Edmund Burke

pp. 10-22

in: Robert Grant, The politics of sex and other essays, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000

Abstract

There are many obstacles to a contemporary understanding of Burke. For a start, as Hazlitt dauntingly observed, "the only specimen of Burke is, all that he wrote". His total output was enormous, and for reasons shortly to follow, none of it is lightly to be discounted. Only one major work is easily available (the Penguin Reflections on the Revolution in France),¹ and neither it, nor any other, can stand proxy for the rest. Again, all Burke's writings are highly topical, and each approaches his characteristic preoccupations from a slightly different angle. Thus his thought is not only cumulative and unsystematic, it is also never definitive. The only constant is Burke's methods and presuppositions, so it will be best to start from there.