Edmund Burke and the Natural LawTransaction Publishers, 10.03.2015 - 311 Seiten Today the idea of natural law as the basic ingredient in moral, legal, and political thought presents a challenge not faced for almost two hundred years. On the surface, there would appear to be little room in the contemporary world for a widespread belief in natural law. The basic philosophies of the opposition--the rationalism of the philosophes, the utilitarianism of Bentham, the materialism of Marx--appear to have made prior philosophies irrelevant. Yet these newer philosophies themselves have been overtaken by disillusionment born of conflicts between "might" and "right." Many thoughtful people who were loyal to secular belief have become dissatisfied with the lack of normative principles and have turned once more to natural law. This first book-length study of Edmund Burke and his philosophy, originally published in 1958, explores this intellectual giant's relationship to, and belief in, the natural law. It has long been thought that Edmund Burke was an enemy of the natural law, and was a proponent of conservative utilitarianism. Peter J. Stanlis shows that, on the contrary, Burke was one of the most eloquent and profound defenders of natural law morality and politics in Western civilization. A philosopher in the classical tradition of Aristotle and Cicero, and in the Scholastic tradition of Aquinas, Burke appealed to natural law in the political problems he encountered in American, Irish, Indian, and British affairs, and in reaction to the French Revolution. This book is as relevant today as it was when it was first published, and will be mandatory reading for students of philosophy, political science, law, and history. |
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... French Revolution, Stanlis wrote, "[w]e too are confronted with Jacobin types of popular collectivism which would make society and the state everything and the individual nothing" (247). He continued: We have witnessed the rise of ...
... Revolution in France, later came to agree with Burke's opposition to the French Revolution. Mackintosh certainly thought Burke was a natural law thinker.7 Stanlis was also not the first scholar to make the connection between Burke and ...
... French Revolution (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1964), 504-506. There are also much more recent scholars who interpreted Burke as a natural lawyer before Stanlis, e.g., Charles Parkin, The Moral Basis of Burke's Political ...
... French Revolution." It might be more strictly correct to say that Burke was forced to express his philosophy coherently by the revolutions; for, as Dr. Stanlis shows, the same assumptions concerning the Natural Law run through Burke's ...
... French Revolution, Burke consistently appealed to the Natural Law and made it the basis of his political philosophy. It should also be evident from this book that as an exponent of Natural Law or traditional "natural rights" Burke was ...