Though the lives and political thought of liberal Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke, Voltaire, and Jean Jacques Rousseau are well studied, the philosophy of Edmund Burke (1730-1797), despite his being a key founding philosopher of modern conservatism, has been neglected in modern scholarship. Jesse Norman, in his biography Edmund Burke: The First Conservative, has effectively analyzed the life and thought of this important Enlightenment parliamentarian. Known in the U.S. for his tireless support of the Colonies during the early stages of the American Revolution and his ringing and prescient denunciation of the French Revolution, Burke was also a prominent Member of Parliament and leader of the Whig party, which supported traditional constitutional limitations on the growth of central government. He was a deep and incisive political thinker of astonishing foresight who reinterpreted the meaning of the ‘social contract,’ which traditionally had focused on government protection of life and property, instead on the protection of community rights and representation.
Born near Dublin in 1730 to an Anglo-Irish family, Burke followed family tradition and studied law, building a successful practice and becoming prominent in local politics. He married into a powerful and influential Catholic family prominent in Whig circles, and despite being a converted Catholic, entered the British Parliament in 1765, becoming an eloquent though tedious speaker. He fearlessly advocated for traditional English constitutional rights, as well as those of his native Ireland, against tyranny. As such, when the American colonies protested “taxation without representation,” Burke and fellow Whig Charles Fox led the opposition to the Crown’s coercive policies as violations of the rights of British citizens abroad. Burke also favored the inclusion of American representatives in the British Parliament. Later in life Burke eloquently opposed the egalitarian and iconoclastic ideals of the French Revolution and lived to witness the Reign of Terror, a vindication of his skepticism about radical liberalism.
In his political writings, Burke argued for measured and legislated changes to a political system and opposed philosophies that advocated sweeping and systemic changes as the solution to political deficiencies. This legislative gradualism is one of the foundational tenets underlying many modern ‘conservative’ organizations. For Burke, revolutionary philosophies were likely to fall short of their grand promises and in the interim allowed the release of violent, irrational tendencies that caused great damage to human life and property. Burke also reinterpreted the Enlightenment ‘social contract,’ holding that government owed its people fair representation and a rule of law that guaranteed certain freedoms, but which was flexible enough to accommodate legislative change. Governments, he argued, should anticipate the best path for the country rather than follow popular will, often irrational and prone to violence. A humanitarian, Burke believed that a constitutional system, if gradually amended through a legislative process, would more effectively and peacefully address social, economic and political inequalities in the long term than could sweeping revolutionary movements. These groundbreaking ideals created a moderate position between radical egalitarian republicanism and absolutist government.
Jesse Norman’s work is the first major biography and analysis of Edmund Burke in over 50 years. Norman masterfully simplifies and summarizes Burke’s difficult prose and often abstruse philosophy to its core concepts, and engagingly resurrects the ‘Father of Conservatism’ as a man of immense personal warmth, professional probity and stubborn determination in the face of opposition to what he believed was ‘the right’. It is a timely and fascinating reexamination of this key statesman and philosopher, without whom modern politics might be significantly different.
Rating: 5/5