Liberty & Power: Burke's Semi-serious Anarchism

[Bradley in DC]

http://hnn.us/blogs/4.html

Roderick T. Long
Burke's Semi-serious Anarchism

[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

It wasn’t solely to make a mean joke at Wagner’s expense that I praised Bizet as the superior composer.

– Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner
In 1756, Edmund Burke published an anarchist tract titled A Vindication of Natural Society. Debate over the intention of the work has continued ever since.

Burke himself claimed that his defense of anarchism was meant satirically, as a reductio ad absurdum of “natural religion” (meaning, in this context, the deistic attempt to base religion purely on reason, without reliance on revelation, tradition, or ecclesiastical authority). According to Burke, the point of the book was to show that the principles by which natural religion was defended by deists such as Bolingbroke would lead, if transferred to the political sphere, to the abolition of the state. The overwhelming majority of Burke scholars have accepted Burke’s statement and interpreted the Vindication as a satire. After all, how could the great conservative, the upholder of tradition and hierarchy, the opponent of the French Revolution, have seriously endorsed such radical sentiments?

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[Aratus]

gotta show Edmund Burke some RPF rEVOLution Love. like what he once said really does matter...

[axiomata]

Got to love Bradley in DC's digg signature. That's where I learned of RPF.