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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... 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 impersonal leviathan states ...
... wrote that the politician was the "philosopher in action,"9 but for the classical political philosophers that notion is problematic. It is similarly problematic for Burke, given the many denunciations of the role of speculation ...
... wrote that a city could not be too large, since that would make it more difficult to legislate for and more difficult to govern. Part of the reason for this is Aristotle's view that legislation had a moral and educational purpose that ...
... wrote that grace doesn't destroy, but perfects nature.46 But grace does change everything, and given the specific character of grace as related to the Incarnation, it has an inescapably historical dimension. The turn to historical ...
... wrote that Burke "paves the way for the historical school."49 While it is certainly true that the "Historical School" made Burke one of its heroes, that tells us nothing about Burke's own intentions. As Professor Stanlis documents at ...