I tried to read this; I wanted to like it. I even enjoyed the bit of wit I caught in the first chapter. However, the lawyer talk and politics were a bit much for me to handle at this time in my life. If this is your interest area, and you like source materials, give it a try. I decided to quit reading it because life is short.

O problema dessa longa preleção, feita no calor do recebimento da notícia da revolução, apenas alguns meses após a mesma, é a sensação de petição de princípio, de que se trata apenas da afirmação de que as coisas não eram ou estão tão ruins sob as monarquias religiosas, e que há relações delicadas que se confundem com o status quo, e que a liberdade se equilibra "por natureza" com outras coisas não tão nobres, que seria melhor ir melhorando aos poucos, com parcimônia, afinal... (não estamos tão mal, e devemos amar os preconceitos, pelo seu poder unificador; e defender os capitalistas, porque se apropriar do trabalhos dos outros é da ordem natural do trabalho, por exemplo). De modo que muito do que é dito é para aqueles que já com ele concordam. Mas talvez aqui eu esteja sendo injusto. O livro foi escrito para dissuadir os ingleses de entrarem na onda revolucionária e dos ideais democráticos. Então, provavelmente, havia muitos indecisos ou irrefletidos como público alvo. ( )

"...the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever."

The seminal text of contemporary Anglo-American conservatism and a continuing inspiration to classical liberals everywhere. Burke channeled his outrage over the French Revolution into a broadside against the horrors of the barbarous and destructive revolutionaries and the tyranny of their democratic majorities. He instead revered the 1689 Bill of Rights and the tradition of English constitutionalism embodied by the Magna Carta, Coke and Blackstone as "the fixed form of a constitution whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of long experience and an increasing public strength and national prosperity." Essential to any reading of the Western tradition. ( )

This book offers lessons for today.
Politics is a dirty business and democracy sometimes requires too many compromises. Change is slow, we can all see that injustice and inequality prevails, and politicians seem unable to solve our problems. Besides, we all know that your neighbor next door is an idiot, and he still gets one vote... just like you.
Wouldn't it be great if we could use a big hammer, break everything apart and start all over again? Someone surely has a solution to our problems.
Burke lived during the French Revolution and he saw, and he reflected, what happens when someone tears down the ruling institutions and starts again, with no constraints from the past, no thought of the future and no opposition. The result is tyranny. And the French got just that.
Burke uses the French revolutionary government as an example of what a society should not do in order to solve its problems.
For Burke a good and just government is the work of ages and requires the input of many generations. Rulers must convince both the people and the opposition about the advantage of their policies or principles. Even within the ruling body there is dissent and every argument and proposal has to be sharpened by the wit of many. No proposal or principle survives unscathed by this resistance. But with debate, with struggle and with compromise you get a better proposal, a better ruling principle. Then, and only then, it is ready to replace and old principle or and old policy.
The lessons this book imparts are as relevant today as they were more than 200 years ago. ( )

NA

I did not read Burke's words- I only read the introduction by JGA Pocock. This intro provides a thorough background to Burke's works and beliefs, as well as a general overview of the politics of that time period in England. ( )

Edmund Burke, MP was not in favour of popular enthusiasms, and when they rise to actual violence, well that is beyond the pale. Even though there may well have been reasons for the uprising, there should not have been this unseemly tumult. When oppressed, the populace should be able to find some non-violent way of changing their condition. After all the English have managed to avoid all this fuss....Well, haven't we? Burke was a prescient Conservative, and saw that the /French were embarked on a road that would lead to violence, to finally dictatorship, and perhaps a deeper tyranny than before. Gradual improvement on an evolutionary course would serve the french better, but they are only Latins, and therefore, the worst can be expected. ( )

I try to scrape all unfavorable reviews down to an absolute minimum of length, so here goes:

Burke thinks that the answer to everything is common sense, although his term for “common sense” was “prejudice”, something that undoubtedly did not get the approval of the PR department or indeed any sort of non-Protestant living in Britain at the time. But it seems to me like Burke relished a fight, so that was probably part of the appeal of calling common sense “prejudice”.

The trouble is real however, in that, as Plato and the philosophers point out, common sense, or simply what you assume, is often simply wrong. Burke I don’t think could overcome his contempt for philosophy long enough to form a coherent reply, so instead he just rambled on about how wrong they all always are. So it remains that common sense is not always helpful and that this is detrimental to Burke. “Blessed are you when you are persecuted” is not common sense, but old Edmund Burke seems to me to think that as long as he could muster up sufficient prejudice/common sense for those pesky non-Protestants then he would be in the clear.

That’s as directed and calm as I could get it.

.........................

It’s true that sometimes pre-Victorians are not negated by the nineteenth century—“the cause of progress in the Victorian Age”, I called it, “Catholic emancipation, popular monarchy”, etc.—I just don’t know exactly how relevant that is to Burke. He seemed to really come down on the side of authority—you can’t just “cashier” the government!—but sometimes today we seem to think that if we just cobble together a little mob we can change the law.

I add this out of some doubt of what I thought before, but I can only imagine if it makes the burden greater or less.

Edmund Burke is often cited as the father of conservatism and is often quoted by modern conservatives. Since I had never read anything by Burke, I decided to start with his Reflections on the French Revolution in hopes of better understanding conservative thinking.

The first half of the book was very disappointing as Burke complains about the Revolution "dethroning" the French nobility and expropriating church properties. He seemed mostly upset by having this disaster occur to people like him. In fact, his defense of the nobility's abuses of people seems to see that they could not be bad since he had met these people and had even had dinner with them.

The second half of the book is much better as Burke dives into the new Constitution proposed by the National Assembly. He takes their work seriously and picks apart the flaws in the government structure that they have created. The second half of the book became even more entertaining when I imagined Burke using the same arguments against today's Trump Administration and the Republican Congress.

Today's conservatives should apply some of his quotes when discussing today's politics. A few favorites:

"The same lazy but restless disposition ... directs the politicians, when they come to work for supplying the place of what they have destroyed. To make everything the reverse of what they have seen is quite as easy as to destroy. No difficulties occur in what has never been tried...At once to preserve and reform is quite another thing. " A quote that could apply to Republican's fight against Obamacare.

"But it seems as if it were the prevailing opinion in Paris, that an unfeeling heart and an undoubting confidence, are the sole qualifications for a perfect legislator. Far different are my ideas of that high office. The true lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sensibility." This quote fits to contemporary Washington as well as to ancient Paris.

"What your politicians that the marks of a bold hardy genius, are only proofs of a deplorable want of ability." By their violent haste and their defiance of the process of nature, they are delivered over blindly to every projector and adventurer, to every alchymist and empric." Although the reference to alchemists is a bit dated, the quote could be easily updated by substituting supply-sider.

"Your legislators seem to have taken their opinions of all professions, ranks and offices, from the declamations and buffooneries of satirists; who would themselves be astonished if they were held to the letter of their own description. By listening only to these, your leaders regard all things only on the side of their vices and faults, and view those vices and faults under every colour of exaggeration." This certainly fits the influence of Alex Jones and others like him.

"In general, those who are habitually employed in finding and displaying faults, are unqualified for the work of reformation: because their minds are not only unfurnished with patterns of the fair and good, but by habit they come to take no delight in the contemplation
those things." This has become one of my favorite Burke quotes.

There are many more quotes that fit our current political environment that make this book worth reading today. ( )

How decayed is contemporary political discourse? So decayed that libertarians and small market conservatives consider Burke to be their forebear, and Marx to be the forebear of Democrats. I imagine that Marx and Burke would much rather have a beer with each other than with any of their lilliputian, soi-disant followers.

So, just to be clear. Burke claims that a society functions best when it has a completely stable set of institutions as its base: civil society, landed property, and a state/church marriage. Only if these persist will liberty give us worthwhile projects, rather than muck; only if they persist is capitalism and financial speculation anything other than a casino in which the rich get richer and the poor get shafted.

These institutions necessarily require what today we think of as 'government intervention.' The poor should be cared for; the benefits of social life should accrue to all, and not just the rich; the profits of the wealthy should be re-invested in productive enterprise and not frittered away on luxury or the aforementioned casino.

Burke is no more compatible with contemporary, so-called 'conservatism' than Marx is. They both saw the dangers of unrestrained capitalism. They both saw the dangers of 'utopian' revolutionary planning (although neither conservatives nor Marxist read those bits of Marx, for obvious reasons). Admittedly, Burke was a sycophantic, power-hungry hack; and Marx went from being a lunatic pamphleteer to an impressive but ineffectual research academic. Neither of them are role-models. But at least they were willing and able to think - actually *think* - about politics, rather than just spouting party line drivel.

All that aside, Burke's analysis of the French Revolution's violence is tendentious, sometimes slipping over into yellow journalism rather than convincing critique. He's not always wrong, but he is always hyper-polemical, and that's never very constructive. His praise of English political institutions is far more interesting, as is his defense of landed property, although it's hard to distinguish the philosophical claims (need for stability in society) from the class-based ideology (stability is produced by Whig aristocrats). And his rhetoric with regard to the dangers of democracy (and, therefore, the libertarianism of the contemporary right) needs to be taken on board by anyone who cares that we're about to destroy our economic, social and environmental heritage: "The will of the many and their interest must very often differ, and great will be the difference when they make an evil choice… 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." "The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints… liberty, when men act in bodies, is power."

The solution for the problems of democracy is not, alas, more democracy, as nice as it would be to think so.

Also, the introduction to this Hackett edition is great, although Pocock doesn't really *show* that Burke wasn't in a rage against a proto-bourgeoisie. He does state it over and over again, but it doesn't seem important enough a point to make, considering that Burke most certainly was in a rage against some people an awful lot like the bourgeoisie of the later nineteenth century. ( )

Edmund Burke does NOT like what he sees in Paris-be warned there are graphic descriptions of horrific atrocities being meted out on the Citizens; the phrase 'reign of terror' is a apt description'. He hits out at the political instruments of the Jacobins in the most searing of ways. One to read alongside others happening at that time like Mary Wollestonecraft, Thomas Paine Rights of Man (both need to be read by me) ( )

Ur-text of modern conservatism. Well, he has a good writing style. I'll give him that.

For all of his self-righteous condemnations, which are so often repeated by conservatives and reactionaries today, I note how so very few of them tend to notice his conspiratorial wailing about international finance and the Jews. ( )

I cannot wait till I have finished this book: Burke's style is horrible, and his reflections are boring. Cannot say more. ( )

"Paine’s answer to Burke’s pamphlet begins to produce some squibs in our public papers. In Fenno’s paper they are Burkites, in the others Painites." — Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, May 8, 1791

"The Revolution of France does not astonish me so much as the Revolution of Mr. Burke. I wish I could believe the latter proceeded from as pure motives as the former. But what demonstration could scarcely have established before, less than the hints of Dr. Priestly and Mr. Paine establish firmly now. How mortifying that this evidence of the rotteness of his mind must oblige us now to ascribe to wicked motives those actions of his life which wore the mask of virtue and patriotism. To judge from what we see published, we must believe that the spirit of toryism has gained nearly the whole of the nation: that the whig principles are utterly extinguished except in the breasts of certain descriptions of dissenters. This sudden change in the principles of a nation would be a curious morsel in the history of man.—We have some names of note here who have apostatised from the true faith: but they are few indeed, and the body of our citizens are pure and insusceptible of taint in their republicanism. Mr. Paine’s answer to Burke will be a refreshing shower to their minds. It would bring England itself to reason and revolution if it was permitted to be read there. However the same things will be said in milder forms, will make their way among the people, and you must reform at last." — Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Vaughan, May 11, 1791

"Burke’s pamphlet and the answers to him occupy much attention there [i.e. Europe] and here [Philadelphia]. Payne’s and Priestly’s are excellent." — Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Sumter, May 14, 1791

"You will observe by the inclosed and preceding papers, that I am mentioned on the subject of Paine’s pamphlet on the rights of man: and you will have seen a note of mine prefixed to that pamphlet, whence it has been inferred that I furnished the pamphlet to the printer and procured it’s publication. This is not true. The fact was this. Mr. Beckley had the only copy of that pamphlet in town. He lent it to Mr. Madison, who lent it to me under the injunction to return it to Beckley within the day. Beckley came for it before I had finished reading it, and desired, as soon as I had done, I would send it to a Mr. Jonathan B. Smith whose brother was to reprint it. Being an utter stranger to Mr. J. B. Smith, I explained to him in a note that I sent the pamphlet to him by order of Mr. Beckley and, to take off somewhat of the dryness of the note, I added ‘that I was glad to find it was to be reprinted here &c. as you have seen in the printed note. I thought so little of this note, that I did not even retain a copy of it: and without the least information or suspicion that it would be published, out it comes the next week at the head of the pamphlet. I knew immediately that it would give displeasure to some gentlemen, fast by the chair of government, who were in sentiment with Burke, and as much opposed to the sentiments of Paine. I could not disavow my note, because I had written it: I could not disavow my approbation of the pamphlet, because I was fully in sentiment with it: and it would have been trifling to have disavowed merely the publication of the note, approving at the same time of the pamphlet. I determined therefore to be utterly silent, except so far as verbal explanations could be made." — Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, July 3, 1791

For details, see editorial note in PTJ 20: 268-312 on The Rights of Man: The "Contest of Burke and Paine . . . in America."

This classic is not a knee-jerk reactions against the Revolution but a deeper reflection and a realization of the ends of violent revolution. Burke opposed the Revolution from the beginning and as events turned out he was correct in identifying the violence and mayhem brought on by the cataclysmic events of the period.

Early on Burke correctly identified "The Social Contract: A Critique" or "Rousseau's Democracy Run Amok". Burke counters the "Rights of Man" declaration and the populist democracy that emerged in France which turned ruinously into anarchy followed by dictatorship. It is a sober reflection on democracy without the limitations of a constitutional republic.

Boring, overwritten, and way too authoritative. ( )

Good story, well told.

I had been wanting to read this book for several years. For a reader interested in Burke's philosophy, and interested in Burke as a progenitor of modern conservativism, the book is definitely worthwhile, but you will encounter much material that can be scanned over, and is probably only of interest to students of that era's history. Slightly similar experience to reading Kapital Volume I -- you only want to read so much wheat prices, or (with Burke) how the National Assembly decided to effect a new, rational determination of France's political divisions.

A classic, perhaps indeed the single main classic, of conservative political thought, this book beautifully clarified central differences between organically conservative Britain & the more radically ideological European Continent. In addition to Burke's original text, this edition, which I recommend, benefits from a good intro & from 4 remarkable essays by modern scholars. ( )

An unofficial name for this could be "The Social Contract: A Critique" or "Rosseau Part 2". Edmund Burke's famous treatise is a refutation of the "Rights of Man" declaration, and the populist democracy that emerged in France and eventually turned into anarchy followed by dictatorship.

A common misconception among the laypeople is that Burke's Reflections is a defense of aristocracy. Burke actually championed the cause of the American Revolutionaries during the War of 1776, and actually was disowned by Thomas Jefferson (who had participated in drafting the Rights of Man declaration) for his work. Burke's critique of the French Revolution was not a defense of aristocracy, but a refutation of universal rights. It was entirely consistent of him to support the American revolution because the American revolution was a reaction against the infringement of the rights of Englishmen in America enshrined (as William Blackstone stated in his Commentaries) in Engish Common Law. The French system of government had always been autocratic, on the other hand and entirely arbitrary, and the introduction of democratic principles and rule of law to a populace with no concept of the responsibilities that those rights entailed was a recipe for disaster.

Again, highly recommended for political science undergraduates. Otherwise unbearably dry for most people. ( )

Not nearly what I was expecting! ( )

The foundational work of conservative thought.

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bless you mr burke ( )

...Burke warned of the dangers of an abstract democracy compared to the smooth operation of a hereditary aristocracy. He argued against the devaluation of tradition and religion he believed would result from the political reconstruction. When the Revolution developed in the violent way that Burke had anticipated, the man who had been treated first as an alarmist was seen as a prophet. -- COL ( )