Teaching practice
Teaching practiceEdmund Burke's Political Theory
1. Burke is quite critical of many of the liberal political theorist that have we have discussed. For Burke terms like liberty, freedom, natural rights, and the General Will should not be used in abstraction. They can only be discussed in context, and more importantly they can only be implemented in the appropriate historical context e.g. England in the seventeenth century, but not France in the eighteenth century.
Consent and Contract
2. One of the most distinctive points of difference between the liberal and conservative centres over the ideas of consent and contract. For the liberal government is formed at least hypothetically by men organising to establish a government will clear limits to protect individual rights. For Burke the contract is too shaky a foundation for government. Government is instituted to serve man's wants and needs, but we are frequently unaware of our true wants and needs. We fail to recognise what is in our best interests or on other occasion we are the victim of our own passions and drives. There is a need for a power outside of us, a power that we do not consent to that will restrain our passions.
3. "The science of government being therefore so practical in itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a matter which requires experience, and more experience than any [one] person can gain in whole life, however intelligently and observing he may be, it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice, which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on the building it up again, without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes." [Ebenstein, p. 496]
4. Burke tells us to rely on the experience of centuries of political practice. No single individual, no matter how extensive the studies of a lifetime, ought to presume that their small wisdom is a match for the experience of ages.
Question to Ponder Is there any difficulty with Burke's argument that the wisdom and "sea worthiness" of an idea and institution is too be measured in terms of how long the institution has been around.
5. Burke writing about the French Revolution portrayed the revolution like a raging brush fire that consumed everything before it, friend and foe.
6. Burke is the critical of Locke and Rousseau because both theories seem to give the people the power and right to reform the structure of society and government.
7. "History consists for the greater part of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the strains of disorderly appetites which shake the public."
Government and Society: Burke as Democrat
8. As to who is eligible to rule, Burke makes a qualified case for equality of opportunity....
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