1 nov 1790 anni - Reflections on the Revolution in France
Descrizione:
Edmund Burke publishes the Reflections on the Revolution in France.
Burke, like many other Europeans, greatly opposed the revolution in France. He thought that they blindly adhered to didactic rationalism (consistent with Rousseau's ideology of a society of civic virtue). He thought that they overlooked the complexities of governmental and social relations. Among other things in his lengthy roast, he also noted that enforced liberty, like that of civic virtue, did not ensure equality.
Burke predicted extended turmoil as inexperienced, paranoid, and angry figures attempted to govern France. He foresaw the execution of royalty and a state of militant despotism. Burke was proved correct.
The excerpt bellow highlights his opposition to naive abstract ideas about political policy.
p. 57 hp. 7
"I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well as any gentleman of that society, be he who he will; and perhaps I have given as good proofs of my attachment to that cause, in the whole course of my public conduct. I think I envy liberty as little as they do, to any other nation. But I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government (for she then had a government) without enquiry what the nature of that government was, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate an highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the gallies, and their heroic deliverer, the metaphysic Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance."
Aggiunto al nastro di tempo:
Politics of Fear
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