The Origin of Burke's Ideas Revisited

Abstract

WHENCE CAME Edmund Burke's political and social ideas? Despite a wide range of suggested answers, the question has remained an open one. It is not a disparagement of Burke's originality to assert that he did not operate in an ideological vacuum; indeed, it would be absurd to believe that he did. All commentators have agreed that Burke drew on the thoughts of a variety of predecessors in drafting his famous statements of a Whig creed in revolutionary times. But the identity of these predecessors and the relative weights to be given their respective influences are problems that have vexed Burke scholars. Aristotle has his champion, but so do figures as diverse as Hale, Montesquieu, and Hume.' And the list could be extended. Most commentators have blended these various sources and others according to some subjective recipe, based perhaps upon their private preferences among the sources and certainly upon their reading of the undeniably gnarled writings of Burke.2 That point

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