Keith Burgess-Jackson

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) on Religion

We know, and what is better we feel inwardly, that religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort. In England we are so convinced of this, that there is no rust of superstition, with which the accumulated absurdity of the human mind might have crusted it over in the course of ages, that ninety-nine in an hundred of the people of England would not prefer to impiety. We shall never be such fools as to call in an enemy to the substance of any system to remove its corruptions, to supply its defects, or to perfect its construction. If our religious tenets should ever want a further elucidation, we shall not call on atheism to explain them. We shall not light up our temple from that unhallowed fire. It will be illuminated with other lights. It will be perfumed with other incense, than the infectious stuff which is imported by the smugglers of adulterated metaphysics. If our ecclesiastical establishment should want a revision, it is not avarice or rapacity, public or private, that we shall employ for the audit, or receipt, or application of its consecrated revenue.—Violently condemning neither the Greek nor the Armenian, nor, since heats are subsided, the Roman system of religion, we prefer the Protestant; not because we think it has less of the Christian religion in it, but because, in our judgment, it has more. We are protestants, not from indifference but from zeal.

We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long. But if, in the moment of riot, and in a drunken delirium from the hot spirit drawn out of the alembick of hell, which in France is now so furiously boiling, we should uncover our nakedness by throwing off the Christian religion which has hitherto been our boast and comfort, and one great source of civilization amongst us, and among many other nations, we are apprehensive (being well aware that the mind will not endure a void) that some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading superstition, might take place of it.

(Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. L. G. Mitchell [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993], 90-1 [footnote omitted] [first published in 1790])

Note from KBJ: Karl Marx was 28 years from birth, but Burke saw him coming.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) on the Latent Wisdom of Prejudices

You see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to confess, that we are generally men of untaught feelings; that instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted, and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would be better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.

Your literary men, and your politicians, and so do the whole clan of the enlightened among us, essentially differ in these points. They have no respect for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very full measure of confidence in their own. With them it is a sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme of things, because it is an old one. As to the new, they are in no sort of fear with regard to the duration of a building run up in haste; because duration is no object to those who think little or nothing has been done before their time, and who place all their hopes in discovery. They conceive, very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous, and therefore they are at inexpiable war with all establishments. They think that government may vary like modes of dress, and with as little ill effect: that there needs no principle of attachment, except a sense of present conveniency, to any constitution of the state. They always speak as if they were of opinion that there is a singular species of compact between them and their magistrates, which binds the magistrate, but which has nothing reciprocal in it, but that the majesty of the people has a right to dissolve it without any reason, but its will. Their attachment to their country itself, is only so far as it agrees with some of their fleeting projects; it begins and ends with that scheme of polity which falls in with their momentary opinion.

(Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. L. G. Mitchell [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993], 87-8 [first published in 1790])

Note from KBJ: In my humble opinion, this is still, more than two centuries after it was written, the best statement of the difference between conservatism and progressivism. Read the two paragraphs carefully, more than once, and think about what Burke is saying. Apply his words to the debate about homosexual "marriage."

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) on the Horrors of Consequentialism

Why do I feel so differently from the Reverend Dr Price, and those of his lay flock, who will choose to adopt the sentiments of his discourse?—For this plain reason—because it is natural I should; because we are so made as to be affected at such spectacles with melancholy sentiments upon the unstable condition of mortal prosperity, and the tremendous uncertainty of human greatness; because in those natural feelings we learn great lessons; because in events like these our passions instruct our reason; because when kings are hurl'd from their thrones by the Supreme Director of this great drama, and become the objects of insult to the base, and of pity to the good, we behold such disasters in the moral, as we should behold a miracle in the physical order of things. We are alarmed into reflexion; our minds (as it has long since been observed) are purified by terror and pity; our weak unthinking pride is humbled, under the dispensations of a mysterious wisdom.—Some tears might be drawn from me, if such a spectacle were exhibited on the stage. I should be truly ashamed of finding in myself that superficial, theatric sense of painted distress, whilst I could exult over it in real life. With such a perverted mind, I could never venture to shew my face at a tragedy. People would think the tears that Garrick formerly, or that Siddons not long since, have extorted from me, were the tears of hypocrisy; I should know them to be the tears of folly.

Indeed the theatre is a better school of moral sentiments than churches, where the feelings of humanity are thus outraged. Poets, who have to deal with an audience not yet graduated in the school of the rights of men, and who must apply themselves to the moral constitution of the heart, would not dare to produce such a triumph as a matter of exultation. There, where men follow their natural impulses, they would not bear the odious maxims of a Machiavelian policy, whether applied to the attainments of monarchical or democratic tyranny. They would reject them on the modern, as they once did on the antient stage, where they could not bear even the hypothetical proposition of such wickedness in the mouth of a personated tyrant, though suitable to the character he sustained. No theatric audience in Athens would bear what has been borne, in the midst of the real tragedy of this triumphal day; a principal actor weighing, as it were in scales hung in a shop of horrors,—so much actual crime against so much contingent advantage,—and after putting in and out weights, declaring that the balance was on the side of the advantages. They would not bear to see the crimes of new democracy posted as in a ledger against the crimes of old despotism, and the book-keepers of politics finding democracy still in debt, but by no means unable or unwilling to pay the balance. In the theatre, the first intuitive glance, without any elaborate process of reasoning, would shew, that this method of political computation, would justify every extent of crime. They would see, that on these principles, even where the very worst acts were not perpetrated, it was owing rather to the fortune of the conspirators, than to their parsimony in the expenditure of treachery and blood. They would soon see, that criminal means once tolerated are soon preferred. They present a shorter cut to the object than through the highway of the moral virtues. Justifying perfidy and murder for public benefit, public benefit would soon become the pretext, and perfidy and murder the end; until rapacity, malice, revenge, and fear more dreadful than revenge, could satiate their insatiable appetites. Such must be the consequences of losing in the splendour of these triumphs of the rights of men, all natural sense of wrong and right.

(Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. L. G. Mitchell [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993], 80-2 [italics in original] [first published in 1790])

Note from KBJ: Deontologists affirm, and consequentialists deny, that certain acts, such as killing the innocent, are intrinsically wrong. To a consequentialist, no act, even killing the innocent, is intrinsically wrong. An act is wrong, if it is wrong, only because its consequences are worse than those of some alternative act. This opens the door to calculation (Burke's "political computation"). If killing the king has better overall consequences than not killing the king, then it's right to kill the king and wrong not to. Burke is railing against this sort of consequentialist thinking, which holds that the end justifies the means. To a deontologist, it is false that the end justifies the means. Certain acts are intrinsically wrong. Either they are never to be performed, no matter how much evil will be prevented thereby, or they are to be performed only to prevent a great deal of evil. The former is absolutist deontology; the latter is moderate deontology. Do you see how both differ from consequentialism?

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) on the Guardians of Learning

We are but too apt to consider things in the state in which we find them, without sufficiently adverting to the causes by which they have been produced, and possibly may be upheld. Nothing is more certain, than that our manners, our civilization, and all the good things which are connected with manners, and with civilization, have, in the European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles; and were indeed the result of both combined; I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion. The nobility and the clergy, the one by profession, the other by patronage, kept learning in existence, even in the midst of arms and confusions, and whilst governments were rather in their causes than formed. Learning paid back what it received to nobility and to priesthood; and paid it with usury, by enlarging their ideas, and by furnishing their minds. Happy if they had all continued to know their indissoluble union, and their proper place! Happy if learning, not debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the instructor, and not aspired to be the master! Along with its natural protectors and guardians, learning will be cast into the mire, and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

(Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. L. G. Mitchell [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993], 78-9 [footnote omitted] [first published in 1790])

Note from KBJ: Which two groups are progressives currently attacking? The wealthy and the religious. What are they thereby destroying? Our manners and our civilization.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) on Unintended Consequences

The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught à priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science; because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate; but that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation; and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In states there are often some obscure and almost latent causes, things which appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity or adversity may most essentially depend. The science of government being therefore so practical in itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, however sagacious and observing he may be, it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up again, without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.

(Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. L. G. Mitchell [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993], 61 [first published in 1790])

Note from KBJ: Apply what Burke says to the issue of homosexual "marriage." The institution of marriage is "an edifice which has answered in [a] tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society." Progressives would pull down this edifice "without having models and patterns of approved utility before [their] eyes." Could anything be more presumptuous? Could anything be more dangerous? We need to move very slowly in this area, for much, including the welfare of children, is at stake. If homosexual couples want the right to make medical decisions for each other, they should seek that right through the legislative process. If homosexual couples want rights of survivorship, they should seek that right. If, after long experience with these individual rights, the consequences seem to a majority of people worthwhile, or at least tolerable, a next step can be taken, say, civil unions (which confer a bundle of rights and responsibilities rather than individual rights and responsibilities). What is the rush? Why are progressives so impatient? Let change occur at its own pace, endogenously, incrementally, in response to the felt needs of those affected by the change. Please don't call this reactionary. Conservatives are not opposed to change; they know as well as anyone that change is inescapable in a living organism such as society. They merely insist that change be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) on Anonymity

If what this society has thought proper to send forth had been a piece of argument, it would have signified little whose argument it was. It would be neither the more nor the less convincing on account of the party it came from. But this is only a vote and resolution. It stands solely on authority; and in this case it is the mere authority of individuals, few of whom appear. Their signatures ought, in my opinion, to have been annexed to their instrument. The world would then have the means of knowing how many they are; who they are; and of what value their opinions may be, from their personal abilities, from their knowledge, their experience, or their lead and authority in this state.

(Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. L. G. Mitchell [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993], 7 [first published in 1790])

Note from KBJ: Burke is referring to the Revolution Society (of England), which, according to Mitchell (the editor), "was founded in 1788 to celebrate the Glorious Revolution of 1688" (p. 293). The Society had issued a resolution of support for the French Revolution, to which Burke was opposed. What interests me, qua philosopher, is Burke's distinction between argumentation and resolution. Anonymity is acceptable, he seems to be saying, if the anonymous person is arguing, for an argument is good or bad independently of who authored it. It is not acceptable if the author is merely stating an opinion in the form of a resolution, for then we need to know the identity of the author in order to determine how much weight to accord the opinion. The opinion of a respectable person (a person of good character) is worth more than the opinion of someone who is not respectable.

This may seem to undercut my long-standing opposition to Internet anonymity, for I oppose anonymity even in the case of argumentation. But I have never cited as my reason for opposition to anonymity that the identity of the author bears on the quality of the argument. What I have said is that it is cowardly to argue anonymously. Think about it. Most philosophical essays are argumentative in nature (as opposed, say, to descriptive or explanatory). Why then do publishers require that names be affixed to them? Why was John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971) not published anonymously? Do you think that Harvard University Press would have acceded to his request (supposing he had made it) that it be published anonymously? The answer is that Rawls needs to be held accountable for the arguments he makes. It is how reputations are forged. It would be cowardly of Rawls or anyone else to enter the public sphere without identifying himself or herself. It would be like giving a talk with a bag over one's head. As I have said many times, part of being an adult is taking responsibility for your actions. Arguing is an action. If nothing else, this improves the quality of arguments. (Perhaps that is why Internet argumentation is so bad; it is a realm of anonymity.)

To summarize: Anonymity is unacceptable both while arguing and while stating an opinion in the form of a resolution. It is unacceptable while arguing not because the identity of the author affects the merits of the argument (it does not), but because people ought to take responsibility for their public utterances. People who make good arguments deserve to be praised; people who make bad arguments deserve to be blamed. How do we assign praise and blame if we don't know who made the argument? Anonymity is unacceptable while stating an opinion (issuing a resolution) for the reason Burke gives, namely, that we need to know the character of the author before we can determine how much weight to assign to the opinion (resolution).