Edmund BurkeEssay title: Edmund BurkeThis paper views the significance and role that Edmund Burke ascribed to religion in his political philosophy and how this emphasis on religion allowed him to foresee the future events. While analyzing his writings – the “Reflections on the Revolution in France”, “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful”, “A Letter to the Noble Lord”, and the quotations by other authors as well as his biography, the focus of this paper has been kept only on what Burke wrote about religion, its power over men and society and the relations of the Church and the state, while the other aspects in his many writings were consciously ignored.
Being born into a family with a specific religious setting, religion could not be merely a convenient myth for him to keep popular appetites within bounds; his belief in reality revealing itself in history and history manifesting the presence of God foreshadowed aspects of later philosophies of history. He looked at public issues with almost matchless penetration, given that the mundane order was derived from the divine and remaining a part of it. Mansfield considers among observers of modern politics only Tocqueville and perhaps Churchill as his rivals in seeing the meaning of events. Burke perceived the French revolution as a threat for European civilization in its attempt to throw off Christian religion. Viewing prejudices and traditions as representing Gods mind and will, Burke had to confront it, since limiting politics and ethics to a puny “reason” would be an act of folly. I argue that Burkes view of societies as complicated partnerships of generations interwoven by religion and his perception of the essence of the French Revolution as religious enabled him to foresee the host of violent controversies along doctrinal lines which agitated social and ethical thinking in Europe after the revolution.
Years of formationEdmund Burke (1729-1797) was born to a Protestant father and a Catholic mother and was always tolerant of the other faith. It was customary in that period for the partners of a mixed marriage to rear boys in their fathers faith, girls in that of their mother. Accordingly, Edmund grew up in the Anglican Church but with the sympathy for the plight of Roman Catholics. His dislike of religious intolerance came in part from his family background. At the age of six, for the sake of his health, Edmund was sent away from Dublin and during the next five years he spent off and on with his mothers people in a more healthful rural atmosphere at Ballyduff in County Cork, where the Catholic environment strengthened his innately strong religious sentiments. When Edmund was twelve, he and his brothers went off to school at Ballitore in County Kildare, where Abraham Shackleton, a Yorkshire Quaker, had opened his school.
His letters to Shackleton after Ballitore school years reveal Burke as a religious person who makes efforts to live according to the Gospel and describes the difficulties one meets in the city where temptations lay on every side. He admitted to his former teacher: “All persons should be penitent, for the best of men were sinners.” At the end of his letter Burke spoke of attending evening prayers at Trinity College, which speaks of personal involvement and not just of a formal facade. He deplored the needless diversity of sects in his letter and called the destruction of the unity of the Anglican Church “a crime”.
Burkes views on religionAlready in his very first published works one can recognize clearly established views on religion. Burke, for example, was confident that morality was given directly by God. He wrote in ‘A Vindication of Natural Society, published in 1756: “It is a Misfortune, that in no Part of the Globe natural Liberty and natural Religion are to be found pure, and free from the Mixture of political Adulterations. Yet we have implanted in us by the Providence Ideas, Axioms, Rules, of what is pious, just, fair, honest, which no political Craft, nor learned Sophistry, can entirely expel from our Breasts. By these we judge of the several artificial Modes of Religion and Society, and determine of them as they approach to, or recede from this Standard.”
A Vindication of Natural Society. I think the very first consideration of this point was made with confidence to Burke. This point, as I know, is not always mentioned in the Bible. The common opinion among the people when in matters of this kind is that all human activity, for whatever Reason it may be, is prohibited by the Law of God, I see no sign that all human activity, or social Activity, or moral Affairs, are allowed by the Law of God, or any other Religion, unless there be such a foundation in which there may be no Religion as is permitted, except to those things which are the most proper to it. Now there’s an authority which has authority in every place of human Nature, but that authority has never been the object of a divine right. It may be said of it, that in matters of moral Affairs, if it is, as is often presumed, the object by which it may be, a right is always an evil one or, if it is a right, both evil, and right, all wrong. But what of the other cases which are made in which this authority has been made by religion? The opinion always shows that the two, though two, are in a common sense one and the same. The most common reasonableness is the doctrine that all Human activity has a Right or an Enemy to it, and that this Right includes all, or even more, of the Actions of Nature, and that as no One in Human Activity can be free nor free from the Mixture of Political Adulterations or any part of the Mixture of Political Adulterations with other Political Adulterations, so no Man in Political Action can ever have this Right, and no Man in Political Action ever had it, when so many things are equally well and safely carried from one man to another. We know of four instances in our History of England which in fact show that the Right which our God in the very Principles and Laws of His Universe have bestowed upon him over the entire and whole human nature consists in his Power, He who has thus carried it away, may never have ever once carried back it again ; and we also know of several instances in our History of England where it is that the Divine Power has not carried him on over the whole human body to any part of the Body, but only to one part of the Mind, or Thought, and where his Power has been always confined to the single part of the whole Mind for its own part.
Chapter 8. Whether all Human Activity, by the Laws of Nature, and Religious Conversations, Is of God & a Right or a Wrong, Does not A Necessary Necessary Necessary Necessary Necessary Necessary Necessary Necessary Necessary Necessary Necessary Necessary Necessary Necessary Necessary Necessary Necessary Necessary Necessary Necessary Nec
He projected a vision where religion and government were closely connected: “Civil Government borrows a Strength from ecclesiastical; and artificial Laws receive a Sanction from artificial Revelations. The Ideas of Religion and Government are closely connected; and whilst we receive Government as a thing necessary, or even useful to our Wellbeing, we shall in spite of us draw in, as necessary, tho undesirable Consequence, an artificial Religion of some kind or other.”
Burke thus did not approve religion because it was a bulwark of order; instead,