Reflections on the Revolution in France
Edmund Burke's 1790 attack on the French Revolution, a defining text of modern conservatism.
At a glance
Key ideas
Abstractions ignore human nature, No rights without duties, Practice over metaphysics …
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Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine and 2 others
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- Burke contrasts the French Revolution with Britain's unwritten constitution and argues with its British supporters.
- He predicts the revolution will end in disaster because its abstract, would-be rational foundations ignore the complexity of human nature and society.
- He defends tradition, property, inherited rights and prejudice as giving citizens a stake in social order.
- He also foresees a popular general making himself master of the republic.
Why it matters
- It is one of the best-known intellectual attacks on the French Revolution and a classic of political theory; historians such as Alfred Cobban judged it misleading as history.
Key facts
- Author
- Edmund Burke1
- Published
- 1790-111
- Origin
- A letter answering the French aristocrat Charles-Jean-François Depont, drafted after Burke read Richard Price's A Discourse on the Love of Our Country1
- Sales
- 13,000 copies in the first five weeks; eleven editions by the following September1
- Replies
- Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) and Thomas Paine's Rights of Man (1791)1
- Banned
- In China in 20201
Key ideas
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Abstractions ignore human nature1
A politics founded on abstract reason ignores how complex people and society are, and will end disastrously.
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No rights without duties1
Liberty is a construct of law, not an excuse to do as one likes.
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Practice over metaphysics1
On a right to food or medicine, call in "the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of metaphysics".
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Prejudice as stored wisdom1
People do better drawing on "the general bank and capital of nations and of ages" than on their own intellects.
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A general will take over1
Disorder would make the army factious until a popular general became master of the assembly; Napoleon did so after Burke's death.
Connections
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Sources
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