Edmund Burke’s Critique of the French Revolution (Paul Krause, July 19, 2024, Discourses on Minerva)
[W]hat we will concern ourselves with is Burke’s analysis of “revolution society” and “constitutional society” and what is entailed in both.
Burke’s constitutional society is a well-ordered society from organic evolution with ancient and longstanding roots; a quintessentially conservative disposition. A constitutional society is the particularized manifestation of universal truths: such as the right to associate, right to organize government, right to dismiss corrupt rulers, etc. A constitutional society is a society of laws and “regulated liberty” for without laws and proper regulations no society can be orderly, effective in its composition and conduct, and have the legal means and juridical precedents to maintain itself while also allowing the means of dismissal, improvement, and ingenuity.
One of Burke’s key arguments in favor of organic institutionalism is how institutionalism has a transcendent character to it. That is, it is larger than the self. Organic institutionalism is our inheritance. It is what our ancestors worked and bequeathed to us. We honor our ancestors in accepting this inheritance. And we honor our ancestors in improving what they have bequeathed to us. We do this so as to bequeath to our progeny, children, a future too. In this manner the chain of history is tied together: past, present, and future are all linked together in the contract between dead, living, and to be born:
This policy appears to me to be the result of profound reflection, or rather the happy effect of following nature, which is wisdom without reflection and above reflection. A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temperament and limited views. People who never look back to their ancestors will not look forward to posterity. Besides, the people of England know well that the idea of inheritance provides a sure principle of conservation and a sure principle of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of improvement. . . . Whatever advantages are obtained by a state proceeding on these maxims are locked fast as in a sort of family settlement, held tight for ever. By a constitutional policy that follows the pattern of nature, we receive, hold, and transmit (i) our government and our privileges in the same way as we enjoy and transmit (ii) our property and (iii) our lives.
As Burke so poignantly reflects, a society that looks upon its ancestors with scorn, or doesn’t look upon its ancestors at all, doesn’t concern itself with the future either. It becomes selfish and self-centered and works only for oneself rather than others. Atomization results when one becomes self-absorbed and lifts oneself up as the center of the world and of history.
A constitutional society, however imperfect, is something ultimately good and that evolves in progress. It is good because it has established and worked to improve, the legal traditions, rights, liberties, and traditions which any society’s first principle of organization and development need. For Burke, the rejection of the organic and constitutional society is not only a rejection of nature, it is a rejection of humanity’s creaturely nature – it makes humans into God as humans believe they can create, from nothing (creatio ex nihilo) the perfect society.
Burke argues that France had its opportunity to transform itself. As a result of missing this opportunity, however, the “revolution society” is the opposite of an organic and constitutional society. The impetus of revolution is to destroy.