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.