Edmund Burke

For his addition to History of Political Philosophy, Harvey Mansfield, Jr. focuses on Edmund Burke, the man widely acknowledged as the father of conservatism. For Mansfield, Burke is best understood as a politician who made contributions to political philosophy in the name of good governance and his real talent is his ability to understand the meaning of events.

Burke is a conservative due to his focus on establishments, and it is within American conservatism where his focus on natural law has gained the most attention as it is here where Burke essentially offers a conservatively modernized form of Thomism. Still, one of the major aspects of Burke’s ideas, and the one where Mansfield spends a good deal of time discussing is Burke’s attitude towards theory. For Burke, theory can be harmful to political practice for creating too many abstractions. This is best seen in Burke’s writings on the French Revolution as according to Burke, the French Revolution showed the dangers of an excessively theoretical conception of politics as well as the great difficulties that arise from trying to but those theoretical concepts into practice. Burke thinks the French Revolutionists made several mistakes. These mistakes are as follows: 1) their grandiose schemes lead to absurd generalizations and made them resistant to the possibility of moderate reform, 2) they saw politics as predictable and universal, 3) they failed to understand that theory is simple, while practice is complex due to the necessity of nuance and compromise, and thus places more of an emphases on experience, 4) they also failed to fully understand that while theory is timeless, political practice is restricted to the here and now, and 5) they failed to see that practice makes better use of prudence. This is not to saw that Burke thinks all theory is inherently bad, as he does distinguish between good theory and bad theory, but he still sees that the Revolutionists made too much of a use of it. For Burke, prudence and practice are to govern the world and theory is to be below these things.

Burke’s focus on practice extends to other aspects of is thought, as drawing from Aristotle, ethics too is seen as a practice. Burke tried to establish this on firm principles in order to avoid falling into relativism. Practice also effected how Burke saw the British constitution as he approved of it because it was grounded in practice rather than in theory. Even better for Burke was the fact that this focus on practice permeated through all levels of governance. This focus on practice also caused Burke to see democracy as impossible as according to him, the practice of good governance required both hierarchy as well as a sense of power from above.

It should also be noted that while Burke uses the language of the social contract, the social contract is seen a far higher than ordinary contracts. It is a partnership between the living, the dead, and those yet to be born. Through this, the past, present, and future are to be united, a move that makes it impossible for one person to justly rule absolutely. This is not to say Burke is against all change as he does recognize that change is at times needed; he simply thinks that any change enacted should be conducted with great prudence and in piecemeal fashion. Making sure any change enacted is done with great prudence is not the sole task of government according to Burke as he also thinks that government should be concerned with the securing of natural rights. Still, the fact that Britain’s constitution had gone through numerous changes from the classical to the modern era and still contained elements of the past was for Burke a sign of its strength.

This focus on slow, measured change does cause Burke to focus on convenience, but this is not a convenience based in calculation as the utilitarians would do. This focus here causes Burke to root his defense of property on fairly pragmatic grounds. For Burke, property is to be praised as it suggests distinction and continuity and it rooted in nature. Even more important is that it also gives Burke a way to conceive of government without founding or theory. This connects to another part of Burke’s philosophy, prescription, as this gives him a way of conceptualizing change without making that change as violent or revolutionary. What’s more, for Burke, prescription is a way to guide theory.

Burke’s focus on the here and now over the abstract can also be seen in his attitude toward natural law. Burke may be heavily indebted to natural law, but his conception of natural law takes circumstances into account. For Burke, much of our feelings and attitudes are untaught and are there to guide people, thus providing a certain degree of latent wisdom. This does connect to the idea of prejudice, but by “prejudice” but does not mean that work in the same sense it is used today with heavily negative connotations. Instead, Burke uses the word “prejudice” is a more neutral to positive way. Prejudice is not seen as the enemy of reason, but rather as its ally. These prejudices mean that true neutrality is impossible and therefore we must learn to work with what we have. Burke thinks this prejudice and recognition of limits will lead to Gentlemanly virtue and this virtue will restrict unjust ambition. This is an important move as for Burke; it is restraints on unjust ambition that the Revolutionaries were lacking.       

Thomas Paine

Coming in at seven pages, Francis Canavan, S.J.’s essay on Thomas Paine is the shortest essay in History of Political Philosophy and has a difficult task ahead, as he must demonstrate Paine’s importance in the development of political philosophy as opposed to being a mere radical. Despite this, Canavan admits that Paine, as a pamphleteer is more of a propagandist than a thinker and tends to see the world in terms of black and white. And indeed, for Paine the past was an age where humans were in perpetual ignorance while the present is seen as ushering in a new era of reason.

Despite Paine’s distain for the past, he still shares one important element of his thought with the Ancient and Medieval philosophers, natural law. Still, he comes up with a different conception of it as while natural law is still seen as being known by reason, Paine also thinks that once the process of people coming to know the natural law is complete, a new conception of humanity, free from ignorance can rise to power. Government should be founded on these new principles and should be greatly limited. Here the state/ society distinction is even further developed as society is still seen as a natural good, but now the government is seen as the cause, not the solution to social disorder.

Rights play an important role in Paine’s thought as the right to pursue one’s own interest as well as security are seen as two highly important concepts. Further developing his ideas on “rights”, Paine identifies two kinds of rights. There two kinds of rights are as follows: 1) Natural rights, which are seen as belonging to people by their nature and 2) Civil rights, which are seen as belonging to people because they are members of society.

Paine sees civil society as coming about due to the natural human ability to reason, an idea that places Paine firmly in the social contract theory. What this means for the actual functioning of government is that all legitimate power must be rooted in popular sovereignty. The fact that this has rarely been the actual case is for Paine the reason why the history of government has been a history of tyranny. In particular, Paine is critical of monarchial and aristocratic forms of government due to the hereditary nature of their power and thinks that only representative government could respect people’s natural sovereignty. Indeed, in Paine’s ideal, representative government should be a place of radical equality, going as far as to place the executive in a purely administrative role as anything else would give one person too much power.

Because people would act in their best interest and everyone’s interest would be represented, representative government would end tyranny as no person would vote to put themselves in tyranny. Paine further hoped that representative government could end both war and poverty and wished to use the money saved from the lack of civil and military extravagance to help build a welfare state, a task Paine plans to do through progressive taxation. This is important as it shows that despite his strongly anti-state rhetoric, Paine still recognizes that the government has positive duties to perform.       

The Federalists

For his entry to History of Political Philosophy, Martin Diamond approaches his essay in a different fashion than the others have. While every other essay in the book focuses on one philosopher, or as in the case of Luther and Calvin as well as Bentham and Mill, two Diamond approached his essay differently as he instead focuses on one collection of essays written by three men and later compiled into a single book, that book being The Federalist Papers. Diamond begins his essay by noting that The Federalist Papers are both bound to their time and also able to address future generations. And while many critics of the essays have maintained that they amount to nothing more than pro-Constitution propaganda and are actually of low quality. Diamond argues for their place in the history of political philosophy.

            First and foremost, The Federalist Papers are to be understood as a defense of the republic and it is for this reason that the three authors, John Jay, Alexander Madison, and John Madison; all took Roman pseudonyms. Diamond also sees The Federalist Papers as primarily undertaking two tasks. These tasks are as follows: 1) defend the proposed Constitution and 2) critique the currently existing confederation. In order to do this, they had to fundamentally change how Americans viewed their republic as the United States had to now be seen as a republic, not as a collection of republics. This was an important task as the Constitution was often seen as anti-republican as it was generally assumed at the time that only small countries could be republican in nature while larger counties by their nature trended towards despotism. It was well understood that a republic needed a well-educated and engaged population and a small country was seen as the most conductive environment for these factors.

            For the Federalists however, the Constitution provided a framework for such a citizenry. In The Federalist Papers, a much more pure synthesis of republicanism and democracy is proposed while this synthesis still maintains a distinction between a republic and pure democracy. Instead, the virtue of “popular government” is exalted which created the idea that the United State was not a mixed regime, but rather a wholly popular state. For this, a new science of politics would be needed that would now be focused on the new understanding of democracy and would also be more tailored for a large republic.

            This is not to say the Federalists had an unwavering support of democracy, as they did recognize three instances where democracy could go wrong. These instances are as follows: 1) the people lose control of their representatives, 2) popular majorities, through their elected officials, become oppressive, and 3) popular majorities become foolish and as a result, elected officials become the same. Because of these fears, safeguards to prevent this from happening become essential as now tyranny can come from both rulers as well as from the masses. One of the key ways in which this was done was by splitting the legislature into two houses while the legislature itself was to be checked by both the executive and judicial branches. Here, the Federalists were trying to encourage the development of rightly understood ambition that could harness the power of ambition to do good while avoiding the negative consequences of ambition. Representation is also seen as essential as for the Federalists; representative government can check the excesses of both government of the few as well as government by the many.

 In the end, the idea of separation of powers and checks and balances is a major factor in Federalist arguments for a large republic as while separation of powers is essential for preserving liberty, it is not seen as being very useful in a small republic. What this means is that in order to properly maintain separation of power, a large republic is needed. This connects deeply to the idea of factions, which are seen as good as they can prevent one faction from gaining too much power. Smaller societies are seen as more united and thus it is easier for one faction to gain control of the society. By contrast, a large representative republic is seen as more likely to produce the sort of divisions that great factions, thus making it more difficult for one faction to gain control. Because of this elevation of the importance of factions, commercial republics are highly regarded as they encourage the diversity that creates factions. Furthermore, trade is seen as an important way of bringing about freedom. Even more important is what the use of factions shows what the Federalists are trying to do, get good results for bad motivation. This is because the Federalists know that ultimately the motivation for each of the factions is selfish, but through their coming together, this selfish motivation can be used to bring about good.     

Adam Smith

In his first contribution to History of Political Philosophy, Joseph Cropsey focuses on the political thought of Adam Smith, a man who helped lay the theoretical justifications of free market capitalism. Though today he is only thought of as an economist, it needs to be remembered that Smith’s actual employment was a moral philosopher. Though he is counted as a political philosopher as the purposes of Strauss and Cropsey; there is very little political philosophy in his moral thought while his economic theory has more implications for political philosophy than any direct contribution. Still, his work is highly important as he did make one of the major defenses of liberal capitalism.

In order to understand Smith, it is helpful to understand his two major influences, John Locke and David Hume. The influence Locke had over Smith is easy to spot, particularly in their shared concern for liberty, property rights, and tolerance. It is more difficult to spot Hume’s influence, but it can be seen in his conception of morality as being rooted in feelings. Still, Smith grounded his conception of utility in a sort of a conclusion of reason rather than in a sense of feeling as Hume did. One major way Smith’s position on feelings is manifested is through his teachings on sympathy, which is a highly important element of Smith’s moral theory as it allows people to see other’s as oneself. Because Smith sees sympathy as being natural to people, he also sees both moral law and society as being natural.

Smith’s views on society are interesting as his “natural right” depends heavily on a supposed impartial observer viewing the actions of people so that it may be properly judged. It should also be pointed out that while Smith sees society as being natural, he does not have this same view of political society as it is more narrowly conceived and mostly exists for the purpose of safeguarding justice. As a result of this, there is now an even greater sense of the divide between politics and society. From here Smith makes three moves. These moves are as follows: 1) moral philosophy is divided between two parts, ethics and jurisprudence. Justice is placed in the latter part. 2) Justice is seen as giving what is due to a person, no more and no less and does not necessitate gratitude. 3) Political society is only seen as natural in the weak sense.

All this talk of what is natural may appear to be Medieval in origin, but it needs to be understood that it is really much more mechanical than what was found in the Middle Ages. Still, natural tendencies are highly valued by Smith, particularly in his ethics. This can be seen in his ethics as he defends a consequentialist based approach on the grounds that it is more natural than intention-based ethics. His focus on what is natural can also be seen in the tension Smith sees between the natural sentiments of people and the natural course of things as people labor but are pushed back by nature, thus making work difficult. The tension Smith notices here ends up leading to one of the more important elements of his thought as the tension between people’s natural sentiments and the natural course of things ends up producing wealth, which Smith elevates. It also needs to be recognized that sentiment still guides people more than reason, and it is this sentiment that forms the basis of morality, much as it also does in Hume. And much like Hume, Smith also makes use of the is/ought distinction in order to avoid giving moral worth to every feeling.

Smith supports democracy as he feels that it is the system that most mitigates the differences between rulers and the ruled, a move that Smith hopes will be able to bring together society and political society. Because of this, a free, reasonable, comfortable, and tolerant life for all those involved is preferred. A nation’s wealth is seen as the best way of bringing about these conditions while free market capitalism is seen as the best way of generating this wealth. The wealth of a nation and its welfare are therefore not easily separated.

It should be noted that while Smith certainly believed in capitalism, he was not a dogmatist for them as many of his followers would later become. Smith grounds value in labor and thinks that labor and land owners share in the wealth they created together. What this means is that Smith could have had no conception of talking to the multitude of laboring poor nor defending putting them in that position. What’s more, Smith did not even call his system “capitalism.” Rather, Smith called it “the system of natural liberty” and was to be a system open to all. Though the intention of this system was indeed to produce liberty, it must be understood that by “liberty” Smith was keeping with tradition as he had a far more communal conception of liberty than what would later develop and was also careful to distinguish liberty from license. Still, Smith had a highly positive outlook for the possibility of the growth of liberty as he thought that this system would naturally spread throughout the world.    

William Blackstone

For his entry to History of Political Philosophy, Herbert J. Storing focuses his attention on William Blackstone; an 18^th century jurist who though his writing on the law was able to make a contribution to political philosophy. One of the first things that needs to be understood about Blackstone is that unlike many other legal theorists that came before him, he is not interested in some sort of idea of what the law is in general, but rather in the particular laws of England. In particular, his most famous work Commentaries on the Laws of England was aimed at two people in particular, the lawyer and the gentleman. Blackstone’s goal with the lawyer was to give the lawyer a knowledge of the first principles of the law. For the gentleman, Blackstone’s goal was to allow him to know what the laws were so that he would no longer act out of ignorance. Blackstone also makes heavy use of religion, seeing law and religion as two methods of making people better.

His book is divided into two parts. The first part is called “Rights,” while the second part is called “Wrongs.” From this, each part is then further divided into two books each. The first book of the first part (Book I) is called “Rights of Persons” while the second book of the first part (Book II) is called “Rights of Things.” The first book of the second part (Book III) is called “Private Wrongs” while the second book of the second part (Book IV) is called “Public Wrongs.”

Book I addresses the absolute rights of individuals and sees the first and primary end of human laws being the maintenance of these rights. The rest of Book I addresses the idea of relative rights, which are secondary and related to legally established relations with other people. It should be noted that Blackstone sees wrongs as the privatization of right. Book III addresses how the law takes action against private wrongdoing while Book IV examines how political society is a way of protecting individual rights while also treating political society as an end.

Much like Hobbes, for Blackstone, the foundation of society is rooted in the wants and fears of individuals. Law is thus seen as a balancing act between a government powerful enough to protect individual rights while not so powerful as to pose a threat to those individual rights as that is ultimately what individuals want. Blackstone also thinks the law should be able to take into account the particulars of an individual case (example, in the case of justifiable homicide) and also contain within it checks and balances. Ultimately, Blackstone roots his conception of law in natural law and sees this as the final check on political power as no person can really go against it.

Blackstone sees the origins of political society as being rooted in anarchy while it as a tendency to go towards tyranny. It is thus the task of law to strive to balance between the two. Furthermore, Blackstone thinks that in dealing with the particulars of an individual case, a move towards custom is advised. This gives him a strong conservative bent, and his arguments often come down more towards authority than reason and justice, particularly in regards to James II and his dealings with Parliament. Though there may be a temptation to dismiss Blackstone because of this, it should be noted that Blackstone is essentially looking for a framework in which legal practice can be done. 

Blackstone then goes onto great lengths to explain the old laws, including those that make no sense in an effort to preserve them and with them the laws that still matter a great deal. By doing this, Blackstone is using the old to support the new. This is not to say Blackstone is completely opposed to reform, as his is like a proto-Burke in many ways as while he recognizes the need to reform, he also understands that excessive questioning can undermine the entire system and thereby make reform impossible. His move towards conservatism also makes him a supporter of property rights as he sees property rights as a natural good doing three important things for society. These things are as follows: 1) having a civilizing effect, 2) having a connection to hierarchy, and 3) having the ability to produce liberty.