BURKE, EDMUND. - Born in Dublin in 1729, died at Beaconsfield in 1797. He is among the most notable figures of the Whig party; in 1765 he was secretary to the prime minister Rockingham: his political career begins then, and both in government and in the House of Commons he maintains his anti-Tory line of conduct: in 1778 he supports the abolition of the disabilities imposed on English and Irish Catholics; in the years 1772-95 he is fiercely opposed to the slave-trading policy that England was conducting in India.

His fame is due above all, among his various writings, to his battle cry of 1790, Reflections on the Revolution in France. In his work as a political writer he fights on two fronts, both against Enlightenment rationalism and against pre-Romantic individualism, in the strenuous defense he makes of the concept of an organic-collective society: for B. the basis and the seed of every wise political sentiment lie precisely in adherence to the social category and in affection for the small group of which the individual is a part within the more general totality. Against the abstractness of the French Revolution he posits a no less abstract conservative method: his historicism, wholly bent on the exaltation of the perfect form of government (the English constitutional one), prevents him from seeing the political-social substratum of the French revolutionary movement.

Exalted and hated, he was spiritual nourishment for the writers of the Restoration, who took from him respect for the moral and political traditions that cannot be destroyed by revolutionary fury. His opposition to the philosophy of Bolingbroke, his constant anti-atheistic polemic (atheism, for our author, is in opposition not only to reason but also to human instinct) will be a most notable leaven for European religious Romanticism.

Bibliography9 works

BIBL.: A. P. I. Samuels, The early life, correspondence and writings of E. B., Cambridge 1923; B. Newman, E. B., London 1927; F. von Oppenheimer, E. B. und die französische Revolution, Berlin 1928; A. Cobban, E. B. and the revolt against the eighteenth century, London 1929; M. Einaudi, E. B. e l'indirizzo storico nelle scienze politiche, Turin 1930; R. H. Murray, E. B., Oxford 1931; Ph. Magnus, E. B., A life, London 1939; A. M. Osborn, Rousseau and B.; a study of the idea of liberty in 18th century political thought, ibid. 1940.

Massimo Petrocchi

@incollection{ec3_burke_edmund, author = {Petrocchi, Massimo}, title = {Burke, edmund}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {III}, pages = {236}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/burke-edmund} }

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Burke, Edmund

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