Edmund Burke's Strengths and Weaknesses

4 Pages 969 Words

Marc M. Johnson


“Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France demonstrates clearly the
strengths and weaknesses of a conservative political theory.”


It would be easy to derive multiple meanings from that statement. But one thing
that is very certain is the conservative nature of Edmund Burke. His writings are regarded
by many as the foundation of the Republican party here in America and the conservative
movement worldwide. Although much of true Burkian conservatism seems to have faded
into the background, there still remains debate about the theories and the basis for a
political movement. What then are the strengths and weaknesses of a conservative
political theory?

Burke starts out talking about the natural law and how it relates to man. Although
much can and has been made about man in a natural world, Burke tries to make the point
that man is not happy in nature and that society is the result of that unhappiness. Society
could hereby be viewed as alternate to nature, one that is a contract to protect man. For
Burke, the natural law was the ultimate standard by which human law was to be measured,
and he emphatically rejected the positivism of Hobbes and indeed any conception of law as
the product of human will: "All human laws are, properly speaking, only declamatory; they
have no power over the substance of original justice.”

A clear strength of Burke’s conservatism lies in the view that government and
society should never be something that is created abruptly or on a whim. He shows a
healthy respect for the wisdom of established institutions. It is wise, Burke writes,

“to be mindful...of what they have received from their ancestors or of what is due to their
posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters...teaching successors as little to
respect their contrivances, as they had themselves respected the institutions of their
forefathers.”

Bur...