Edmund Burke and German Political Philosophy in The Age of Romanticism

Abstract

English political philosophy reached undisputed, worldwide recognition three times in the 17th and 18th century, in the works of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Edmund Burke. The writings of these thinkers, who deserve the reputation of being statesmen of the first order, exerted an influence which was not restricted to the British Isles. Like mighty waves, the political insights and experiences, the great and vital principles of political order and leadership which Hobbes, Locke and Burke had made available to their compatriots, broke on the shores of the old and the new world. This influence has not ceased to the present day, although it was expressed in terms of a certain constellation of social forces in the British kingdom. The tremendous upheaval of the Western social structure which began — in Burke’s words — like an earthquake in the age of the French Revolution has, to be sure, long since shaken and destroyed the social organization which forms the basis and supplies the standards of their thinking. There can be no question that Hobbes, Locke and Burke, in their views on the origin and meaning of the state, the nature of society, and the relationship of the individual to the state and to the social bonds in which alone he can really be said to become a man in the full sense of the word, achieved recognition for the material interests of certain social classes in a certain legal and political order. Their works contain an ideological foundation and justification of a certain political and social order resting upon the monarchy, the landed gentry and the propertied middle class. But is the only function of these writings that of an ideological justification? Are they merely the expression of an existing or desirable social constitution in which the play of opposing forces and ideas has culminated in a state of relative political stability? Why is it then that the after-effects of these works are to be felt with unparalleled force to the present day, although their political and social assumptions are by no means those of our age?