Reflections on the Revolution in France (Rethinking the Western Tradition) [Hardcover]

Edmund Burke (Author), Frank M. Turner (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Rethinking the Western Tradition | Publication Date: December 1, 2003

"Reflections on the Revolution in France" was written in 1790 and has remained in print ever since. Edmund Burke's analysis of revolutionary change established him as the chief framer of modern European conservative political thought. This new edition of the "Reflections" presents Burke's famous text along with a historical introduction by Frank Turner and four critical essays by leading scholars. The volume sets the "Reflections" in the context of Western political thought, highlights its ongoing relevance to contemporary debates, and provides abundant critical notes, a glossary and a glossary-index to ensure its accessibility. Contributors to the book examine various provocative aspects of Burke's thought. Conor Cruise O'Brien explores Burke's hostility to "theory", Darrin McMahon considers Burke's characterization of the French Enlightenment, Jack Rakove contrasts the views of Burke and American constitutional framers on the process of drawing up constitutions, and Alan Wolfe investigates Burke, the social sciences, and liberal democracy.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Rethinking the Western Tradition Series

About the Author

Frank M. Turner is John Hay Whitney Professor of History, Yale University. Conor Cruise O'Brien is the author of The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography and Commented Anthology of Edmund Burke. Darrin M. McMahon is the author of Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity. Jack N. Rakove of Stanford University was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his book Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution. Alan Wolfe is director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College and the author of Moral Freedom: The Search for Virtue in a World of Choice.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (December 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300099789
• ISBN-13: 978-0300099782
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,745,773 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Probably the greatest defense of tradition and political caution ever conceived, December 14, 2008

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Bibliophile (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Reflections on the Revolution in France (Rethinking the Western Tradition) (Paperback)

This is the book - a letter, actually - which established Burke's title as the father of conservatism in the English-speaking world. Burke did what no other writer had done in establishing a framework and a moral philosophy for conservative thought.

Burke deplored the reckless upheaval he saw in France, in which so much good was lost in a cataclysmic uprising, simply because it was traditional good. While not afraid of change, especially necessary change, Burke compellingly advocates caution and respect for tradition, so that political changes are more likely to be for the best.

Most importantly, Burke is almost single-handedly responsible for all modern conservative movements; while not all who call themselves conservative recognize Burke's centrality, all true conservatives see his work as foundational.

I could go on and on about this book, but thankfully thousands of other writers have done so already. For all these readings, this is required reading for anyone who wishes to play a meaningful role in society, whether liberal or conservative. A timeless classic.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Burke's evils of the French Revolution, December 3, 2008

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Michael A Neulander "Political Philosophy" (VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Reflections on the Revolution in France (Rethinking the Western Tradition) (Paperback)

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.