Edmund Burke: 18th century solutions to 21st century dilemmas

Jul 16, 2018 by

by Fionn Shiner, The Conservative Woman:

I recently read Samuel Burgess’s book Edmund Burke’s Battle with Liberalism: His Christian Philosophy and Why It Matters Today. Samuel Burgess is a new writer, although the cover features glowing reviews from such figures as Jacob Rees-Mogg, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali and Iain Dale, so he is clearly doing something right.

His book is a study of the ideas of Edmund Burke, the 18th century philosopher widely considered to be the founder of modern conservatism, with a heavy focus on the Christian basis of his thinking.

Burgess artfully contrasts Burke’s ideas with those of social contract theorists such as John Locke, John Rawls and the thinkers behind the French revolution. Whilst Burke is seen as the forefather of modern conservatives, the ideas of today’s Left sprouted from social contract theorists.

Whilst Burke draws his conclusions both from the existence of God, and humans as he finds them in the world, thinkers such as Locke used abstract ideas about humanity such as the ‘state of nature’ or John Rawls’s ‘original position’.

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