Author: Jesse Norman Publisher: Basic Books ISBN: 0465044948 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 338
Book Description
A provocative biography of Edmund Burke, the underappreciated founder of modern conservatism Edmund Burke is both the greatest and the most underrated political thinker of the past three hundred years. A brilliant 18th-century Irish philosopher and statesman, Burke was a fierce champion of human rights and the Anglo-American constitutional tradition, and a lifelong campaigner against arbitrary power. Once revered by an array of great Americans including Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Burke has been almost forgotten in recent years. But as politician and political philosopher Jesse Norman argues in this penetrating biography, we cannot understand modern politics without him. As Norman reveals, Burke was often ahead of his time, anticipating the abolition of slavery and arguing for free markets, equality for Catholics in Ireland, responsible government in India, and more. He was not always popular in his own lifetime, but his ideas about power, community, and civic virtue have endured long past his death. Indeed, Burke engaged with many of the same issues politicians face today, including the rise of ideological extremism, the loss of social cohesion, the dangers of the corporate state, and the effects of revolution on societies. He offers us now a compelling critique of liberal individualism, and a vision of society based not on a self-interested agreement among individuals, but rather on an enduring covenant between generations. Burke won admirers in the American colonies for recognizing their fierce spirit of liberty and for speaking out against British oppression, but his greatest triumph was seeing through the utopian aura of the French Revolution. In repudiating that revolution, Burke laid the basis for much of the robust conservative ideology that remains with us to this day: one that is adaptable and forward-thinking, but also mindful of the debt we owe to past generations and our duty to preserve and uphold the institutions we have inherited. He is the first conservative. A rich, accessible, and provocative biography, Edmund Burke describes Burke's life and achievements alongside his momentous legacy, showing how Burke's analytical mind and deep capacity for empathy made him such a vital thinker-both for his own age, and for ours.thread on pub day of what people at basic like about it (editors) "You won't find a more impressive political philosopher than the 18th-century MP who more or less invented Anglosphere conservatism. And you won't find a pithier, more readable treatise on his life and works than this one." --Wall Street Journal
Author: David Bromwich Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674729706 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 513
Book Description
This biography of statesman Edmund Burke (1730–1797), covering three decades, is the first to attend to the complexity of Burke’s thought as it emerges in both the major writings and private correspondence. David Bromwich reads Burke’s career as an imperfect attempt to organize an honorable life in the dense medium he knew politics to be.
Author: Emily Jones Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 019879942X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 284
Book Description
Between 1830 and 1914 in Britain a dramatic modification of the reputation of Edmund Burke (1730-1797) occurred. Burke, an Irishman and Whig politician, is now most commonly known as the "founder of modern conservatism" - an intellectual tradition which is also deeply connected to the identity of the British Conservative Party. The idea of "Burkean conservatism"--a political philosophy which upholds "the authority of tradition," the organic, historic conception of society, and the necessity of order, religion, and property--has been incredibly influential both in international academic analysis and in the wider political world. This is a highly significant intellectual construct, but its origins have not yet been understood. This volume demonstrates, for the first time, that the transformation of Burke into the "founder of conservatism" was in fact part of wider developments in British political, intellectual, and cultural history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing from a wide range of sources, including political texts, parliamentary speeches, histories, biographies, and educational curricula, Edmund Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism shows how and why Burke's reputation was transformed over a formative period of British history. In doing so, it bridges the significant gap between the history of political thought as conventionally understood and the history of the making of political traditions. The result is to demonstrate that, by 1914, Burke had been firmly established as a "conservative" political philosopher and was admired and utilized by political Conservatives in Britain who identified themselves as his intellectual heirs. This was one essential component of a conscious re-working of C/conservatism which is still at work today.
Author: Gregory M. Collins Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108489400 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 581
Book Description
This book explores Edmund Burke's economic thought through his understanding of commerce in wider social, imperial, and ethical contexts.
Author: David Dwan Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1107495652 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 465
Book Description
Edmund Burke prided himself on being a practical statesman, not an armchair philosopher. Yet his responses to specific problems - rebellion in America, the abuse of power in India and Ireland, or revolution in France - incorporated theoretical debates within jurisprudence, economics, religion, moral philosophy and political science. Moreover, the extraordinary rhetorical force of Burke's speeches and writings quickly secured his reputation as a gifted orator and literary stylist. This Companion provides a comprehensive assessment of Burke's thought, exploring all his major writings from his early treatise on aesthetics to his famous polemic, Reflections on the Revolution in France. It also examines the vexed question of Burke's Irishness and seeks to determine how his cultural origins may have influenced his political views. Finally, it aims both to explain and to challenge interpretations of Burke as a romantic, a utilitarian, a natural law thinker and founding father of modern conservatism.
Author: Yuval Levin Publisher: Basic Books ISBN: 0465040942 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 298
Book Description
An acclaimed portrait of Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the origins of modern conservatism and liberalism In The Great Debate, Yuval Levin explores the roots of the left/right political divide in America by examining the views of the men who best represented each side at its origin: Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. Striving to forge a new political path in the tumultuous age of the American and French revolutions, these two ideological titans sparred over moral and philosophical questions about the nature of political life and the best approach to social change: radical and swift, or gradual and incremental. The division they articulated continues to shape our political life today. Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the basis of our political order and Washington's acrimonious rifts today, The Great Debate offers a profound examination of what conservatism, progressivism, and the debate between them truly amount to.
Author: Leonard W. Cowie Publisher: Greenwood ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 152
Book Description
Although he held only minor offices in Parliament, politician and political writer Edmund Burke strongly affected contemporary opinion, and his ideas had a profound impact on the future. He supported the American colonists in their quarrel with Britain, played a conspicuous part in the impeachment of Warren Hastings for alleged misgovernment in India, and advocated religious toleration, the abolition of the slave trade, and other reforms. A bibliography of his life and career, the book includes a biographical essay and chronology, and provides a complete list of Burke's writings, as well as books and articles about him up to the present. Important contemporary portraits and cartoons and comments of his contemporaries add to this volume. The book's opening essay describes the life of Edmund Burke, showing how his writings and actions related to the main issues of the time, where the chronology lists events important to this situation. Section one, Manuscript and Archival Resources, sites the location of relevant collections, indicates those of greatest importance, and lists both guides to collections and contemporary periodicals. Bibliographies, biographies, and studies of Burke's political thought appear in the second section, while the tertiary section covers Burke's own writings. Contemporaries of Burke are covered in section four. His political background is examined in the fifth section, and the following chapters cover places associated with Burke, his speeches, contemporary portraits and caricatures, periodicals, and his life and career. Author, artist, and subject indexes conclude the work.
Author: John Whale Publisher: Manchester University Press ISBN: 9780719057878 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 252
Book Description
In this volume, leading Burke scholars offer new and challenging essays which allow us to reconsider the historical context in which Reflections on the Revolution in France was written, its reception, its engagement in the discourses of nationalism and toleration, its legacy to English and Irish writers of the Romantic period, and its impact within our contemporary cultural and critical theory. The volume demonstrates a range of interdisciplinary critical methods and cultural perspectives from which to read Burke's most famous work.
Author: Stephen K. White Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 9780742521353 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 134
Book Description
Edmund Burke: Modernity, Politics, and Aesthetics examines the philosophy of Burke in view of its contribution to our understanding of modernity. Stephen K. White argues that Burke shows us how modernity engenders an implicit forgetfulness of human finitude. White illustrates this theme by showing how Burke's political thought, his judgment of the 'modern system of morality and policy, ' and its taste for a 'false sublime' are structured by his aesthetics
Author: J. Welsh Publisher: Springer ISBN: 0230374824 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 259
Book Description
The mind of Edmund Burke has attracted the attention of countless political theorists, historians, and biographers. Nonetheless, one aspect of Burke's thinking has been neglected: his perspective on international relations. This book seeks to address that gap, by analysing Burke's reaction to the international events of his century. The book argues that the tension between Burke's constitutionalism and crusading is ultimately reconciled by his broader conception of international legitimacy and order. It is only by widening the definition of international theory to include domestic as well as international politics that one can resolve this tension in Burke's theory and arrive at a richer understanding of the nature of international order, both historically and today.
Author: Jesse Norman
Author: David Bromwich
Author: Emily Jones
Author: Gregory M. Collins
Author: David Dwan
Author: Yuval Levin
Author: Leonard W. Cowie
Author: John Whale
Author: Stephen K. White
Author: J. Welsh