The Political Thought of Edmund Burke

"The most influential political thinker of Ireland," is not a phrase to be taken lightly. These words spoken by module lecturer, Paul Bew, and agreed upon by many are what I hope to discuss briefly in this essay. There are three questions I will be bringing light upon in this essay. The first will be of what the main elements in the political thinking of Edmund Burke were. Secondly I will discuss how important an influence Ireland was in molding Burke's political thought. And finally the controversial question of why Burke defended the ancien regime in France but criticized it in Ireland will be clarified.

Burke believed in the unity of England and Ireland. A good way of looking at his view is that he thought Catholics have grievances; Ireland doesn't. He was a thinker of modern conservative thought and the chief Orange thinker of the 1700s. Burke was also an aesthetic writer who believed in not "the" world but "a" world and thought that drama in theatre could not replace man's feelings for the real world. He was a disciple of Locke, a "philosopher of unreason in the great age of Reason" (Cobban, p.75), and a Whig politician with a difference. Locke's philosophy is based on individual right; Burke's begins with religious obligation (Cobban, p. 95). He denied the validity of abstract, deductive thinking in politics. Burke's conservatism was not scientific in origin-but religious. As a Whig, Burke desired an oligarchy (spiritual in rule) (Cobban, p. 92).

Burke was against revolution and Thomas Payne was for it, so Irish thought was split between the two. Burke was opposed to the French Revolution because he thought it stood for everything that was antichristian and was bad for everything that represents civilization. He felt that it was not for democracy or liberty; it was about destroying everything that was worthwhile. He felt that England had to fight to the finish to stop it. Americans used this philosophy to apply to the Russian revolution in 1917.