Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Chronological table
- Introduction
- A note on the texts
- Biographica
- Bibliography
- ‘Extempore Commonplace on The Sermon of Our Saviour on the Mount’
- A Vindication of Natural Society
- A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
- ‘Religion’
- Tracts on the Popery Laws
- Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents
- Conciliation with America
- ‘Almas Ali Khan’
- ‘Speech on the Army Estimates’
- Index of persons
- Index of subjects and places
- Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
‘Religion’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Chronological table
- Introduction
- A note on the texts
- Biographica
- Bibliography
- ‘Extempore Commonplace on The Sermon of Our Saviour on the Mount’
- A Vindication of Natural Society
- A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
- ‘Religion’
- Tracts on the Popery Laws
- Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents
- Conciliation with America
- ‘Almas Ali Khan’
- ‘Speech on the Army Estimates’
- Index of persons
- Index of subjects and places
- Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
Summary
Introduction
Burke seems to have turned to this subject after finishing his Philosophical Enquiry, published in 1757. His second edition of 1759 criticized the theory of moral sense as one which had ‘misled us both in the theory of taste and of morals’, specifying that it ‘induced us to remove the science of our duties from their proper basis, (our reason, our relations, and our necessities).’ ‘Religion’ gave Burke's ‘proper basis’ to moral theory in the course of developing a wider argument.
Why should the paper be called ‘Religion’? The common feature of moral sense and deism, two of the objects of Burke's enmity, was to his eyes an insufficient regard for God. The former had no explanatory role for Him in aesthetic or moral theory. Whilst the latter did not involve that omission, it made another by discounting His revealed word. Burke, having attended to aesthetics, turned to morals and revelation in order to relate them both to his understanding of God.
How did Burke's moral explanation use ‘our reason, our relations, and our necessities’? Relation and reason are important at the most general level. Burke used them to explain duty. He took it that we ‘cannot conceive that a reasonable Creature can be placed in any Relation that does not give rise to some Duty’. Relation, a term of scholastic origin, denotes the comparing of two ideas. For instance, we might conceive God as powerful and man as weak.
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- Pre-Revolutionary Writings , pp. 78 - 87Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993