Key Concept
God as God – The phrase “God as God” is basically a synonym for “God the subject.” In other words, it refers to God precisely in God’s status as an incomprehensible divine Other.
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Imagine you inherit some real estate. It has been in the family for years, and while it has been reasonably well maintained, there are parts of the property in a state of disrepair. Additionally, it is in a desirable location and could fetch a high price on the market regardless of its current condition. What should you do with the property? You could sell it and make a profit. Alternatively, if you kept it, you could demolish the property and build something new. You could also repair and remodel the property. No doubt other options are also possible. What kinds of reasons are relevant to this decision? Suppose the inheritance is not a piece of real estate, but a well functioning society. How should we improve society and pass it on to future generations? Today we’ll examine Edmund Burke’s answer to this question. But first, respond to this poll.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was an Irish-born British statesman and political philosopher. He served as a member of Parliament for the Whig Party in the British House of Commons from 1766 to 1794. But he is best known as the father of modern conservatism for his principled opposition to the French Revolution of 1789. Burke’s central idea is that society is an inheritance that must be conserved before it can be improved upon. His arguments appeal to tradition, observable cause and effect, and a mix of moral and religious sentiments.
Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) is composed in the rhetorical style of a letter. Ostensibly addressed to a concerned French citizen, Burke was really addressing the British public, whom he feared would emulate the radical politics of the 18th century Enlightenment intellectuals. The work has since become the classic statement of political conservatism, earning new readers every generation.
The full text of Reflections on the Revolution in France can be found here.
Conservatism – a modern political ideology that aims to preserve and promote the existing (or traditional) institutions of society. These institutions typically include the rule of law, property, the family, and religion.
Reform – a change in the social order that originates from the existing character of society. An example would be market-based healthcare reform in a capitalist society.
Rights – moral claims invoking immunity from (or entitlement to) some specific treatment (or good) from others. Commonly recognized rights include the right to free speech or the right to healthcare.
Prejudice – a foundational, strongly held, unreasoned (but not necessarily irrational) moral opinion or belief. We might believe, for example, that parents have special obligations towards their own children.
Contract Theory – a modern political theory identifying consent as the sole justification for government. Contract theory is associated with Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704), Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), and more recently, John Rawls (1921-2002)
Burke opens with the striking claim that change is essential to conservatism. According to Burke, an openness to change is what allowed the British Constitution to conserve its hereditary monarchy, the British monarchy that still exists in the reign of King Charles III. The monarchy survived through the periods of the Restoration (1660), which followed the English Civil War, restoring King Charles II to the throne, and the Glorious Revolution (1688), which cemented the Protestant line of succession, and established the primacy of Parliament over the English Crown.
Part I, Introduction, pages 108-109
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. Without such means it might even risk the loss of that part of the Constitution which it wished the most religiously to preserve. The two principles of conservation and correction operated strongly at the two critical periods of the Restoration and Revolution, when England found itself without a king. At both those periods the nation had lost the bond of union in their ancient edifice; they did not, however, dissolve the whole fabric. On the contrary, in both cases they regenerated the deficient part of the old constitution through the parts which were not impaired. They kept these old parts exactly as they were, that the part recovered might be suited to them. […] At no time, perhaps, did the sovereign legislature manifest a more tender regard to that fundamental principle of British constitutional policy than at the time of the Revolution, when it deviated from the direct line of hereditary succession. The crown was carried somewhat out of the line in which it had before moved, but the new line was derived from the same stock. It was still a line of hereditary descent, still an hereditary descent in the same blood, though an hereditary descent qualified with Protestantism. When the legislature altered the direction, but kept the principle, they showed that they held it inviolable.
Burke dispels the myth that conservatism opposes change. On the contrary, in order to conserve anything, we must be amenable to change in the thing we wish to conserve. While Burke does not mention conservatism by name (the term was not coined until 1818 by the French writer François-René Chateaubriand), he invokes “two principles of conservation and correction.” The principle of conservation seeks to preserve an existing valued institution, in Burke’s case, the British Crown. The principle of correction assists the principle of conservation when the institution no longer functions, for instance, during Britain’s constitutional crises of the 17th century.
The key for Burke is that the change required by the principle of correction should proceed by way of reform rather than revolution. Reform is change that at the same time conserves. So, according to Burke, the British did not discard the principle of hereditary monarchy; they “altered the direction, but kept the principle.” Similarly, in the United States, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 affirmed and brought to greater realization the American principles of liberty and equality. This stands in contrast to radical revolutionary movements that seek to overthrow or replace the established political order, like the French Revolution.
Having articulated conservatism’s approach to change, Burke takes aim at (what he regards as) the false doctrine of rights informing the revolutionary changes in France. While Burke is clear that he believes in the existence of rights, he objects to their strict imposition on society by force. For Burke, rights are expressions of fundamental human needs for living a good life, and he enumerates several in the following passage, such as the right to the fruits of one’s industry. But rights do not settle the question of how individuals living together in society should provide for these needs.
Part I, Introduction, pages 150-151
Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my heart from withholding in practice (if I were of power to give or to withhold) the real rights of men. In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to justice, as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in public function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents, to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring, to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights, but not to equal things. He that has but five shillings in the partnership has as good a right to it as he that has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock; and as to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention.
If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures. They can have no being in any other state of things; and how can any man claim under the conventions of civil society rights which do not so much as suppose its existence, — rights which are absolutely repugnant to it? One of the first motives to civil society, and which becomes one of its fundamental rules, is that no man should be judge in his own cause. By this each person has at once divested himself of the first fundamental right of uncovenanted man, that is, to judge for himself and to assert his own cause. He abdicates all right to be his own governor. He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons the right of self-defence, the first law of Nature. Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together. That he may obtain justice, he gives up his right of determining what it is in points the most essential to him. That he may secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole of it.
Here, Burke appeals to a distinction between nature and convention. What is natural refers to what is always (or for the most part) the case regardless of human choice or institution. For instance, slavery is always and everywhere unjust. What is conventional, by contrast, hinges on human choice or custom. Variances between cultures, like modes and styles of dress, for example, are a matter of convention. We sometimes say that they are “socially constructed,” as opposed to “really existent.”
What then are “natural” rights? Burke and his opponents agree that rights are moral claims derived from (human) nature. For if rights were purely conventional, slavery would be just in those societies that have no legal conventions prohibiting the practice. But Burke parts company with his opponents by insisting that natural rights must be implemented through the conventions of society, that is, through man-made, conventional law. Thus, in the second paragraph of the excerpt above, Burke denies that we have a natural right to govern ourselves, since this is incompatible with the authority of government. Even the right of self-defense, Burke argues, must be circumscribed by the needs of society. No right is absolute.
Burke proceeds to elaborate his theory of rights and its relationship to the science (or knowledge) of government. While rights, for Burke, have a basis in nature, he affirms, in this passage, that government is a matter of convention: “Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants [i.e., needs].” As such, we have a right that government provide for these needs. But again, to affirm that the right to food or medicine, like in Burke’s examples below, are among the most important human needs, does not settle how these needs should be met. Politics is an empirical science, based in experience, not a species of abstract philosophical knowledge.
Part I, Introduction, pages 151-153
Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exist in total independence of it, and exist in much greater clearness and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection; but their abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to everything they want everything. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power out of themselves, and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances and admit to infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon that principle. […] What is the use of discussing a man’s abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician rather than the professor of metaphysics.
The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate; but that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens: and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In states there are often some obscure and almost latent causes, things which appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity or adversity may most essentially depend. The science of government being therefore so practical in itself and intended for such practical purposes — a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, however sagacious 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 building it up again without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.
We have already seen Burke adopt the language of rights to suit his own purposes. He does that again in the above passage, arguing that rights function as much to restrain us as to set us free. Paradoxically, in fact, for Burke, without restraints there is no true freedom. Burke’s first premise is that government exists to provide for the needs of citizens. Indeed, these needs constitute our rights. But these needs go beyond the freedom to choose and act as we wish, free from the interference of others. For this freedom, if unchecked by society in either morality or law, will corrode the social order, undermining the security of all our rights, all of our freedoms. Thus, Burke’s second premise: if the government exists to provide for the needs (or rights) of citizens, then the government must restrain its citizens from actions that violate the rights (or undermine the needs) of others. Such restrictions are among our rights. Here is the argument presented more formally:
Premise 1: Government exists to provide for the needs (or rights) of citizens.
Premise 2: If the government exists to provide for the needs (or rights) of citizens, then the government must restrain its citizens from actions that violate the rights (or undermine the needs) of others.
Conclusion: The government must restrain its citizens from actions that violate the rights (or undermine the needs) of others.
The example of drug legalization may serve to illustrate Burke’s point. One may argue that there is a right to consume stimulating substances–even if harmful to oneself–provided one does not thereby harm others. If that’s right, then drug prohibition is always and everywhere wrong. But, as Burke might argue, the apparent human need to be free to make such choices competes with another, arguably more fundamental human need: to be free from the social ills associated with widespread and excessive drug use. Therefore, drug prohibition, in fact, affirms this more fundamental right. But of course, as Burke cautions in the second paragraph above, the details and circumstances matter. Just as there is no abstract right of individuals to consume drugs, there is no abstract right of governments to prohibit them. We should instead exercise caution and pay close attention to observable cause and effect.
Burke’s empirical approach to the science of government assumes the existence of an established society. But how are societies established and held together in the first place? Having ruled out abstract reason as a basis for political order–the mortal error of the French–Burke ventures, in this passage, to propose that society is held together by religion. But given the irreducible fact of religious differences, which was as true in Burke’s time as ours, how could that be?
For Burke, religious belief supplies the prejudices out of which a peaceful, cooperative society is possible. Even religious belief that has been thoroughly corrupted by human custom (“the rust of superstition”), Burke believes, is preferable to atheism and impiety, as long as it continues to provide necessary social cohesion without which society could not subsist.
Part I, Section I, pages 185-186
WE KNOW, AND WHAT IS BETTER, we feel inwardly, that religion is the basis of civil society and the source of all good and of all comfort. In England we are so convinced of this, that there is no rust of superstition with which the accumulated absurdity of the human mind might have crusted it over in the course of ages, that ninety-nine in a hundred of the people of England would not prefer to impiety. We shall never be such fools as to call in an enemy to the substance of any system to remove its corruptions, to supply its defects, or to perfect its construction. If our religious tenets should ever want a further elucidation, we shall not call on atheism to explain them. We shall not light up our temple from that unhallowed fire. It will be illuminated with other lights. It will be perfumed with other incense than the infectious stuff which is imported by the smugglers of adulterated metaphysics. […]
We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason, but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long. But if, in the moment of riot and in a drunken delirium from the hot spirit drawn out of the alembic of hell, which in France is now so furiously boiling, we should uncover our nakedness by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been our boast and comfort, and one great source of civilization amongst us and amongst many other nations, we are apprehensive (being well aware that the mind will not endure a void) that some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading superstition might take place of it.
Aristotle famously wrote that “a human being is by nature a political animal” (Politics, 1253a, trans. Reeve). By this he did not mean that human beings naturally participate in politics, say by voting in elections. He simply meant that we are social beings. We naturally live among one another in an organized society.
In the second paragraph of the passage above, Burke, alluding to Aristotle’s observation, adds “that man is by his constitution a religious animal.” Human beings are not only social by nature, as Aristotle observed, but also religious in the sense of having a need to belong with others in virtue of shared belief. We have a need to believe and belong. Religion, understood as the deepest questions of belief, precedes politics. “All human conflict,” as Cardinal Manning observes, “is ultimately theological.” Therefore, remove traditional religious belief, and as Burke warns, “some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading superstition might take place of it.”
Burke concludes that these religious beliefs should be transferred, as it were, to the state. This does not mean that the state is immune from criticism or beyond correction. But such interventions should always be done cautiously and proceed by reform not revolution. We should treat the state with the same pious reverence owed to a parent. As such, political revolutions, for Burke, are akin to patricide, with all the moral seriousness that goes with it. He goes on to situate this consecrated state within “the great primeval contract of eternal society,” turning on its head the contract theory of his opponents: society chooses us, not the other way around.
Part I, Section I, pages 192-193
To avoid, therefore, the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the state, that no man should approach to look into its defects or corruptions but with due caution, that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by its subversion, that he 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.
SOCIETY is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure — but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico, or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence, because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule, because this necessity itself is a part, too, of that moral and physical disposition of things to which man must be obedient by consent or force; but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.
Once more Burke turns the ideas of his intellectual opponents against them. In the second paragraph of the passage above, Burke adopts the language of contract theory to argue that the state is not a contract, at least if a contract is understood as a voluntary arrangement between individuals subject to rational agreement. Like a genuine marriage, which is held together by vows, society is not a mere business arrangement for some instrumental purpose, like economic growth. Instead, Burke urges that the state exists for a higher purpose; it is “a partnership in every virtue and all perfection.” Society exists as an intergenerational trust between the living, the dead, and the yet-to-be-born. The laws that hold society together, therefore, are not something we are at liberty to alter carelessly, and their authority and force should not be malleable by human whim.
In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke lays the foundations for modern conservatism. Far from resisting change, conservatism requires change, that is, change that comes from within. Beneficial changes, meanwhile, should reflect our rights, understood as what we need to live a good life. But rights must be implemented through the conventions of society. This is an empirical matter subject to variation and circumstance. And yet the true foundation of society remains religious belief, which, when attached to the state, forms a trust, to be conserved, improved upon, and passed on to future generations.
For an introduction to Burke’s life and thought by James Muldoon, Lecturer in Political Science at Exeter University, check out this video:
Although its length and structure present challenges, the full text of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France is worth reading. One useful resource to help you is the late Jonathan Bennett’s Early Modern Texts, which includes an abridged and “translated” version of Burke’s text, including a helpful table of contents that exposes the work’s structure. The American writer Russell Kirk did much to popularize Burke as the father of modern conservatism in his bestselling book The Conservative Mind (1953). More recently, philosophers Roger Scruton and John Kekes have made important contributions to the conservative tradition. Finally, the author of this commentary, Tristan J. Rogers, has a book forthcoming in January 2025 titled Conservatism, Past and Present: A Philosophical Introduction (Routledge).
This work has been adapted from Reflections on the Revolution in France, a title from Project Gutenberg. This work is in the Public Domain. The page numbers cited above refer to the Liberty Fund edition of Select Works of Edmund Burke, Vol. 2. All images were created using Midjourney and are the property of the Philosophy Teaching Library.
Rogers, Tristan. 2024. “Change from Within: Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France.” The Philosophy Teaching Library. Edited by Robert Weston Siscoe, <https://philolibrary.crc.nd.edu/article/change-from-within/>.
God as God – The phrase “God as God” is basically a synonym for “God the subject.” In other words, it refers to God precisely in God’s status as an incomprehensible divine Other.
Incarnation – The Christian doctrine of the incarnation is the notion that the word of God became fully human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. It is closely associated with the doctrine of the trinity, which asserts that God the Father, God the Son (Jesus as the word made flesh), and God the Holy Spirit are one God.
Religious Fanaticism – In Feuerbach’s use of the term, a religious fanatic is someone who is unwaveringly faithful to God as an utterly mysterious superhuman being. They subordinate other things—especially the love of other humans—to submission before this divine other.
God the Subject – When Feuerbach refers to God as a subject, he is referring to the commonplace religious belief that God is a being who has various attributes, like a loving nature.
Faith Separates Man From God – Faith separates God from man in this sense: it treats God as a mysterious other, a being radically distinct from us.
Faith – Belief in and fidelity to a transcendent divine subject like God.
Orthodoxy – Orthodoxy refers to “right belief,” and it is concern with identifying heresies and ensuring that people believe and practice correctly.
Indirect Form of Self-Knowledge – Feuerbach’s view is that religious belief is a naive way of relating to our human nature and its perfections. It is naive or childlike because it treats these as external realities that belong to God. He believes a mature and contemplative person realizes these don’t belong to God, but rather to our species, abstractly conceived.
Above the Individual Man – The human perfections are “above the individual” insofar as no particular individual ever perfectly realizes them. They are abstractions.
Divine Trinity – Feuerbach is having fun here. He is using the theological phrasing of the Trinity to talk about human perfections. In calling reason, love, and freedom of the will “divine,” he means they are absolutely good; they are activities whose goodness is intrinsic to their practice or exercise. This isn’t a novel philosophical view. For example, Immanuel Kant argued that autonomy or a good will is the only thing which is unconditionally good.
Perfections – The end to which a faculty or power is ordered. For example, omniscience would be the perfection of the intellect. Traditionally, God is said to possess all perfections.
Love – When Feuerbach writes about love, he is referring to unconditional concern for others and the desire for fellowship with them. He is here asserting that love, understood in this sense, is the perfect activity of the affective faculty. In other words, our feelings and passions are fully actualized and engaged in an intrinsically valuable activity when we genuinely love others.
Infinite – The infinite is whatever can be understood as unbounded or unlimited. Human nature in the abstract is unbounded and unlimited. It is only bounded or limited in its concrete form as it is realized by particular material individuals.
Higher Consciousness – The sort of consciousness that mature human beings possess, but which other animals do not. It is “higher” than animal consciousness because it involves thinking abstractly about the form or essence of things.
Science – Feuerbach uses the term science in its classical sense, meaning systematically organized knowledge. Any body of knowledge founded on an understanding of first principles and the essences of things is a science in this sense.
Popular Sovereignty – The view that a government’s authority to rule comes from the people, making a ruler subject to the will of their citizens.
The Divine Right of Kings – The theory that kings are chosen by God and thus that political revolt is a rebellion against the will of God.
Synthesis – The prefix ‘syn-’ means “together,” so a synthesis “brings together” or combines elements of both a thesis and its antithesis.
Antithesis– An antithesis is the contradiction of a thesis. For example, internationalism could be understood as the antithesis of nationalism.
Thesis – In Hegelian terms, a thesis can be understood as a position or theory. Examples include any of the “-isms” that we discuss in science, history, and philosophy, such as Darwinism, capitalism, nationalism, etc.
Progressor’s Temptation – a unique temptation for those making progress in which pride impedes their further progress and leads to backsliding.
Progressors – those who are not yet expert Stoic practitioners, but who are also aware of the fact that they must change their lives in that direction. They are working on making progress.
Intellectualism – the philosophical view that our motivations and emotions are all judgments. The reason why you do something, your motivation, is because you believe it’s the right thing to do. The reason why you feel good or bad about something, an emotion, is because you believe that something good or bad happened to you.
Duties – acts of service, obedience, and respect that we owe to each other. The duties we owe to each other depend on what kind of relationship we have.
Askeses – exercises of Stoic thought and practice that make the lessons and habits of Stoic philosophy second-nature for Stoic practitioners.
Externals – things that are not under our control but that are all-too-easily confused with things that should be important to us, like wealth, status, and pleasure. Too many people believe externals like these are necessary for the good life, and the Stoic path is to focus not on these things but rather what is up to us.
The Fundamental Division – the division between things that are under our direct control and those that are not. The important lesson is to care only about the things we can control.