Burke's View Research Articles

Burke's "sensitive" sublime rooted in brain and body versus Kant's transcendental concept in the German Romantic discourse.

During the 18th century, debates about what constituted the sublime flourished in Europe, and particularly in Germany. These debates were nourished by two different visions: The Kantian concept supposed that the sublime is supra-sensible and rooted in reason (Logos) rather than in the object, thus provoking a mental state of tension between nature and art; Edmund Burke's concept, on the other hand, conceived of the sublime as a bodily immersive experience, which we here define as "sensitive" sublime. In summary, Burke's view of the sublime is rooted in the senses and not in the power of reason, unlike Kant's. This was to disrupt the mainstream ideas of that time, unconsciously anticipating some of the recent neuroaesthetic acquisitions regarding the central role played by the sensory apparatus in the experience of beauty and of the sublime.

Консервативный либерализм И. Кан­та в свете либерального консерватизма Э. Бёрка

I. Kant and E. Burke both presented and developed their political views in 1790s in the common context of the French Revolution. We compare their views in two aspects. First, we consider the question whether Kant in his writings has implicitly referred to Burke’s pamphlet “Reflections on the Revolution in France”. In our view, it remains unproven and doubtful that Kant had read this book (in German translation). Second, we consider Kant’s political views as liberal and Burke’s ones as conservative. We rely on those scholars who distinguish liberalism and conservatism building on the anthropological foundations of political philosophy. Some scholars define Kant’s moderate liberalism as a variation of conservatism, although Kant explicitly criticizes a number of ultra-conser­vative views. Burke is widely known as the founder of modern conservatism but also has substantial liberal points in his views. Both philosophers sought to find balance between stability and improvement of a political order, but they propose completely different cri­teria for a reform policy. For Kant, all reforms should aim to realize the abstract ideal of universal law. Alongside, Kant recommends only moderate and prudent reforms in or­der to preserve the freedom and safety of states as political organisms. Burke views re­forms as a means of reconciling traditions and customs with changing circumstances. Our conclusion is that Burke cannot be named among the prototypes of those ultra-con­servatives whom Kant describes as the most implacable opponents of his views. We sup­port the assessment of Kant’s position as conservative liberalism and Burke's position as liberal conservatism. This perspective reveals a certain similarity of their views despite their fundamental differences.

БЕРКОВ ДОПРИНОС ПРОУЧАВАЊУ ВОЈСКЕ КАО ДРУШТВЕНЕ ИНСТИТУЦИЈЕ

Criticizing the social events in France during the French Revolution, Edmund Burke also dealt with military issues. He criticized the changes that the Revolution brought in the military organization in order to demonstrate the futility and harmfulness of the revolution. In this paper we have analyzed three types of his arguments against the reform of the army in France in order to check if those aspects of Burke's views on military are still valid. These are arguments against electing military officers for officers' duties, the arguments against a weak supreme commander and the arguments against interfering of political parties in the military and against political engagement of the soldiers. As a key social relationship that must prevail in the military, Berk emphasized discipline (as an internal functional relationship) and subordination (an external functional relationship, which refers to subordination to civil authorities). He underlined singularity and political neutrality of the military as its essential characteristics. He was the first to unequivocally point to the connection between officers and soldiers as the central point of the structure of a military. He proved that the military reform in France during the revolution would lead to a military dictatorship, but he failed to note that the reform also meant the abandonment of feudal mercenary military as a form of organization, as well as creating conditions for the introduction of a mass military based on general conscription. His understanding of the relations between military and civilian spheres, makes him one of the forerunners of the modern theories of civil-military relations.

The myth of Mr Burke and Mr Watt: for want of a Champion!

Edmund Burke, one of England's great thinkers and orators of the eighteenth century, has been lauded as a champion of the anti-intellectual-property movement by scholars past and present. This reputation arises largely through his opposition to James Watt's Fire Engine Act 1775. However, the article examines the contemporary evidence and challenges this dominant interpretation, showing that Burke's views were actually very much in favour of granting monopolies to inventors as well as authors.

Edmund Burke's Views of Irish History

SummaryAlthough ‘Burke and Irish history’ is a theme which has long been known to modern commentators, it has not necessarily been addressed sufficiently. This essay seeks to put forward a more comprehensive account of Burke's views on Irish history than has previously been offered by scholars. According to Burke, the protection of Christianity had brought flourishing science to seventh- and eighth-century Ireland. Nevertheless, the nation was plunged into a barbarous state after the invasions of the Danes and other northern tribes. Burke's sympathy with the Brehon law was possibly unique, although he was not uncritical of it. Unlike the Irish patriots, his chief concern with historical Ireland was not the origins of the Irish legislature. He was rather most interested in the religious affairs which had continued to plague the nation during history. Throughout his career, Burke considered the Irish Rebellion of 1641 to have been ‘provoked’, and continuously endeavoured to remove the penal laws imposed on the Roman Catholics after the Williamite Conquest of 1689–1691. In his view, despite the substantial increase in prosperity after 1688/9, the series of religious persecutions, as well as other oppressive policies, had still obstructed the further progress of Irish society.

Edmund Burke's Ideas on Historical Change

SummaryBurke's view of history is an aspect of his thought that has been largely neglected by scholars, despite the wide recognition of its importance. In Burke's view, history, led by providence and by a human nature designed by God, is necessarily progressive. It is, nevertheless, human beings who are largely responsible for building their nations. A variety of civilisations could be generated if people governed a nation in harmony with its peculiar manners and circumstances. Nations can, however, be unstable, because their fortunes fluctuate. Although Burke was very familiar with—and influenced by—several different traditions of historiography, his ideas on history should also be seen as the product of his own reflections.

Somaesthetics and Burke's Sublime

Burke is an important exception to Nietzsche's claim that philosophical aesthetics ignores physiology and the role of practical interest. Grounded on the powerful interest of survival, Burke's theory of the sublime also offers a physiological explanation of our feelings of sublimity that explicitly defines certain conditions of our nerves as the ‘efficient cause’ of such feelings. While his general account of sublimity is widely appreciated, its somatic dimension has been dismissed as hopelessly misguided. In examining Burke's views in relation to contemporary somaesthetics, cognitive psychology, and physiology, this paper shows that though Burke's somatic arguments can be criticized as overly simplistic and mechanistic, his recognition of the crucial bodily dimensions of aesthetic experience should be taken more seriously. In refining Burke's insight that bodily factors can help explain our aesthetic reactions, somaesthetics further urges that improved somatic understanding and performance can provide valuable means for enhancing our aesthetic response.

Maçonnisme et anti-maçonnisme en Grande-Bretagne sous la Révolution française

It is contended here that paradoxically British freemasons concurred with notorious anti-masons such as Abbé Augustin Barruel, the Jesuit who wrote Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du jacobisnime (1790), and John Robison, the Scottish author of Proofs of a Conspiracy (1797) in condemning the French revolution. As British Grand Lodges identified themselves more and more with the Establishment, they supported Edmund Burke's views and like Barruel and Robison blamed French Jacobins for their lack of respect for property, monarchy and religion. Burke befriended Barruel and even more significantly, while laun¬ ching such an attack upon freemasonry, both Barruel and Robison made an exception for English lodges. Edmund Burke was never proved to be a mason, although it has been suggested that he was. However British freemasons fully endorsed his views on the French revolution. (traduction par l'auteur)

Burke on Democracy as the Death of Western Civilization

This essay concerns Edmund Burke's view of the civilizing process. It begins by developing Burke's revision of Scottish Enlightenment historiography from the perspective of his own earlier treatise...

Burke and Nietzsche

The essay examines the “becoming‐Nietzsche” of Kenneth Burke by exploring the complex linkages between Burke and Nietzsche, particularly those forged by Burke in the 1920s and 30s while formulating his well‐known concepts: perspective by incongruity, motive, terministic screens, and dramatism. An understanding of the ways Nietzsche's philosophy helped shape Burke's views on the nature of language (metaphor, writing, poetry), and the effects language produces, enables a different understanding of central passages in Permanence and Change, Burke the critic, and by extension, the development of rhetoric as a discipline.

Edmund Burke and India: political morality and empire

Convinced of corruption and tyranny in the Indian empire, Burke led a campaign to reform its administration and bring the offenders to account. Relating Burke's views on India to ideas expressed in his other writings, Whelan offers a comprehensive assessment of Burke's political theory as a whole.

Reason, Discretion and Tradition

This article seeks to better identify Edmund Burke's views on human reason and human nature, tradition, representation, and law, and the implications of these views for public administration. Parallels between Burke's thought and that of the Founders (Founding Fathers) are examined. Also, the reasons for neglect of Burke's thought by public administration writers are discussed. Drawing on Burke's thought, the article presents an argument for the exercise of significant discretion by public administrators but argues that this discretion should be limited by administrative rules and procedures and by a set of ethics that emphasizes prudence and tradition.

Rhetorical subterfuge and “the principle of perfection”: Bob Packwood's response to sexual misconduct charges

This essay identifies Senator Bob Packwood's public response to charges of sexual misconduct as a “rhetorical subterfuge” that exhibits a cluster of terms implicit in Kenneth Burke's principle of perfection. These terms consist of perfection, the negative, antithesis, victimage, and substitution. The study shows how the principle of perfection enables us to piece together Packwood's “fragmentary” discourse before it disappears, revealing a larger problem that can account for the Senator's behavior and response to the charges. As such, the essay addresses what Burke views as the most important yet most difficult aspect of symbolic action to explain, how a hierarchy's very existence encourages an undue acquiescence among those who could otherwise be its most capable critics.

Edmund Burke et la question américaine

The « speech for conciliation with the colonies » (1775) given by Edmund Burke, on behalf of the whigs, invited the House of Commons to give up its taxation right as far as it concerned the american colonies. Such a proposition based on political pragmatism aimed over all to safeguard the economical interests of Great Britain ; according to Burke's views even if the mercantilist system he disagreed with was brought to an end, the british interests would be sharply threatened if the colonies were going out of the empire.

Is the AGU headquarters bond issue really a boon?

In these somewhat difficult economic times and uncertain future, it is satisfying to know that AGU was able to secure a reasonable interest rate on its bond float to finance its new headquarters (see Eos, October 19, 1993). However, Burke's view that this interest rate leads to savings that can be applied to other AGU programs represents a limited view of this substantial financial commitment of AGU, in my opinion. For example, the borrowing of $11 million by issuing bonds at 5.98% interest rate represents an indebtedness to AGU over 30 years of nearly $20 million, or more than $600 ($20/year) for each of the 30,000 or so members (only approximately, since the issued bonds probably have varying interest rates and maturity periods). The yearly rate of this indebtedness is about the same as our present dues; will these have to be increased to pay for the new headquarters? I am also rather surprised to read that the AGU Council authorized an interest rate on the bonds up to 9', substantially higher than present bond interest rates.

Constructing irreconcilable conflict: The function of synecdoche in the spotted owl controversy

This essay examines the spotted owl controversy as a public argument rooted in conflicting owl synecdoches that conceptualize competing social realities for environmentalists and the timber industry. It argues that these conceptions not only represent conflicting realities of the old‐growth forest, but also function as “figurative” or “representational ideographs” that disallow resolution and maintain conflict because the controversy is too significant to resolve. By applying Burke's view of synecdoche and extending McGee's concept of the ideograph to conflicting views expressed in synecdochal form, the essay offers a unique perspective for understanding how controversies are influenced by rhetorical tropes and how such tropes prevent resolution and maintain controversy by becoming issues in and of themselves.

Burke's View of the Evils of Political Theory: Or, "A Vindication of Natural Society"

It is well known that Edmund Burke did not think much of theorizing about politics. But apparently this is not a disposition he acquired as he matured in his political career. As Mr. Pagano argues here, it characterizes Burke's very first published work, A Vindication of Natural Society, itself a piece of theoretical writing but one that attacks political theory.

Reason and the Basis of Morality in Burke

Reason and the Basis of Morality in Burke RODNEY W. KILCUP I. THE CONTINUINGINTERESTin the moral and political ideas of Edmund Burke is testimony to more than the excellence of his eighteenth-century prose. Burke remains significant because he focused on a problem that persists in modern political theory and ethics, namely, reconciling the claims of a relativizing historical understanding with the need for stable ethical principles. What Burke offers us is an argument that appears to harmonize historical and moral understanding by demonstrating that binding moral principles are to be found precisely in the midst of the flux of dynamic historical processes. What emerges seems to combine the best of two worlds, a view that is fully sensitive both to the realities of historical change and to the requirement for an ethics that is free in its essentials from the corrosions of temporality . He advances a hardheaded, pragmatic politics that, precisely through being fully prudent and utilitarian, is informed by timeless moral law. Burke's way of proceeding can be briefly illustrated through a consideration of his view of the virtue of prudence, which he considered "not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but.., the director, the regulator, the standard of them all."' According to Burke, to be prudent means to follow the dictates of the whole of human nature, to accept the prescriptive basis of the legitimacy of government, to bow before the inherited wisdom of the past as it is embodied in the customs and institutions of the nation, and to reform the body politic as cautiously as possible. The primacy of prudence would, then, seem to mean that the ultimate political principle should be a utilitarianism that is informed as fully as possible by an understanding of the interrelations of human nature and public policy in history. Prudence , in short, is a rule derived from history and pragmatically validated. But Burke did not leave it at that. He also commended prudence on the basis that it was the means through which God has chosen to direct the affairs of our temporal life and to which we are thus obliged to conform. Prudence is not merely secular caution . Rather, its rules "are formed upon the known march of the ordinary providence of God. ''2 Prudence is enjoined upon us as a matter of historical wisdom and of pious obedience. These arguments in favor of prudence are not autonomous and independent of one another. In Burke's thought they are continually interwoven, creating a scene in which history is not amoral and morality is not ahistorical. Scholars writing in the past twenty years have been able to show that Burke's statements about the existence of a divine, immutable moral order, far from being ' Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791),in The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, rev. ed., 12vols. (Boston, 1866),4:81. 2Second Letter on a Regicide Peace (1796-97), Works, 5:349. [2711 272 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY merely rhetorical devices, are crucial to his thought. Peter J. Stanlis and Francis P. Canavan have made it clear that Burke firmly believed that the ultimate sanction of any moral rule is its conformity to the will of God and that the divine moral law is both transcendent and immanent within us. 3Burke's injunctions to follow tradition, experience, prescription, expediency, and utility were thus neither absolute nor unrestricted , but were based upon and bound by the "one, great immutable, pre-existent law, prior to all our devices."' The particular concern of this paper is not whether Burke believed that moral conduct is ultimately sanctioned by its conformity to the will of God, a contention that is accepted here. The topic at hand is how Burke perceived the knowability of universal moral principles and the implications of his position. This issue is of considerable importance because opinion about the possibilities of knowing has bearing upon what can be legitimately asserted about that which is known. Although scholars such as Burleigh Wiikins believe that the epistemological question is not decisive for determining the nature of a moral philosophy, s it can be shown that Burke's view of the...

Edmund Burke's View of History

A study of Edmund Burke's theory of history has not, to my knowledge, been undertaken before. There are two principal justifications for it. The first is that since Burke is, as some have claimed, “the principal founder” of the Romantic theory of history, his theory of history, as one aspect of the complicated association of thought and feeling called Romanticism, is important in the history of ideas. The second reason is that almost all of Burke's politics depends on his view of history or, at least, can be explained by it.

Burke and Natural Rights

Edmund Burke was at once a chief exponent of the Ciceronian doctrine of natural law and a chief opponent of the “rights of man.” In our time, which is experiencing simultaneously a revival of interest in natural-law theory and an enthusiasm for defining “human rights” that is exemplified by the United Nations' lengthy declaration, Burke's view of the natural juridic order deserves close attention.Unlike Bolingbroke and Hume, whose outward politics in some respects resembled the great Whig statesman's, Burke was a pious man. “The most important questions about the human race Burke answered … from the Church of England's catechism.” He takes for granted a Christian cosmos, in which a just God has established moral principles for man's salvation. God has given man law, and with that law, rights; such, succinctly, is Burke's premise in all moral and juridical questions.