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Burke's influential early writings on aesthetic are intimately connected to his political concerns according to this study of his engagement with Irish politics and culture. The heart of his aesthetic addressed itself to the experience of terror, a spectre that haunts Burke's political imagination throughout his career. Burke's preoccupation with violence, sympathy and pain actually allowed him to explore the dark side of the Enlightenment. This major reassessment of a key political and cultural figure appeals to Irish studies specialists, political theorists and Romanticists. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An odd little book
Indeed, an odd little book, but one meriting the attention of readers interested in Burke; how much it would appeal to readers interested in Ireland otherwise would be hard to guess. I suppose that in writing about a master of such sonorous and pregnant late 18th century prose, a modern academic writer is taking on a lot, yet the step down in style from Burke (as quoted in the text) to that of the author is less precipitous than might have been feared.

A number of interesting ideas are touched on, such as colonialism, what we call the Enlightenment, the philosophical idea of the 'Sublime', and political order and disorder. The writer's sympathies are never left in doubt, but the reader will give thanks that, for reasons of chronology at least, Burke can be spared the sheep-dip treatment of being meaningfully described in terms of Irish 'post-colonialism'.

All in all, a good, workmanlike account of its topics, taken at a trot and unimpeded by much truck with modern academic 'secondary literature' or theoretical authorities. The quoted passages and references are mainly to contemporary sources, including Burke's own works, showing that Mr Gibbons can approach an 18th century writer directly rather than through the fog of recent postcolonial tracts. This short book will probably be read when most postcolonialist texts are deservedly forgotten. Indeed, it seems that passing approving references to post-colonialism in this book are intended ironically; there is clearly a modest place for wit in academia. ... Read more

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One of America's most distinguished intellectual historians explores the minds and lives of some of the most brilliant and provocative thinkers of modern times: Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mill, Benjamin Disraeli and Winston Churchill, Jane Austen and George Eliot, Charles Dickens and John Buchan, Walter Bagehot and the Knox brothers, Michael Oakeshott and Lionel Trilling. In their distinctive ways, Ms. Himmelfarb argues, they exemplify what Burke two centuries ago and Trilling most recently have called the moral imagination. ... Read more

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New Slants
G. Himmelfarb has some very different insights into the authors she discusses and puts some of the characters in the novels in new lights.I have enjoyed reading this book and she has prodded me into reading further in the authors discussed.I would recommend this book to any persons interested in changing the 'moral tone' of American today.

Links intellectual lives to the moral imagination
Gertrude Himmelfarb's THE MORAL IMAGINATION is a recommended pick, here linking the intellectual lives of modern thinker and literary giants with what she identifies as the 'moral imagination'. How these thinkers evolved their ideas, wrote in different traditions at different times, and shared a common moral passion which reflected in their literature makes for truly involving reading.
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This intriguing collection of essays is dominated by the figure of Edmund Burke and by accounts of the ways in which he and some of those he influenced understood the revolutionary changes that produced the modern world. The issues of liberty and empire, faction and revolution, universality, equality, authority, sectarian vice and democratic virtue are central here. Dominating them all is the question of how traditional feeling and affection can be retained within the revolutionary and colonial worlds that emerged at the close of the eighteenth century. The answers to these questions emerge from the different interpretations of the American and French Revolutions that were to be so influential for generations after Burke. In addition, he posed the colonial question in Ireland before it was posed more generally. Was liberty compatible with colonial rule? Ultimately, Burke secured his position by his condemnation of colonial as well as revolutionary violence. But in the works of Burke’s contemporaries, especially deTocqueville and Acton, colonial atrocity is condoned or supported while revolutionary violence is condemned out of hand. This, it is argued here, is constitutive of the European anti-revolutionary position which Burke helped to create but to which he nevertheless remains alien. ... Read more

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The most recent commentators on Edmund Burke have renewed the charge that his political thought lacks the consistency and coherency necessary to even claim the status of a political philosophy and that he is indeed a "utilitarian." They mark him off as an "ideologist," a "rhetorician," and a "deliberate propagandist." Even Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, his most profound statement of a political philosophy, is regarded by some as a work of mere "persuasion," not "philosophy." All this occurs in spite of the seminal work of Stanlis, Canavan, and Wilkins, who in the 1950s and '60s, demonstrated the natural law foundations of Burke's politics. Burke revisionists, forced to acknowledge his use of the "natural law," label such use as a rhetorical means for utilitarian ends. Directly opposed to this renewed "utilitarian" interpretation of Burke is Joseph Pappin's work The Metaphysics of Edmund Burke. Not only does this work challenge the "utilitarian" view of Burke, it sets out, as not other work on Burke has attempted to do, "to make explicit the implicit metaphysical core of Burke's political thought." Pappin does this by examining both Burke's critics and Burke's own attack on a rationalist, ideologically inspired metaphysics. Drawing from Burke's vast writings, Pappin establishes as his goal "to demonstrate that Burke's political philosophy is grounded in a realist metaphysic, one that is basically consonant with the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition." Does the author succeed? According to Francis Canavan, in his Foreword to this work, the "explanatory key" of a realist metaphysics grounding Burke's politics "is a key that fits the lock better than any other that scholars have offered." Canavan further holds that the author offers "us a more thorough analysis of Burke's understanding of God, the creation, nature, man, and society than has previously appeared." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A good, fairly short bio of Edmund Burke
Apparently intended for adolescents, this biography is written on an adult level and is in fact a quite satisfying life of Burke. The author likes her subject while retaining critical objectivity. Burke is generally regarded as the founding father of conservatism as a coherent political philosophy in the English-speaking world; comparing Burke as presented by Alice Miller and what passes for "conservatism" in twenty-first century America should be a fine stimulus to reflection. The book should motivate keen readers to continue to more specialized studies and especially to Burke's own writings.

The best biography of Burke available
I read this book because it was described on National Review Online as the best Burke biography around and I agree. It seems to be one of a series written for young adults but it is excellent and never condescended to the reader. Burke, of course, had a colorful life and is revered as the original conservative, just as Tom Paine may be the first liberal, in the modern American sense. Burke was very concerned with stability and legitimacy in government while Paine seemed to share Jefferson's enthusiasm for revolutions. Burke had a long and active career in Parliament before the French Revolution but he is probably best known for his adamant opposition to it. His life is interesting and the biography is light handed and very well done. I recommend it. ... Read more

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Rousseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791 plunges students into the intellectual political and ideological currents that surged through revolutionary Paris in the summer of 1791.

Part of the “Reacting to the Past” series, this text consists of elaborate games in which students are assigned roles, informed by classic texts, set in particular moments of intellectual and social ferment.   Students are leaders of major factions within the National Assembly (and in the streets outside) as it struggles to create a constitution amidst internal chaos and threats of foreign invasion.

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A very pleasant read
Edmund Burke's Philosophical Enquiry, though it presents to modern sensibilities, so shaped by scientific certainties to which Burke had no access, an extremely dated and at times ludicrous impression, nevertheless is an important document for the historical development of aesthetic theory in the eighteenth century, and indeed is a pleasurable read in its own right, owing to Burke's vigorous and lucid prose. Though no-one to-day will read the Enquiry only on the merits of its ideas, it has undeniable value as a legacy of the history of philosophy.

This edition is very satisfactory. Boulton's lengthy introduction is very helpful and informative despite being some fifty years old, and the apparatus criticus is meticulously complete.

Burke's Sublime and Beautiful
The categories of the sublime and the beautiful seem, on first contemplation, an 18th-century distinction with little meaning for our own time. I read this book while preparing a course on J.S. Bach's"Goldberg" Variations and Beethoven's "Diabelli"Variations.The idea was to find a wayof talking about the differencebetween the two pieces.At first brush, the Bach is "beautiful",the Beethoven "sublime", but only a little thought leads to amore complicated view.Both pieces have aspects of both qualities. Nevertheless, my students found the question a fascinating one.

Ofcourse, the book goes well beyond the characteristics of the two qualities. It focusses on the interesting question of how human nature leads us toexperience the two qualities.To me much of Burke's discussion of thispoint seems quite contemporary.

Burke's preference for the sublime overthe beautiful reflects his time at the beginning of the Romantic period inliterature, and anticipates Goethe's (and Beethoven's) celebration of theindividual and direct appeal to the emotions. His essentialist views of thebeautiful as a feminine characteristic seem gratuitous.

I wonder whatBurke would have found to say about, say, the Goldberg, with its formalityand artifice.These characteristics would seem to place the piece in thebeautiful rather than the sublime.But the piece is clearly not merely afrill, nor is it at all sentimental.

Burke's book is well argued andchallenging tothe modern reader.Give it a try! ... Read more

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This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature. ... Read more

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Burke's evils of the French Revolution
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.
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"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
                  ---Edmund Burke

Customer Reviews (2)

Informative At least
In reply to an earlier reviewr:

Logical Fallacy on your part, Sir.

You say that the quote has been falsely attributed to him for decades, but has never been sourced.
You agree that for decades it has been thought to be his but there has never been any proof that it is not.
Now, coming to the point of cover. You so easily conclude that the content is not worth reading on the basis of the inappropriate authority that you have. I am not the writer of the book but I can point out what you have said and what you should not have.

I believe carelessness lies on your part because few people in this world judge a book from its cover, only those who love affectation and ostentation.

I am an authority on Edmund Burke myself and I have researched his works for more than two decades.

I hope you don't mind this interference of mine, for I have nothing to do with this particular book.
Kind Regards

Not promising
I will confess up-front that I have not read this book. What I have done is seen the cover, which was enough. The quote so prominently placed on the cover is NOT by Burke; it has been falsely attributed to him for decades, but has never been sourced. If the creators of this book are so careless as to use a false quote, how careful can they be with the rest of the content? ... Read more

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The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12) is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Edmund Burke is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Edmund Burke then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

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The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 11 (of 12) is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Edmund Burke is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Edmund Burke then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

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Biography based on the nature of ambivalence
For a political biography, THE RAGE OF EDMUND BURKE/ PORTRAIT OF AN AMBIVALENT CONSERVATIVE by Isaac Kramnick goes a long way into the psychology of social breakdown.Burke is remembered mainly as a conservative, old enough at the time of the French revolution to be appalled that anyone thought an attack which left the queen's bedchambers in Versailles full of mayhem and dead bodies could advance civilization.The revolutionary freedom which America is currently attempting to bring to foreign portions of the world by demonstrating air superiority might be considered as deranged as the situations examined in this book, which was published in 1977, when hardly anyone had reason to suppose that the form of freedom offered by American military conquest was similar to the acts of Medea conjured by Edmund Burke into a description of the nature of rebellion in his REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE, quoted in this book as an instance in which "Burke might well have sensed the relationship between his own radical streak and his enduring hatred towards his father.Guiltily, however, he recoiled from the bloody horror and emphasized the loving and caring son.The good subject, he insisted,

should approach to the faults of the State as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude.By this wise prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children of their country who are prompt rashly to hack that aged parent in pieces and put him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds and wild incantations they may regenerate the paternal constitution and renovate their father's life."(p. 64).

Other major figures mentioned in this book include Bedford, James Boswell, Charles James Fox, Warren Hastings, Tom Paine, Joseph Priestley, Rockingham, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Richard Shackleton, and Mary Wollstonecraft.The beginning of the book emphasizes the role that religious dissenters in England played "in scientific and political innovation."(p. 13).Joseph Priestly, "founder of the modern Unitarian movement," (p. 13) opposed the "Poor Laws, which for the bourgeoisie were one of the most onerous of the old order's interferences with economic liberty."(p. 14).In those exciting times, a mob "burned his laboratory and home in 1791, sending him to finish his days in dissenter's paradise--America."(p. 13).

Freud is mentioned well a few times in this book, showing that it is possible to take a modern view of times that were shaking the foundation of everything that was not America.People who are used to the pampered civilized existence which Americans of today expect others to worship even as they experience extreme forms of chaos might learn a few things that provide a better perspective for understanding Freud than the middle class version of conservatism provides.This book is interesting, if you can stick with it. ... Read more

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The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.
Delve into what it was like to live during the eighteenth century by reading the first-hand accounts of everyday people, including city dwellers and farmers, businessmen and bankers, artisans and merchants, artists and their patrons, politicians and their constituents. Original texts make the American, French, and Industrial revolutions vividly contemporary.
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The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:
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Harvard University Libraries

N023683

In this edition there are no rules above and below the edition statement; the press figures are: 14-5, 16-4, 20-3, 31-1, 40-3, 42-4, 59-3, 60-1, 68-3, 75-5, 93-1.

London : printed for J. Dodsley, 1775. 96p. ; 8° ... Read more