Burke primarily in moral or spiritual terms, rather than political. Burke remarks, anticipating Rank and Becker and preempting Marx's silly economic heresy, (and anticipating Marxist personality cults) "Man is by his constitution a religious animal." One of the attractive things about Burke to me is his non-sectarian faith; he spoke from a viewpoint C.S.Lewis later described as "Mere Christianity." Some of his insights also parallel those of the Chinese philosopher, Confucius. What the two men shared was intellectual accuity combined with humility that expressed itself as a willingness to sit at the feet of teachers of the past. "We know that we have made no discoveries; and we think that no discoveries are to be made, in morality." That is one pole within the orthodox Christian approach to morality; God has "placed eternity in our hearts;" the Tao is universal, as Lewis argued.

Burke's argument may go too far at times; surely some of the changes wrought by the French Revolution were for the good, and there is something to be said for the moral passion of the revolutionary. And not every paragraph is interesting to me. Still, overall, the balance and sanity of this book remain not just as a monument to the powers of its author, but as useful resource to anyone who thinks about the relation of power and morality. Solomon said, "Pride comes before a fall." This book is, in some ways, a prophetic and wise meditation on the social consequences of that deep truth.

Author, Jesus and the Religions of Man (July 2000) d.marshall@sun.ac.jp

This version (Penguin Classics) has a wonderfully informative(81 pages) introduction that will bring anyone not familiar with Edmund Burke or his writings up to par.

Edmund Burke originally wrote what became "Reflections" as a letter in response to a young Parisian man who sought his support. He later went back to elaborate upon the original letter and wrote this book, knowing then that the book would be read by many more than the simple few that would read the letter.

In "Reflections on the Revolution in France", Edmund Burke lays down his arguments against several items on which he disagreed with the National Assembly leaders responsible for the French Revolution. The basis for most of his concerns was that he saw the French to be tossing aside all the prior wisdom and knowledge gained throughout history, simply to erect a radical, new government. It is amazing in retrospect to see how uncannily Burke predicted the Reign of Terror that would follow shortly. Thomas Paine, a hero of the US Revolution, who then went to France to aid in their revolt, angrily chastized Burke and this book, in Paine's "The Rights of Man." But while Paine gave many valid points in his book (I recommend it and this one for the full spectrum of the debate), he clearly ended up on the wrong side of this argument.

Another thing I found so amazing about reading this book was how Burke's warnings to the French are still almost entirely applicable today. One of my favorite passages, Burke writing about the general public, is something I would love to personally deliver to every modern-day political pollster (not to mention Bill Clinton & Co.): "A perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world... It is therefore of infinite importance that they (the people) should not be suffered to imagine that their will, any more than that of kings, is the standard of right and wrong."

I recommend this book to anyone who thinks logically or wants to know why conservatives think the way they do. Also, if you believe yourself to normally be conservative, but often find yourself pinned or lacking an explanation for why you are against something that the majority, or "trendy" minorities, might support, then this book is where you need to start.

Reflections on the Revolution in France written by Edmund Burke and Edited with an introduction by Conor Cruise O'Brien the Penguin Classics version is the best version of this unparalleled powerful work. The reason for this is that included in this version you have an introduction that gets the reader upto speed. For Burke is without doubt the foremost conservative British political thinkers of his time, (1729-1797).

There is a biographical note on Edmund Burke right after the introduction giving the reader a historical perspective into who is Edmund Burke and why his advice was sought after with regard to the French Revolution and the consequenses of its following. Unlike the United States, France had an established entrenched government, so any change in form of government meant that an upheavel of property, religion, and traditional French institutions would have to occur. Underlying the French Revolution was the latent Catholic Cause which being Irish Burke had a good deal of sympathy.

Burke's Reflections written in 1790 was a really good prediction of the events pretaining to the Reign of Terror experienced by the French. This edition of Edmund Burke's "Reflection on the Revolution in France" has well explained footnotes further giving the reader a much greater appreciation for the practical wisdom of Burke. Burke was a man who would've rather seen a gradual or piecemeal reform as opposed to a revolution as he was sceptical in his belief in expediency.

Another plus for this edition, in contrast to the others available, is that there is a well appointed "Notes" at the end of Burke's writing. Also, at the very end of this book you'll have a recommended reading list, which for those inclined is indispensable. By far this edition is well worth reading and great care has been given to bring this important work in a form that is easily understandable, with enough detail to make it interesting reading.

Without a doubt, the finest political/philosophical conservative text published in its time. The Honorable Mr. Burke saw what the French revolution was about and attacked it root and branch. Ultimately being vindicated by Napoleon's fall at Waterloo. The work posits the chaos of the left to the natural political order of the right well before those terms were connected. Serious students of the subject will learn much from this text

My recommendation was for the Oxford rather than the Everyman edition, edited by L.G. Mitchell. I apologise for this error.

Can't improve on the text of REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. He was the dominant political thinker of the last quarter of the 18th century in ENgland. His reputation depends less on his role as a practising politician than on his ability to set contemporary problems within a wider context of political theory. The introduction by L.G. Mitchell argues this point congently. Mitchell's intro appears in the Oxford University Press edition. It's cheaper, too.

This was required reading for a graduate course in the history of the French Revolution. In Burke's book Reflections on the Revolution in France, he penned a diatribe against the evils of the French Revolution, believing that there was a pernicious cabal of philosophes and politicians joined by money-jobbers whose aim was to topple not only the old regime in France, but to export their "plague" throughout Europe. Thus, Burke astutely understood and abhorred the influence that Radical Enlightenment ideas had on the French Revolution. One instantly detects, in Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, a conservative philosophy by which he not only understood his own society, but the entire human civilization. Much of his work was an appeal to a politically conservative notion of a "created order" of the world, which from this reading seemed to be universal to all European nations. This reader sensed that Burke's Reflections were written as a warning to the rest of Europe not to follow the model of change embodied in the French Revolution, and to adopt the steady reforms that took place in England.

Burke found no social redeeming value in the French Revolution and when he wrote Reflections, the worst of the "reign of terror" had yet to come. In fact, if one used Georges Lefebvre's notion of "four acts" to the Revolution, Burke poured out all his criticism against the first two acts, the aristocratic and bourgeois revolts. This reader found Burke's long sections on British history used to buttress his case; that change should have come to France within a more staid social order as either ignorant of the complex socio-economic and political factors that led up to the Revolution, or as a naïve belief that that the French people were so culturally close to the English that they should both react in similar fashion to socio-political upheaval. Burke delivered a literary "tongue lashing" to the French for how easily they turned their backs on their socio-political traditions. "You had all these advantages in your ancient states; but you chose to act as if you had never been moulded into civil society, and had everything to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by despising everything that belonged to you" (31). This reader found Burke's argument on this point a little disingenuous. He lectured how Britain's "Glorious Revolution" in 1688 should have been the model for reform. However, he barely mentioned the bloody English Civil War that Cromwell staged, including the regicide of Charles I. In addition, one's impression of Burke's information is that he had received a very narrow view of the history leading up to the Revolution and its opening days, which seemed confined to correspondence from a small circle of friends. Burke had high praise for the First and Second Estates. His opinion of the nobles he knew was that they were, "...for the greater part composed of men of high spirit, and of a delicate sense of honour....They were tolerably well bred; very officious, humane, and hospitable" (115-116). Not the impression one is left with after viewing the movie Dangerous Liaisons! In describing his personal contacts with the French clergy, he noted that, "I received a perfectly good account of their morals, and of their attention to their duties" (123).

Burke essentially observed a "cabal" that planned the opening of the Revolution to include a pronouncement of aristocratic intentions to abolish feudalism, the National Assembly's adoption of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," and the confiscation of Church property. Burke blamed two evils for the old regimes' demise. First, he blamed the philosophes whose atheistic literature he believed provided the influential ideas necessary to set the Revolution in motion. "The literary cabal had some years ago formed something like a regular plan for the destruction of the Christian religion" (94). "Writers, especially when they act in a body, and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind" (95). Second, he blamed the doubling of the Third Estate's representation in the National Assembly who were led by an overabundance of undistinguished lawyers and whose ambitions were to grab the reins of power. Burke described these men as "the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession" (36). Burke also ascribed to this cabal; the desire to reorder society through the confiscation of property, which he decried in his Reflections. "I see the confiscators begin with bishops, and chapters, and monasteries; but I do not see them end their" (128). Thus, Burke found that the pernicious cabal of philosophes and politicians were too enamored of the "new religion" of enlightenment science and had no respect for tradition or the wisdom of religion. "They conceive very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous" (75).
Alexis de Tocqueville noted how Burke misjudged the Revolution. "At first he thought it meant that France would be weakened and virtually destroyed" (94). Burke also feared that this "irrational" revolution would infest his own countrymen similar to a plaque. "If it be a plague, it is such a plague that the precautions of the most severe quarantine ought to be established against it." (76).

Burke was no stranger to enlightened ideas. After all, he had been a supporter of American and Irish liberty. Burke was a Conservative Enlightenment figure, defending "reason" with tradition and religion. However, what Burke, was condemning in its earliest form is what we now recognize as ideology. And what he understood with great foresight is the power of modern intellectuals, acting as a literary clerisy, to produce it. Thus, Burke found that the pernicious cabal of philosophes and politicians were too enamored of the "new religion" of enlightenment science and had no respect for tradition or the wisdom of religion. "They conceive very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous" (75).

Recommended reading for anyone interested in political philosophy, enlightenment history, and the French Revolution.

This was required reading for a graduate course in the history of the French Revolution. In Burke's book Reflections on the Revolution in France, he penned a diatribe against the evils of the French Revolution, believing that there was a pernicious cabal of philosophes and politicians joined by money-jobbers whose aim was to topple not only the old regime in France, but to export their "plague" throughout Europe. Thus, Burke astutely understood and abhorred the influence that Radical Enlightenment ideas had on the French Revolution. One instantly detects, in Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, a conservative philosophy by which he not only understood his own society, but the entire human civilization. Much of his work was an appeal to a politically conservative notion of a "created order" of the world, which from this reading seemed to be universal to all European nations. This reader sensed that Burke's Reflections were written as a warning to the rest of Europe not to follow the model of change embodied in the French Revolution, and to adopt the steady reforms that took place in England.

Burke found no social redeeming value in the French Revolution and when he wrote Reflections, the worst of the "reign of terror" had yet to come. In fact, if one used Georges Lefebvre's notion of "four acts" to the Revolution, Burke poured out all his criticism against the first two acts, the aristocratic and bourgeois revolts. This reader found Burke's long sections on British history used to buttress his case; that change should have come to France within a more staid social order as either ignorant of the complex socio-economic and political factors that led up to the Revolution, or as a naïve belief that that the French people were so culturally close to the English that they should both react in similar fashion to socio-political upheaval. Burke delivered a literary "tongue lashing" to the French for how easily they turned their backs on their socio-political traditions. "You had all these advantages in your ancient states; but you chose to act as if you had never been moulded into civil society, and had everything to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by despising everything that belonged to you" (31). This reader found Burke's argument on this point a little disingenuous. He lectured how Britain's "Glorious Revolution" in 1688 should have been the model for reform. However, he barely mentioned the bloody English Civil War that Cromwell staged, including the regicide of Charles I. In addition, one's impression of Burke's information is that he had received a very narrow view of the history leading up to the Revolution and its opening days, which seemed confined to correspondence from a small circle of friends. Burke had high praise for the First and Second Estates. His opinion of the nobles he knew was that they were, "...for the greater part composed of men of high spirit, and of a delicate sense of honour....They were tolerably well bred; very officious, humane, and hospitable" (115-116). Not the impression one is left with after viewing the movie Dangerous Liaisons! In describing his personal contacts with the French clergy, he noted that, "I received a perfectly good account of their morals, and of their attention to their duties" (123).

Burke essentially observed a "cabal" that planned the opening of the Revolution to include a pronouncement of aristocratic intentions to abolish feudalism, the National Assembly's adoption of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," and the confiscation of Church property. Burke blamed two evils for the old regimes' demise. First, he blamed the philosophes whose atheistic literature he believed provided the influential ideas necessary to set the Revolution in motion. "The literary cabal had some years ago formed something like a regular plan for the destruction of the Christian religion" (94). "Writers, especially when they act in a body, and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind" (95). Second, he blamed the doubling of the Third Estate's representation in the National Assembly who were led by an overabundance of undistinguished lawyers and whose ambitions were to grab the reins of power. Burke described these men as "the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession" (36). Burke also ascribed to this cabal; the desire to reorder society through the confiscation of property, which he decried in his Reflections. "I see the confiscators begin with bishops, and chapters, and monasteries; but I do not see them end their" (128). Thus, Burke found that the pernicious cabal of philosophes and politicians were too enamored of the "new religion" of enlightenment science and had no respect for tradition or the wisdom of religion. "They conceive very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous" (75).
Alexis de Tocqueville noted how Burke misjudged the Revolution. "At first he thought it meant that France would be weakened and virtually destroyed" (94). Burke also feared that this "irrational" revolution would infest his own countrymen similar to a plaque. "If it be a plague, it is such a plague that the precautions of the most severe quarantine ought to be established against it." (76).

Burke was no stranger to enlightened ideas. After all, he had been a supporter of American and Irish liberty. Burke was a Conservative Enlightenment figure, defending "reason" with tradition and religion. However, what Burke, was condemning in its earliest form is what we now recognize as ideology. And what he understood with great foresight is the power of modern intellectuals, acting as a literary clerisy, to produce it. Thus, Burke found that the pernicious cabal of philosophes and politicians were too enamored of the "new religion" of enlightenment science and had no respect for tradition or the wisdom of religion. "They conceive very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous" (75).

Recommended reading for anyone interested in political philosophy, enlightenment history, and the French Revolution.

This was required reading for a graduate course in the history of the French Revolution. In Burke's book Reflections on the Revolution in France, he penned a diatribe against the evils of the French Revolution, believing that there was a pernicious cabal of philosophes and politicians joined by money-jobbers whose aim was to topple not only the old regime in France, but to export their "plague" throughout Europe. Thus, Burke astutely understood and abhorred the influence that Radical Enlightenment ideas had on the French Revolution. One instantly detects, in Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, a conservative philosophy by which he not only understood his own society, but the entire human civilization. Much of his work was an appeal to a politically conservative notion of a "created order" of the world, which from this reading seemed to be universal to all European nations. This reader sensed that Burke's Reflections were written as a warning to the rest of Europe not to follow the model of change embodied in the French Revolution, and to adopt the steady reforms that took place in England.

Burke found no social redeeming value in the French Revolution and when he wrote Reflections, the worst of the "reign of terror" had yet to come. In fact, if one used Georges Lefebvre's notion of "four acts" to the Revolution, Burke poured out all his criticism against the first two acts, the aristocratic and bourgeois revolts. This reader found Burke's long sections on British history used to buttress his case; that change should have come to France within a more staid social order as either ignorant of the complex socio-economic and political factors that led up to the Revolution, or as a naïve belief that that the French people were so culturally close to the English that they should both react in similar fashion to socio-political upheaval. Burke delivered a literary "tongue lashing" to the French for how easily they turned their backs on their socio-political traditions. "You had all these advantages in your ancient states; but you chose to act as if you had never been moulded into civil society, and had everything to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by despising everything that belonged to you" (31). This reader found Burke's argument on this point a little disingenuous. He lectured how Britain's "Glorious Revolution" in 1688 should have been the model for reform. However, he barely mentioned the bloody English Civil War that Cromwell staged, including the regicide of Charles I. In addition, one's impression of Burke's information is that he had received a very narrow view of the history leading up to the Revolution and its opening days, which seemed confined to correspondence from a small circle of friends. Burke had high praise for the First and Second Estates. His opinion of the nobles he knew was that they were, "...for the greater part composed of men of high spirit, and of a delicate sense of honour....They were tolerably well bred; very officious, humane, and hospitable" (115-116). Not the impression one is left with after viewing the movie Dangerous Liaisons! In describing his personal contacts with the French clergy, he noted that, "I received a perfectly good account of their morals, and of their attention to their duties" (123).

Burke essentially observed a "cabal" that planned the opening of the Revolution to include a pronouncement of aristocratic intentions to abolish feudalism, the National Assembly's adoption of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," and the confiscation of Church property. Burke blamed two evils for the old regimes' demise. First, he blamed the philosophes whose atheistic literature he believed provided the influential ideas necessary to set the Revolution in motion. "The literary cabal had some years ago formed something like a regular plan for the destruction of the Christian religion" (94). "Writers, especially when they act in a body, and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind" (95). Second, he blamed the doubling of the Third Estate's representation in the National Assembly who were led by an overabundance of undistinguished lawyers and whose ambitions were to grab the reins of power. Burke described these men as "the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession" (36). Burke also ascribed to this cabal; the desire to reorder society through the confiscation of property, which he decried in his Reflections. "I see the confiscators begin with bishops, and chapters, and monasteries; but I do not see them end their" (128). Thus, Burke found that the pernicious cabal of philosophes and politicians were too enamored of the "new religion" of enlightenment science and had no respect for tradition or the wisdom of religion. "They conceive very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous" (75).
Alexis de Tocqueville noted how Burke misjudged the Revolution. "At first he thought it meant that France would be weakened and virtually destroyed" (94). Burke also feared that this "irrational" revolution would infest his own countrymen similar to a plaque. "If it be a plague, it is such a plague that the precautions of the most severe quarantine ought to be established against it." (76).

Burke was no stranger to enlightened ideas. After all, he had been a supporter of American and Irish liberty. Burke was a Conservative Enlightenment figure, defending "reason" with tradition and religion. However, what Burke, was condemning in its earliest form is what we now recognize as ideology. And what he understood with great foresight is the power of modern intellectuals, acting as a literary clerisy, to produce it. Thus, Burke found that the pernicious cabal of philosophes and politicians were too enamored of the "new religion" of enlightenment science and had no respect for tradition or the wisdom of religion. "They conceive very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous" (75).

Recommended reading for anyone interested in political philosophy, enlightenment history, and the French Revolution.