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Edmund Burke and the Perennial Battle, 1789-1797 book cover
Edmund Burke and the Perennial Battle, 1789-1797
2022
First Published
4.50
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Edmund Burke's interpretation of the revolution in France, beginning 1789, is nothing short of an interpretation of human nature, and of Western civilization. Now the most penetrating and timeless passages of Burke's writings 1789 to his death in 1797 are collected for accessible enjoyment and edification. The passages come from Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), Letters on a Regicide Peace (1795-96), and six other writings penned during those momentous years. The editors of this volume have left the bulk of those texts behind, selecting only crisp and cogent passages. The result is not a mere collection of nuggets, but a sourcebook of Burke's most profound body of thought. Burke instills appreciation of liberty and of its dependence on a political order that is stable, functional, reasonable, and reformable. He interprets the French Revolution as downstream from human nature and human instinct, but also as the expression of a new and wrongheaded quasi-religion. He exposes its dogmatism, rationalism, hypocrisy, incivility, and chic radicalism. Our modern world, he exhorts, must not forsake the morals and beliefs upon which liberal arrangements depend. Hear a living voice, now urgently relevant. With candor and openness Burke pours out his sentiments and bravely expresses the farthest reaches of his understanding of the moral universe. His brilliance, erudition, and passion are on full display, a soul offering a statement for the ages.

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Author

Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Author · 19 books
Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher who served for many years in the British House of Commons as a member of the Whig party. He is mainly remembered for his support of the American colonies in the dispute with King George III and Great Britain that led to the American Revolution and for his strong opposition to the French Revolution. The latter made Burke one of the leading figures within the conservative faction of the Whig party (which he dubbed the "Old Whigs"), in opposition to the pro-French-Revolution "New Whigs", led by Charles James Fox. Burke also published a philosophical work where he attempted to define emotions and passions, and how they are triggered in a person. Burke worked on aesthetics and founded the Annual Register, a political review. He is often regarded by conservatives as the philosophical founder of Anglo-American conservatism.
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