Notes on Ball & Dagger reader
Edmund Burke (1790, 1791):  Selections from Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791)

Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

1774:  Elected Whig representative to Parliament from Bristol.  "Address to the Electors of Bristol"

1780:  Elected Whig representative from Malton, a pocket borough of Lord Rockingham (Burke's patron) (obviously).

Lecture notes

Distinguish Edmund "Burke" from Robert "Bork", the Supreme Court nominee, whose nomination was rejected by the Senate (by, let it be noted, the largest rejection vote ever).  Burke is a classical conservative, while Bork I consider to be a reactionary conservative.

Popular view of Burke:

• arch-conservative
• honor tradition, resist all new ideas
• the current elite deserve to be the elite

All of these are incorrect (or at least badly oversimplified) understandings.  Note that he sought conciliation with the colonies and foresaw their rebellion.  Note also his stance that while George III was right in law, he was wrong in the spirit of the British Constitution (esp. in trying to assert his [George III's] powers against Parliament).

This is our first encounter with (non-retrograde) criticism of Classical Liberalism.

We must understand him against the terrible background of the French Revolution — the executions (and, after he wrote, the Terror, where the revolutionaries turned on themselves and after which Napoleon Bonaparte became military dictator).  (He supported the American colonists in their war for independence.)

The French Revolution and the Terror raised the Classical Liberal problem:  majoritarianism vs. rights.  How can we have rights & yet be guided by the people's will?

Burke recasts this problem as one of theory / philosophy / reason vs. prudence.  "How can we make necessary changes without getting swept away by abstractions?"  (One such abstraction was the absolutist doctrine that "the colonists must obey the law!" — correct in law, perhaps, but not practicable.)  Recall that he was a practical politician.

It is still Stage 5 (the law-creating stage:  "How should we deal with society as a problem?"), though it sees society as more organic, less susceptible to abstract definition and construction.  No "state of nature" argument.  No participant orientation.

The organic metaphor — conservation (ecology) & conservatism;  "philosophy" & "rights" vs. practicality and muddling through.  [A tree farm is not a forest.]

• The fallacy of rightness:  "At last, now I have it right!"
• Robots & computers vs. organic life;  the "fabric" of society [149A/1/7]
• Colonization of the lifeworld

Slow change, respect for tradition.  "Prejudices" (meaning well-grounded ideas you can't necessarily justify rationally) ;  "prudence";  "the sovereignty of convention";  "latent wisdom"

Rights are refracted, distorted, when they pass from the vacuum of philosophy into the material of society.  Rights are also affected and distorted by the power of those propounding these abstractions.  [Marx says something similar.]

No absolute rights;  just a middle (a la Aristotle)  [99/5].  We can't define rights, but we can discern them [99/5-6]

Social contract, yes, in some sense, but of a total form of life and with generations to come — and thus not susceptible of a specific, explicit definition.

The business of government is to restrain passions (a la Hobbes) [§95/middle]  Anti-majoritarianism;  anti-mob rule.

We're interested in his supposed elitism:  what sort of an elitism was it?

• It is natural to respect leaders.
• The need for smart leadership, i.e., leadership with many skills
• The natural aristocracy.  Not the same as the existing aristocracy.  More those who had demonstrated talent and had learned management by being successful [like Locke talked about].  So these were mostly the monied, though also the traditional aristocracy.  And of course this is not a radical message.

The need for religion as an ongoing reminder of the awe due to existing institutions.

The need for the "little platoons" of society;  organic growth of custom (a la development of English common law)

There is no single, best government for all societies.

YET MORE NOTES

The Classical Liberal "thought experiment" of the "state of nature":

• Is it useful?
• It is unrealistic because it is atomistic, says Burke.

Radical — radix — image of a leaky roof in the house.

The organic metaphor

Enlightenment — Reason — absolute, abstract rights — "diffracted" by reality and by power;  muddling through;  Aristotle's middle.  Can't define rights in advance but only backwards (i.e., in hindsight).

Contra the quotation in the text, stability is not an end in itself for Burke.

A student asks, perceptively, "Why don't Burke's arguments apply to the United States and its Declaration of Independence?  Why would he consider the French Revolution bad and yet be sympathetic to the American colonists' similar claims?"   The answer is that the French pol8itical culture was not very similar to the rights being asserted by the revolutionaries, while in the American colonies, the rights of the Declaration of Independence were already incorporated into the colonists' thinking (or at least into the thinking of their traditional leaders).

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

• Edmund Burke lived 1729-1797. What events were happening during that period? What social forces were at work? What social changes occurred? What philosophies were being propounded?
• Burke was born in Dublin of a Protestant father and Catholic mother.   What were the relations of the Protestants and Catholics during that time in Ireland?  Does this help us understand Burke's philosophy?
• Note context of this specific reading:  the French Revolution of 1789, and the general idea of rights independent of government (as stated in Thomas Paine's later critique of Burke, “Rights of Man”). Burke's reaction to the revolution was eagerly awaited.

When I study a reading such as this, particularly when I do so for a class, I like to record the general theoretical questions it raises for me.   These questions can then be applied to other readings, and I get to see what the relationships are among the readings.  Some questions prove of little use, and so I drop them after a while.  I have listed below the general theoretical questions that Burke raises for me.  You should also be thinking of such questions.

• Burke bases the legitimacy of a regime on the tradition that has led up to it.  He sees such a tradition both in England and in France.
  • Is this ethnocentric of him — generalizing something that might pertain to those two countries alone?
  • Is this naive of him — assuming that tradition automatically confers legitimacy, when the tradition might be one of oppression, misery, and impotent anger?
• Regardless of whether Burke was right in his critique of the French Revolution specifically, he raises an important and to my mind entirely legitimate concern.   How bad do thing have to get before revolution is permitted?  Thomas Aquinas says that even in dealing with a bad tyrant, only prayer is permitted, but both John Locke and Thomas Jefferson (in the Declaration of Independence) caution against over-hasty revolution, although recognizing its legitimacy when government fails to protect the rights of its citizens.  So where does Burke fall along this dimension?
• What political party or movement would Burke join (or found) today?   What wing of that party or movement?
• Burke is particularly concerned with preserving nobility, understood not as a specific group of people but rather as a goal of life, both individual and collective.   Some people are recognized as being noble;  all should be trying to become so.  He critiques the leveling tendencies of the French Revolution on this ground, claiming that they thereby abandon the concept of nobility itself.  Some – many – social critics of today's society might claim the same thing, i.e., that mass culture makes people "equal" only in their shared reduction to the lowest common denominator.  Do you believe this is true?  Could it be just old fogies bemoaning what they don't understand?
• The French revolutionaries condemned not just the oppressive State but also religion.  (Later, Marx will similarly oppose it as “the opiate of the people”, i.e., something that puts them to sleep.)  Burke, on the other hand, claims that “religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and all comfort”.  What radically opposed perspectives!  Can we understand this conflict as arising from one side being right and the other side being blind or stupid?  (And if so, which side is which?)  Or is there some way in which we can reconcile these views, i.e., understand how each might reasonably hold its position and inform the other?
• How would one classify Burke’s philosophy, at root?  As what can we understand it?  Here are some possibilities:
• "Burke is the first of the postmoderns (Stage 5½), appropriately critiquing Stage 5 classical liberalism, but without benefit of Marx's understanding of oppression."
• "Burke is a Stage 5 classical liberal in that he grants that there are basic rights that government is supposed to preserve but recognizes that in reality the headlong pursuit of lost rights will only push them farther away."
• "Burke is a 'classical conservative', seeking a return to Stage 4 authoritarian rule from the Stage 4½ recognition of cultural relativity."
• "At root, regardless of the philosophical veil thrown over it, Burke’s position is a self-interested one that toadies up to aristocrats in their conflict with commoners."
• To what extent does Burke’s organic metaphor resemble “deep ecology” or “eco-feminism”?  You might reflect on the connection between the terms "conservative" and "conservation".
• One concept found in a number of liberal thinkers (and beyond – the list includes Jürgen Habermas) is that of “civil society”.   This concept refers to society outside the paternal (and self-interested)control of the State.   The free market, free associations (e.g., labor unions and your local bridge club), religions, and so on – all these require no direct government control and indeed suffer if government exercises such control.  These institutions of "civil society" represent the liberty that classical liberals believed government is created to protect.  Burke uses the same term.  Is he then a classical liberal, seeking to preserve this liberty, not to repress it?  To put this another way: could it be that Burke is not a classical conservative but rather a classical liberal, believing in liberty and in government’s obligation to protect it, but concerned that reckless adoption of radical ideas will reduce our liberties, not increase them?   Notice that Burke nowhere claims that government should rule civil society;  he doesn't advocate going back to a time when the monarch ruled absolutely;  he doesn't advocate going back to mercantilism.
• As we read Burke, we have to keep in mind that classical liberals of the time were also elitist, although they aren't as direct in stating it.  When Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, he was referring only to propertied, white, male humans.  If we were to read the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and the Constitution in this way, substituting “propertied, white, male humans” for “men” or “citizens” or “people”, we might miss the radical democratization that these documents gave birth to.  So when you read Burke, understand him in light of the context in which he is writing, not that of today.
• Note Burke's distinction between  “practical wisdom” and “theoretic science”.  Is he anti-Enlightenment, i.e., anti-rational?

QUIZ, DISCUSSION, AND OTHER QUESTIONS

• "Art is man's nature."  What did Burke mean by that?
• What year was this work written?  In response to what event(s)?  How does the work's argument relate to those events?

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