Edmund Burke (traditional)

• Human nature

  • Our natural limitations make tradition so important
  • Traditions provide comfort and stability and traditional insutitions, national myths, manners and conventions all help restrain our emotional, destructive impulses
  • The crooked timber of humanity is marked by a gap between aspiration and acheivement, we may conceive perfection but are unable to acheive it
  • We are imperfect and any attempt to create a system based upon the perfectibility of man is thereby contrary to our innate character
  • We seek security over abstract notions of equality and liberty
• Society pt 1

  • Society works as a living organism
  • Each part of society performs different but equally important functions
  • All classes play distinct roles in a thriving society
  • Hierarchy is inevitable as its a result of our different upbringings
  • Humans are not isolated individuals because each 'organ' relies on the other
• Society pt 2

  • We should be prejudiced in favour of the accumulated wisdom of generations, gradually reforming rather than suddenly innovating
  • Society is organic, comprising a host of small communities which check the power of the state
  • Civilisation must be constructed by giving weight to our ancestors
  • Society needs to reflect the past, consider the present and meet the needs of future generations
• The state

  • The origin of the state is unknowable and instead of contracting in, people are born into a web of duties and a hierarchy that has organically evolved across generations
  • As humans are naturally flawed, they should respect the leadership of authority
  • Authority are those who by virtue of their birth are the best able to overcome their flaws and rule in the national interest, acting as trustees rather than delegates
  • The state should be consitutional
  • You cant construct a new world from the ashes of the old - preservation should be where you place your faith rather than destruction
• The Economy pt 1

  • It is natural for people to desire greater wealth
  • The markets that naturally arise as individuals freely exchange and should be left to operate freely
  • He believed charity to be an essential obligation and a duty as a key to the organic society
• The Economy pt2

  • He also believed state intervention to help the poor would distrupt the effient hand of the market and leave the organic society without the natural aristocracy it needed to invest, create jobs and provide leadership
  • He critisised proposals that were radically innovative but was also sceptical of the New Rights more ideological commitment to laissez-faire capitalism