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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... basis and horizon to moral and political life is at the root of the Western tradition of political thought and continued as its central tradition for two millennia, the first half of the twentieth century saw a determined attack on it ...
... basis of goods immediately present to practical reason?24 This latter question is less important for our purposes than the former. There it seems to me that Aquinas's account is one that encompasses both natural law precepts and a ...
... basis of which one can criticize positive law, but that is a rare situation. The virtue of prudence is central to lawmaking and that is based not only on the natural law, but on the statesman's knowledge of the peculiarities of his ...
... basis of politics in unchanging basic principles, and even his teaching on the importance of custom or prescription, especially in constitutional matters, are all closely tied to the central naturalist tradition of political thought ...
... Basis of Burke's Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956). 8. Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953) , 296. See also Ernest Barker, "Burke on the French Revolution" [1931] in his ...