reflections on the revolution in france and other writings

Featuring a comprehensive introduction and extensive annotations, Iain Hampsher-Monk's edition helps readers new to Burke to better understand the historical, political and philosophical context behind his writings, and the significance of contemporary and classical allusions. This accessible new edition brings together for the first time Burke's first and last published thoughts on the revolution including as it does the first Letter on a Regicide Peace a work that has contributed to a particular view of international society. Ultimately Burke advocated a counterrevolutionary war and the restoration of the French monarchy.

Reflections surveys the British political culture of traditionalism, gradualism and deference, and contrasts it with the French Revolutionaries' programme of appeal to abstract right, transformational change and popular agency. We cannot understand the defects of the modern world, or modern politics, without him.Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France was the first sustained theoretical critique of the French Revolution and is now recognised as the classic statement of modern conservatism. Burke s wisdom, Norman shows, applies well beyond the times of empire to the conventional democratic politics practised in Britain and America today. In this absorbing new biography Conservative MP Jesse Norman gives us Burke anew, vividly depicting his dazzling intellect, imagination and empathy against the rich tapestry of 18th century Europe. This he predicted, would trigger extremism, terror and the atomisation of society a profound analysis that continues to resonate today.

He warned of the effects of British rule in Ireland, the loss of the American colonies, and most famously, he foresaw the disastrous consequences of revolution in France. 'Amid the 18th century s golden generation that included his companions Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson and Edward Gibbon, Burke s controversial mixture of conservative and subversive theories made him first a marginal figure, and finally a revered theorist a hero of the Romantics. Philosophy | Everyman's Library | History | Classics Print Reflections on the Revolution in France and Other WritingsĪuthor(s): Edmund Burke Jesse Norman (Editor) Reections on the Revolution in France Edmund Burke Part 1 persons who, under the pretext of zeal toward the revolution and the constitution, often wander from their true principles and are ready on every occasion to depart from the rm but cautious and deliberate spirit that produced the revolution and that presides in the constitution.

Reflections on the revolution in france and other writings