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Reflections on the Revolution in France: and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to That Event (English Library) (Paperback)

by Edmund Burke (Author) "You are pleased to call again, and with some earnestness, for my thoughts on the late proceedings in France ..." (more)

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Product details

Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Penguin; first penguin edition edition (5 April 1968)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0140432043
ISBN-13: 978-0140432046
Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.7 x 1.8 cm

Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 120,429 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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#20 in	Books > History > Essays, Journals, Letters & True Accounts > 16th-18th Centuries
#27 in	Books > Poetry, Drama & Criticism > Essays, Journals & Letters > 16th to 18th Centuries
#61 in	Books > History > Political History > Revolutions & Coups

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Product Description

Burke’s seminal work was written during the early months of the French Revolution, and it predicted with uncanny accuracy many of its worst excesses, including the Reign of Terror. A scathing attack on the revolution’s attitudes to existing institutions, property and religion, it makes a cogent case for upholding inherited rights and established customs, argues for piecemeal reform rather than revolutionary change – and deplores the influence Burke feared the revolution might have in Britain. Reflections on the Revolution in France is now widely regarded as a classic statement of conservative political thought, and is one of the eighteenth century’s great works of political rhetoric.

About the Author

Edmund Burke (1729 - 97) was born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1750 he entered the MIddle Temple in London but soon left law for literature. His Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful influenced many writers of the Romantic period. An MP in the Whig Party, he championed the cause of Catholic emancipation and was involved in the governing India. Conor Cruise O'Brien is Emeritus Professor of the University of Dublin. In 1955 he was Counsellor in Paris and head of the United Nations section on Ireland from 1956 - 1960. He has been a professor at NYU, St Catherine's College, Oxford and at Dartmouth College in the USA. He has written on subjects including Ireland, Israel and the French Revolution.

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You are pleased to call again, and with some earnestness, for my thoughts on the late proceedings in France. Read the first page

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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Original Exposition of Conservative Principles, 18 Jul 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Reflections on the Revolution in France (Great Books in Philosophy) (Paperback)

Edmund Burke is considered by many to be the first to expound upon Conservative principles. And this book provides plenty of justification for that view. Burke's "reflections" are especially potent since they not only provide a common sense defense of Conservative values but allow one to examine the consequences of ignoring those values, vis-�-vis the French Revolution. Burke defends the stability that comes with constancy and aged wisdom and derides those that embrace variability and experimentation as virtues. However, the reader is not left with the impression that Burke is opposed to all change. Quite the contrary. Recognizing the fallibility of Man, Burke fully expects that there is to be changes in our habits and prejudices as part of the normal course of human endeavors in order to improve upon established wisdom. But he forthrightly rejects the wholesale dismissal of knowledge and wisdom accumulated over vast periods of time. And he holds no punches in castigating the French Revolutionaries who were so presumptuous and arrogant as to count their vernacular wisdom wiser than that of all generations preceding them. He uses example after example of failures in the French experiment to demonstrate the futility and imbecility of starting afresh instead of building upon an existing foundation. This book is an absolute must read for conservatives.

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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking and eloquent, 2 Oct 2004

By	"matthew_wilson04" - See all my reviews

Edmund Burke has written a powerful and eloquent argument against the revolution in France and its instigators. It is easy to be swayed by Burke's rich and dramatic use of language. He shows a deep knowledge of both contemporary history, European events, British History, Ancient History and languages. He does not only decry the excesses of the French Revolution; he is prepared to credit it with its gains although lamenting the manner of their achievement. Further, he is willing and very able to put forward an alternative to the Revolution. This is grounded in the British Constitution. However, it isn't merely patriotic zeal that causes this exaltation of the British way of doing things: it is backed with a knowledge of human nature, as constituted, and an awareness of the limits of life itself. For those who are Romantic, Burke's philosophy is not comforting. There is no progress for the vast majority of mankind. They are to live harsh lives where effort remains unrewarded except by the thought of heavenly compensation.
He is more clear sighted than many of his contemporary pro-Royalist/Conservative writers: he sees that it is the myth of Monarchy that is important, not the Monarchy itself. He sees the world of illusion fading to the detriment of mankind. And he sees exactly who is taking power - the Calculator, the Agent, the Accountant and the Man of Industry. There is a limited attraction for these people in his writings. He does not believe the world they can build will be one where the old values can exist (curious why contemporary Conservatives allude to him when he would be opposed to their world of markets and free trade). Interestingly, he foresees the weakening of human values in their entirety. In passages that will be clearer to the modern reader, he predicts that values are fogged by other principles - economic, social political and sociological. Who, nowadays, cannot see this? When talk of Truth and Justice inevitably becomes entwined with economic growth or societal change that has ramifications that go beyond any one human perspective.
Burke sees this and laments it. His preferred world of the gentleman farmer, with values rooted in an unchanging world with the result that people know where they stand; and can separate what is good from what is evil fairly simply, is argued for with passion and conviction.
As regards The People, as noted before, there is a passage that is telling:

'Good order is the foundation of all good things. To be enabled to acquire, the people, without being servile, must be tractable and obedient. The magistrate must have his reverence, the laws their authority. The body of the people must not find the principles of natural subordination by art rooted out of their minds. They must respect that property of which they cannot partake. They must labour to obtain what by labour can be obtained; and when they find, as they commonly do, the success disproportioned to the endeavour, they must be taught their consolation in the final proportions of eternal justice. Of this consolation, whoever deprives them, deadens their industry, and strikes at the root of all acquisition as of all conservation. He that does this is the cruel oppressor, the merciless enemy of the poor and wretched.'

Burke and I parted company long before this, but the breach is final with this passage and I consider him to be, despite his generosity and liberality and feeling and however well-intentioned or misguided, an enemy of mankind. For his 'good order' requires nothing more than the systematic inculcation of fear into children and then to have that fear bounded to them by God and consequences. At root of this there is the belief that people are a danger to themselves and to others. Yet after years of psychological and developmental research we now know differently. It is the aims that Burke advocates that creates the cruel oppressor and this, in turn, necessitates the maintenance of Burke's Conservative Ideas and system. The Revolutionnaries may have lacked knowledge of some critical fundamentals, and patterns of greed and usury and resentment may have lain behind many deeds, as Burke perceived, but that does not mean that they were entirely incorrect or that their resentment lacked justice.
As Burke presciently noted the world will become uglier because of the French Revolutions success (it has - decline of manners, ugly urban areas: it has not - no mas starvation on our doorstep, deforming diseases not rampant). Yet Burke's ideas could not turn back the French Revolution, nor could they sustain the British way of life, nor can they be used to build a future, then or now. A very thought provoking read nonetheless.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the greatest works of politics; a classic., 2 Aug 2008

By	ninth-wave "ninth-wave" (London, UK.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reflections on the Revolution in France, by Edmund Burke: A Critical Edition (Paperback)

Edmund Burke's tour de force, demolishing Jacobin upstarts and naive, utopian aristocrats alike, is a witty, intelligent and lively work which has rightly gone down in history as a seminal conservative text.

These reflections were first published in 1790, around a year after the Revolution began; before the monarchy had been overthrown and before the King was executed; before the Reign of Terror began which would result in great bloodshed. Burke was initially dismissed as an alarmist reactionary by many but as the Revolution culminated in the grotesque abuses of the guillotine and the rise to power of a military dictator, which he predicted in this text, Burke was hailed as a prophet and was vindicated in his wise warnings.

Without regard to fashionable and trendy abstract theories Burke defended prejudice, tradition and custom against the 'enlightened' intellectuals who thought they ought to rule in place of those born in the purple. Burke claimed that society is a contract, although a contract between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are yet to be born. Those who are alive must not posses dictatorial powers over the majority constituents of this contract, the dead and the unborn, but must work in accordance with traditions and be aware that they are but trustees of an inheritance which they must pass on to the next generation.

For Burke prejudices were the "bank and capital of nations and of ages" which make habits out of virtues. Prejudices give people instinctive responses in moments of decision and do not leave people hesitating in an emergency. The revolutionaries rejected all ideas repugnant to their individual reasoning and were bigotedly self-satisfied in their own way of thinking; they had "no respect for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very full measure of confidence in their own". By destroying established authority on the grounds that it was irrational or unjust the revolutionaries eroded the stability of their country and made the intervention of a "popular general" who would restore order inevitable. This was borne out when General Napoleon took control over France on the 18th Brumaire in 1799 and proceeded to try and conquer all of Europe until finally defeated by the counter-revolutionary forces of Britain and Prussia at Waterloo in 1815.

The description of Burke's visit to the French court where he witnessed Marie Antoinette on the horizon is probably one of the finest pieces of English literature I have ever read. The emotions; awe, outrage and anger all wrapped up to express Burke's indignation that 'the age of chivalry is gone' and that the 'glory of Europe is extinguished for ever'. According to one of Burke's correspondents Marie Antoinette was shown this passage whilst she was held captive and before she could finish reading it she had burst into tears and took considerable time to recover before she could read the rest.

One must remember that Burke was writing this letter to a French nobleman who obviously knew more than Burke on what was happening in France and so would not have needed a narrative of the political goings-on.

This edition, edited by historian of eighteenth-century Britain, J. C. D. Clark, is the most helpful for students. It includes a lengthy introduction exploring Burke's identity as a Whig, his ideas on the Glorious Revolution, the background to the "Reflections", its political theory, and Burke's career afters its publication. Unlike other editions, this edition includes a detailed table of contents for Burke's text as he never divided his letter into chapters. This is extremely helpful for the reader, as are the numerous footnotes.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Great Writer and A true challenge
Edmund Burke has written a powerful and eloquent argument against the revolution in France and its instigators. Read more

Published on 13 Oct 2004 by matthew_wilson04

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