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Edmund Burke
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
18th century philosophy
Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke
Full name Edmund Burke
Birth January 12, 1729 (Dublin, Ireland)
Death July 9, 1797 (aged 68) (Beaconsfield, England)
School/tradition Old Whig, Liberal conservatism
Main interests Social and political philosophy
Edmund Burke (12 January 1729[1] – 9 July 1797) was an Anglo-Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher who, after relocating to Great Britain, served for many years in the British House of Commons as a member of the Whig party. He is mainly remembered for his support of the American colonies in the dispute with King George III and Britain, which led to the American Revolution, and for his strong opposition to the French Revolution. The latter made Burke one of the leading figures within the conservative faction of the Whig party, which he dubbed the "Old Whigs", in opposition to the pro-French-Revolution "New Whigs" led by Charles James Fox. Burke also published a philosophical work where he attempted to define emotions and passions, and how they are triggered in a person. Burke worked on aesthetics and founded the Annual Register, a political review. He is widely regarded as the philosophical founder of Anglo-American conservatism.[2]
Early Life
Burke was born in Dublin to a prosperous, professional solicitor father (Richard; d. 1761) who was a member of the Protestant Church of Ireland. It is unclear whether this is the same Richard Burke who converted from Catholicism.[3][4] His mother Mary (c. 1702–1770), whose maiden name was Nagle, belonged to the Roman Catholic Church and came from an impoverished but genteel County Cork family. The name Burke is a corruption of the Norman name Burgh or de Burgh, who settled in Ireland following the Norman invasion of Ireland by Henry II of England in 1172.[5] Burke was raised in his father's faith and would remain throughout his life a practising Anglican, unlike his sister Juliana who was brought up as and remained a Roman Catholic. His political enemies would later repeatedly accuse him of harbouring secret Catholic sympathies at a time when membership of the Catholic church would have disqualified him from public office (see Penal Laws in Ireland). Once an MP, Burke was required to take the oath of allegiance and abjuration, the oath of supremacy, and declare against transubstantiation. No Catholic is known to have done so in the eighteenth century.[6] Although never denying his Irishness, Burke often described himself as "an Englishman". This was in an age "before 'Celtic nationalism' had been constructed to make Irishness and Englishness incompatible".[7]
As a child he sometimes spent time away from the unhealthy air of Dublin with his mother's family in the Blackwater Valley. He received his early education at a Quaker school in Ballitore, some 30 miles (48 km) from Dublin, and remained in correspondence with his schoolmate Mary Leadbeater, the daughter of the school's owner, throughout his life.
In 1744 he proceeded to Trinity College, Dublin. In 1747, he set up a Debating Club, known as Edmund Burke's Club, which in 1770 merged with the Historical Club to form the College Historical Society, now the oldest undergraduate society in the world. The minutes of the meetings of Burke's club remain in the collection of the Historical Society. He graduated in 1748. Burke's father wished him to study for the law, and with this object he went to London in 1750 and entered the Middle Temple, but soon thereafter he gave up his legal studies in order to travel in Continental Europe. After giving up law, he attempted to earn his livelihood through writing.
Burke's first published work, A Vindication of Natural Society: A View of the Miseries and Evils Arising to Mankind, appeared in Spring 1756. Burke imitated Lord Bolingbroke's style and ideas in a reductio ad absurdum of his arguments for atheistic rationalism, demonstrating their absurdity.[8][9] Burke claimed that Bolingbroke's arguments against revealed religion could apply to all social and civil institutions. Lord Chesterfield and Bishop Warburton (and others) originally thought that the work was genuinely by Bolingbroke rather than a satire.[10][11]
In 1757 Burke published a treatise on aesthetics, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which attracted the attention of prominent Continental thinkers such as Denis Diderot and Immanuel Kant. It was his only purely philosophical work and when asked by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr. Laurence to expand it thirty years later, Burke replied that he was no longer fit for abstract speculation as he was when at college and the immediate years after (Burke had written it before he was 19).[12]
The following year, with Robert Dodsley, he created the influential Annual Register, a publication in which various authors evaluated the international political events of the previous year.[13] The extent to which Burke personally contributed to the Annual Register is contested.[14] Robert Murray in his biography of Burke quotes the Register as evidence of Burke's opinions yet Philip Magnus in his biography does not directly cite it as a reference.[15] Burke remained its chief editor until at least 1789 and there is no evidence that any other writer contributed to it before 1766.[16]
In London, Burke became closely connected with many of the leading intellectuals and artists, including Samuel Johnson, David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, and Joshua Reynolds. Edward Gibbon described him as, 'the most eloquent and rational madman that I ever knew.'[17]
On 12 March 1757 he married Jane Mary Nugent (1734–1812), daughter of a Catholic physician who had treated him at Bath. His son Richard was born on 9 February 1758. Another son, Christopher, died in infancy.
At about this same time, Burke was introduced to William Gerard Hamilton (known as "Single-speech Hamilton"). When Hamilton was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, Burke accompanied him to Dublin as his private secretary, a position he maintained for three years. In 1765 Burke became private secretary to liberal Whig statesman Charles Watson-Wentworth, the Marquess of Rockingham, at the time Prime Minister of Great Britain, who remained Burke's close friend and associate until his premature death in 1782.
Member of Parliament
In December 1765 Burke entered the British Parliament as a member of the House of Commons for Wendover, a pocket borough in the control of Lord Fermanagh, later 2nd Earl Verney, a close political ally of Rockingham. After Burke's maiden speech, William Pitt the Elder said Burke had "spoken in such a manner as to stop the mouths of all Europe" and that the Commons should congratulate itself on acquiring such a member.[18]
In 1769 Burke published, in reply to George Grenville, his pamphlet on The Present State of the Nation. In the same year he purchased the small estate of Gregories near Beaconsfield. The 600-acre (2.4 km2) estate was purchased with mostly borrowed money, and though it contained an art collection that included works by Titian, Gregories nevertheless would prove to be a heavy financial burden on the MP in the following decades. Burke was never able to fully pay for the estate. His speeches and writings had now made him famous, and among other effects had brought about the suggestion that he was the author of the Letters of Junius.