Articles by Richard Bourke
The Historical Journal, 2012
This article presents four manuscript essays from the mid-s, three of which are attributed to... more This article presents four manuscript essays from the mid-s, three of which are attributed to Edmund Burke for the first time. In doing so, the article aims to reconstruct Burke's earliest political thought during a period often described as the 'missing years' of his biography. These essays cover themes that would later occupy places of central importance in Burke's thinking, and so form a bridge between his early intellectual development and his subsequent political career. After presenting the grounds for ascribing these writings to Burke, the article then sketches their main lines of argument and situates them in their political context. It also briefly establishes their significance with reference to their enlightenment intellectual milieu. Covering such themes as the nature of party, the functioning of the mixed constitution, and the terms on which Ireland was subjected to the English crown, these early essays address a set of political and constitutional issues that were major areas of controversy in British politics in the second half of the eighteenth century.
History of Political Thought, 2000
British International Thinkers from Hobbes to Namier , 2009
There is a significant body of scholarly literature that habitually presents the writings of Edmu... more There is a significant body of scholarly literature that habitually presents the writings of Edmund Burke as constituting a contribution to international relations theory. This perspective derives in large part from an examination of Burke's later writings, especially those concerned with the outbreak of the French Revolution and the pattern of its subsequent development. 1 Some of this literature claims Burke as the inaugural representative of a specific 'English school' of international thought. 2 This is not completely without foundation since Burke did indeed champion the cause of the British constitution as an exemplary model of political engineering, favourably contrasting it with the organisation of France. But this fact is hardly sufficient to qualify him as a British 'theorist' of international relations-or as the creator of any kind of 'school' for that matter. Burke was above all else a publicist and a politician, although it is clear that he was preoccupied with international affairs, particularly as these unfolded after 1789. But while it is distorting to appropriate Burke to either nineteenth-or twentiethcentury academic categories and norms, mistaking him for a 'theorist' or an 'international lawyer', it is clear that his arguments do draw on assorted traditions of * I am grateful for the comments I received on this chapter from the contributors to this volume during a preparatory conference organised by Ian Hall and Lisa Hill on British international thought held at the University of Adelaide in 2008. Portions of the chapter were also delivered to the Séminaire franco-britannique d'histoire at the Université de Sorbonne, Paris IV, and at a conference on Révolution et empire chez Edmund Burke jointly convened by L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and the Université Paris-Diderot, both in 2009. My thanks to Luiz-Felipe de Alencastro, Jean-François Dunyach and Robert Mankin for their respective invitations, and their questions. My thanks in addition to Ultán Gillen and Iain Hampsher-Monk for further comments.
The Science of Sensibility: Reading Burke's Philosophical Enquiry, 2012
Tis not enough that Poems be beautiful, they should be sweetly moving and tender, and have absolu... more Tis not enough that Poems be beautiful, they should be sweetly moving and tender, and have absolute Command over the Passions of the Audience'. André Dacier annotated Horace and commented extensively on his poetics over a period extending from the late seventeenth to the fi rst decades of the eighteenth century. For a synopsis of his views, see his Dissertation critique sur l'art poetique d'Horace ou l'on donne une idée générale des pieces de theatre (Paris, 1698), together with the substantial 'Preface' to the fi rst volume of his edition of the Oeuvres d'Horace en Latin et François , 6 vols.
What should be the relation between means and ends in politics? The question can be subdivided in... more What should be the relation between means and ends in politics? The question can be subdivided into distinct areas of inquiry covering ethics and political philosophy. It raises issues at once for practical reasoning, moral appraisal, and political prudence. Relevant topics that might be analysed include: efficient methods for securing objects of choice; the coordination of judgements with general principles in moral theory; and the conformity between political goals and courses of action designed to achieve them. Relations between principles and strategies of implementation are often examined in terms of the roles of ideal and non-ideal theory. 1 This has particularly been the case over the past half century. However, the subject has been integral to attempts to match theory and practice since the Enlightenment. 2 Edmund Burke addressed the issue in a letter written in 1771 to William Markham, then Bishop of Chester. "History," Burke wrote, "is a preceptor of Prudence, not of principles. The principles of true politicks are those of morality enlarged; and I neither do, nor ever will, admit of any other." 3 If politics is to be understood as "morality enlarged," then the former should be seen as an extension of the latter. 4 Political judgment might therefore be appropriately described, in the phraseology of recent commentaries on the subject, as "applied ethics." 5
Cambridge Companion to Edmund Burke, 2012
In a letter sent to his Quaker school-friend, Richard Shackleton, at the start of his third year ... more In a letter sent to his Quaker school-friend, Richard Shackleton, at the start of his third year as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin, Burke identified a mania for syllogistic reasoning with the dark days of Scholastic philosophy, contrasting its procedures with those of 'these enlightened times'. 1 He had encountered neo-Aristotelian logic through the textbooks of Franciscus Burgersdicius and Martinus Smiglecius during his first year at university; at the same time, he was exposed to the Logica of Jean Le Clerc. By the mid-1740s he was associating the former with the kind of pre-enlightened 'ignorance' that modern philosophy had helped to overcome. 2 A decade later, in the Account of the European Settlements in America, which Burke composed with his close friend, William Burke, the passage from ignorance to enlightenment is set within a conventional, Protestant historiographical framework. Technological and scientific progress, along with humanism and the reformation, are presented as having created the conditions for material and intellectual improvement. These developments, moreover, are shown to have occurred in tandem with the consolidation of modern monarchies, the revival of politeness, and the establishment of a 'rational'-meaning prudently oriented-politics. Altogether, learning prospered, manners improved, and policy became enlightened. 3 In a fragmentary 'Essay towards an History of the Laws of England' which Burke undertook around the same time, the slow, faltering march towards a government of laws is taken to have been 'softened and mellowed by peace and Religion; improved and exalted by commerce, by social intercourse, and that great opener of the mind, ingenuous science'. 4 What these diverse observations illustrate is that enlightenment for Burke encompassed the progress of society through the expansion of commerce under the protection of law, *My thanks to J. C. D. Clark and David Dwan to comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
History of European Ideas, 1999
Modern Intellectual History, 2007
History of Political Thought, 2000
This article situates the work of Edmund Burke, principally his writings on the French Revolution... more This article situates the work of Edmund Burke, principally his writings on the French Revolution, in an enlightenment debate about sociability, monarchy and mixed government. It shows how his conception of manners in general, and honour in particular, relates to similar preoccupations in Montesquieu, Voltaire, Smith and Millar, and how that conception has consequences for his theory of authority and mod eration in politics.
Cambridge History of Rights
In a characteristically incisive essay on the languages of political thought, J. G. A. Pocock ide... more In a characteristically incisive essay on the languages of political thought, J. G. A. Pocock identified the dominant strain of thinking about politics in the West as "jurisprudential" in character. 1 The central terms of this "law-centered paradigm," he thought, were ius and imperium-or right and sovereignty, as we might loosely render these expressions. Pocock did not describe in any detail the history of the tradition he was invoking, although he did indicate that its components could be variously traced to stoic philosophy, Roman law and medieval theology. He followed Richard Tuck in arguing that these strands had come together as a system of concepts under which property, right and freedom were connected to one another in a relationship of complex interdependence. 2 Seventeenth-century natural law theorists, beginning with Grotius, identified "right" as a moral power (facultas) that entitled individuals to exercise legitimate freedoms as well as to expect just treatment in return. Justice in this broad sense was standardly differentiated into "perfect" obligations and "imperfect" virtues. 3 Perfect rights, which Grotius termed "expletive," and which Pufendorf later categorised under "commutative" justice, gave individuals command over their liberty, property and dependents. 4 Justice so understood, as Grotius described it, concerned "that Right which a man has to his own [sui]." 5 This contrasted with what he termed "attributive" rights, which were based on the Aristotelian idea of "distributive" justice. 6 These involved rendering to each what was due to them, not as a perfect
History in the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2022
Political Judgement, 2009
Inquiry, 2021
Jon Elster has argued for the explanatory importance of two discrete emotions in political histor... more Jon Elster has argued for the explanatory importance of two discrete emotions in political history: namely, the emotions of 'enthusiasm' and 'anger'. His argument forms part of a larger social philosophy. Elster's overarching aim is to elucidate the role of mechanisms in social and political life. 1 Identifying particular causal connections is distinct from constructing a science of prediction: we can explain individual processes in casual terms, Elster believes, yet we cannot predict when a given explanation will apply. 2 This is because it has proved impossible to specify the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a recurrent causal nexus will obtain. This conclusion disposes Elster to a degree of scepticism about the ability of rational choice modelling to account reliably for the character of human behaviour. The nature of this scepticism stands in need of clarification. Elster is not opposed to methodological individualism, presupposed in standard accounts of economic and rational choice theory. On the contrary, he accepts the claim that social processes are resolvable into the behaviour of the individual agents who comprise them. 'There are no societies', Elster has claimed, 'only individuals who interact with one another'. 3 This view is evident throughout his writings, conspicuously so since his Logic and Society of 1978. 4 It has bred in turn a rejection of functionalist arguments prominent in various philosophers including Marx and Foucault. 5 Yet, despite his interest in the micro-foundations of social science, Elster has at the same time been a dissenting
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 2017
Authors are strongly advised to read these proofs thoroughly because any errors missed may appear... more Authors are strongly advised to read these proofs thoroughly because any errors missed may appear in the final published paper. This will be your ONLY chance to correct your proof. Once published, either online or in print, no further changes can be made. These proofs should be returned within ten working days of receipt. How to supply your corrections; The PDF proof is enabled to allow the corrections to be inserted directly into the proof using the tools incorporated. Please be aware that Adobe Acrobat Reader will be required to complete this task. Using the cursor simply select the text for correction, whilst highlighted right click and use the most appropriate single tool (i.e. 'Replace', 'Cross out' or 'Add note to text'). If the yellow 'sticky note' function is used the line number must be included with the correction for location.
Journal of Modern History, 2011
Princeton History of Modern Ireland , 2016
In 1969, T. W. Moody, then Professor of Modern History at Trinity College Dublin, published an ar... more In 1969, T. W. Moody, then Professor of Modern History at Trinity College Dublin, published an article outlining a plan for a 'New History' of Ireland. 1 This was to be a multi-volume, collaborative enterprise, synthesizing the results of a generation of specialized research. Some of the inspiration for the project derived from Lord Acton's Cambridge Modern History, also a work of many hands that cultivated a detached perspective. 2 Acton's venture looked back, in turn, to European scholarship: to Georg Weber's Allgemeine Weltgeschichte of 1857, and to Lavisse and Rambaud's Histoire générale of 1893-1902. 3 In an obvious yet crucial respect, each of these enterprises was very different in conception from the New History of Ireland as it was first imagined and ultimately executed: the earlier experiments were 'universal' histories, European in focus but global in scope. Weber's fifteen-volume study was a single-authored magnum opus that aimed at the instruction of 'educated ranks' (gebildete Stände). 4 What it offered was a model of cumulative scholarship, based on the synthesis of previous research. To that extent it exuded the ethos of 'professionalization' pioneered in nineteenth-century German universities. 5 It was part of an academic culture whose goal was to offer guidance and improvement to the professional and administrative classes of the modern bureaucratic state. 6 Viewed in this context, Moody's project exemplified a long-established programme of providing public education by synthesizing historical research.
A standard narrative of the rise of democracy takes its modern incarnation to be based on an atte... more A standard narrative of the rise of democracy takes its modern incarnation to be based on an attempt to revive the ancient ideal of citizen self-rule, exemplified by popular participation. From the seventeenth century through to the 'age of revolutions', popular sovereignty is assumed to have made steady progress towards democratic government. Yet this story carries within it a range of simplifications. Paramount among these is the equation between government by the people and participation in public life. In the pages that follow, I trace some key episodes in how participation has been understood and evaluated in the past, analysing the sometimes-fraught relations between civic engagement and popular government spanning ancient and modern democracies.
Modern Intellectual History, 2019
European Journal of Political Theory, 2018
Is there a political philosophy of conservatism? A history of the phenomenon written along scepti... more Is there a political philosophy of conservatism? A history of the phenomenon written along sceptical lines casts doubt on the existence of a transhistorical doctrine, or even an enduring conservative outlook. The main typologies of conservatism uniformly trace its origins to opposition to the French Revolution. Accordingly, Edmund Burke is standardly singled out as the 'father' of this style of politics. Yet Burke was de facto an opposition Whig who devoted his career to assorted programmes of reform. In restoring Burke to his original milieu, the argument presented here takes issue with 20th-century accounts of conservative ideology developed by such figures as Karl Mannheim, Klaus Epstein and Samuel Huntington. It argues that the idea of a conservative tradition is best seen as a belated construction, and that the notion of a univocal philosophy of conservatism is basically misconceived.
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Articles by Richard Bourke
Bourke interprets Hegel’s thought, with particular reference to his philosophy of history, placing it in the context of his own time. He then recounts the reception of Hegel’s political ideas, largely over the course of the twentieth century. Countering the postwar revolt against Hegel, Bourke argues that his disparagement by major philosophers has impoverished our approach to history and politics alike. Challenging the condescension of leading thinkers—from Heidegger and Popper to Lévi-Strauss and Foucault—the book revises prevailing views of the relationship between historical ideas and present circumstances.