Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:05:55.035Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Edmund Burke and the Anglo-American Tradition of Liberty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2017

Extract

It is proper for more reasons than the most obvious one that I should open this talk by quoting a former President of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, Lord Quinton, whose works on political philosophy I have so much enjoyed—and learnt from.

In a chapter on political philosophy, which he contributed to the Oxford History of Western Philosophy, Lord Quinton says that ‘the effect of the importation of Locke's doctrines in to France was much like that of alcohol in an empty stomach’. In Britain, Lord Quinton adds, Locke's principles ‘served to endorse a largely conservative revolution against absolutist innovation’, whereas in France the importation of Locke's ideas would lead to the radicalism of the French revolution. Why was this so?

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Quinton, A., ‘Political Philosophy’, The Oxford Illustrated History of Western Philosophy, Kenny, Anthony (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 327.Google Scholar

2 Op. cit. note 1, 327.

3 Burke, E., ‘Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs’, The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, IV (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1866), 165166.Google Scholar

4 Burke, E., ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’, The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, III (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1866), 359.Google Scholar

5 Burke, E., ‘Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol’, The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, II (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1865), 227.Google Scholar

6 Op. cit. note 5, 230.

7 Burke, E., ‘Speech on Fox's India Bill’, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke VGoogle Scholar, India Madras and Bengal, 1774–1785, Marshall, P. J. (ed.) (Oxford, 1981), 402.Google Scholar Quoted by Muller, J., The Mind and the Market (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 126.Google Scholar

8 Burke, E., ‘Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe’, The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, IV (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1866), 249.Google Scholar

9 Op. cit. note 3, 78.

10 Burke, E., ‘Thoughts and Details on Scarcity’, The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, V (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1866), 166167, 169.Google Scholar

11 Muller, J., The Mind and the Market (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 122.Google Scholar

12 Op. cit. note 11, 121–122.

13 Himmelfarb, G., The Roads to Modernity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 7374.Google Scholar

14 Burke, E., ‘Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents’, The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, I (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1865), 446, 454.Google Scholar

15 Madison, J.. ‘Federalist No. 51’, A. Hamilton, J. Madison, J. Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Mentor Books, 1961), 322.Google Scholar

16 Nisbet, R., ‘The Contexts of Democracy’, The March of Freedom, Feulner, E. J. Jr (ed.) (Washington D.C.: Heritage Books, 2003), 223.Google Scholar

17 Rousseau, J-J., The Social Contract (London: Penguin Classics, 1968), 63.Google Scholar

18 Op. cit. note 13, 158–159.

19 Op. cit. note 13, 163–164.

20 Op. cit. note 13, 166.

21 Op. cit. note 13, 167.

22 Op. cit. note 13, 166.

23 Berlin, I., Freedom and its Betrayal, Hardy, H. (ed.) (London: Chatto & Windus, 2002) 151, 148.Google Scholar

24 Op. cit. note 23, 149.

25 Op. cit. note 23, 150.

26 Quinton, A., The Politics of Imperfection (London & Boston: Faber and Faber, 1978), 18.Google Scholar

27 Op. cit. note 26, 20.

28 O'Hear, A., After Progress (London: Bloomsbury, 1999), 41.Google Scholar

29 Op. cit. note 26, 21.