Edmund Burke’s Concept of Order

Last updated on: July 3, 2008 at 12:00 pm by jonathanjonesuiwdpt

Edmund Burke’s Concept of Order 2008-07-03T12:00:54-05:00 jonathanjonesuiwdpt

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Edmund Burke wrote against three schools of thought embodied by the French Revolution: the rationalism of Enlightenment philosophers, the romantic sentimentalism of Rousseau and his disciples, and utilitarianism. He knew himself to be contending against a “spirit of innovation possessed by of a recognizable general character.” The innovative spirits were: if a divine authority existed, it differs sharply in its nature from the Christian conception of an active, personal God; abstract reasoning or idyllic imagination may be employed to direct the course of social destiny; man is naturally benevolent and generous and yet corrupted by institutions; the traditions of mankind are a tangled myth from which we can ascertain little; mankind, capable of constant improvement, should have be fixed upon the future; and the aim of a reformer, moral or political, is emancipation, a sort of liberation from old creeds, oaths, and establishments, while the citizen of the future is to rejoice in the possibilities of pure liberty and self-governance. These glittering ideas were among the most powerful undercurrents of modernizational government and social theory which Burke confronted. Over the course of his long public life, he was uneasy of the unintended and unforeseeable consequences of man detached from a personal God.

Human beings, he thought, do have rights by virtue of their human nature. But those rights are not bloodless abstractions, nor are they limited to mere guarantees against government. To narrow natural rights to such neat slogans as ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ or ‘life, liberty, property,” Burke knew, was to ignore the complexity of public affairs and to leave out of consideration most moral relationships. The evolved wisdom of society shapes the necessary ability to be restrained from actions destructive to themselves and their community, the right to have some control put upon their appetites. One difference between the French Revolution and the Revolution of 1688, Burke wrote in Reflections on the Revolution in France, was that the latter was made to preserve “indisputable laws and liberties,” the ancient constitution of government which is the people’s security for a stable law and liberty:

“The very idea if the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror. We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers. Upon that body and stock of inheritance we have taken care not to inoculate any cyon alien to the nature of the original plant. All the reformations we have hitherto made, have proceeded upon the principle of reference to antiquity; and I hope, nay I am persuaded, that all those which possibly may be made hereafter, will be carefully formed upon analogical precedent, authority, and example.”

In surveying the landscape of France, Burke contended that a utopian, anti-egalitarian movement might also destroy the natural aristocracies that serve, necessarily, as an intermediary body between the individual and the state. Such an aristocracy, “the cheap defense of nations,” provides for the leadership of the people. He believed that a true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest in the state, or separable from it. It is an essential integrant part of any large body rightly constituted. It is formed out of a class of legitimate presumptions, which, taken as generalities, must be admitted for actual truths. An admirable constitution maintains balance between the claims of freedom and the claims of order. From the natural law flow natural rights, even as government does not exist solely to defend the claims of personal liberty among its citizenry so that order may be maintained. Burke believed there must be the preservation of restraints upon the personal will. Explaining his belief that government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants, Burke writes in Reflections:

“Men have a right that these wants should be provide that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power out of themselves, and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restrains on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their very rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances and admit to infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon that principle.”

Such a defense of the religious and community establishments which may stand in the way of politicizing the personal will places Burke at odds with the notion, present throughout the Enlightenment period, that a privatization of religious belief could work to eliminate the publicly ruinous consequences of zealous faith such as war. Burke continuously defended the established Church of England and advocated on behalf of Catholics in Britain and Ireland. Many of his arguments, in fact, referenced and assumed the truth of Christian claims, particularly those against the “armed doctrine” of Revolutionary France. He set himself against humanistic ideologies that sought to regenerate humans after the fashion of its creators. In the section of Reflections defending the church as one of the foundations of the Commonwealth, he wrote:

“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 alembic of hell, which in France is now so furiously boiling, we should uncover our nakedness by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been our boast and comfort, and one great source of civilization amongst us and amongst 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.”

An uncompromising ideological worldview unmoored from the inheritance of Christian faith and civilization would have little patience for the sort of cautious but persistent calls for reform that animated Burke’s life and career. One reason to reject revolutionary change was because its pursued goals were unlikely to achieve the promised results, which could in turn facilitate uncompromising countermeasures of infighting and opposition. Without the restraints of the wisdoms and temperance of Christian faith, the passions of man in his environment of power and status struggle are a recipe for large-scale disorder.

Burke believed that to consider man separate from the constraints of society was a mistake. Humans are social creatures, and the natural inclination is to live with others in settings where needs and wants are fulfilled. Living a moral existence, however, is an elusive and frail enterprise. God-given rights exist within a society, one preferably under the guidance of Christian mores, and are therefore existent within the circumstantial limitations of society. Burke’s conception of man in his natural state is to link individual rights and morality to the long development of society to which man belongs. The unavoidable rise of conflicts will lead man to draw upon his natural instincts for achieving those divinely inspired recognitions of mutual need which point to morality. In time, these develop into shared wisdoms that afford a common perspective for the best methods of resolving conflict. The individual becomes a part of the group by sharing in these perspectives and accordingly adapting behavior to fit with the community, accepting the manners, morals, and institutions (religious, social, political) that are the consequences of the shared beliefs of a society. This is a duty in the continuance of generational covenants, and necessary for wisdom to be passed forward in time. The proper end result of social life is not an idea of or attempt for equality, but rather a mosaic of societal stability.

His response to the cultural and social shock provoked by the rise of industrial capitalism, science and ‘scientism,’ and mass communication was a call for civic order grounded in religious (and ideally, though not necessarily, Christian) wisdom. Next, Burke’s view of the Enlightenment attempt to remake a society “rationally” so as to forge a philosophical vision of equality or justice.

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