Edmund Burke
1729-1797 · Conservatism · Prominent
Burke was an Anglo-Irish statesman who defended prejudice by name: the settled habits a people cannot justify carry more wisdom than the reasoning of any one generation, and he set that against the abstractions of the Jacobins. A nation is a partnership, belonging to the dead and the unborn as much as to the living. His Reflections on the Revolution in France appeared in 1790, and modern conservatism starts there.
Signature
The position Burke is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Society
- leans Collectivism
- Authority
- Sacred Tradition / Custom
Positions on the 7 axes the sources answer
- Society
- leans Collectivism (19 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- The Divine
- leans Describable (25 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (22 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Polity
- leans Illiberalism (19 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Ignorance
- leans Bliss (85 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
- Allegiance
- leans Local (16 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
13 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Burke refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Parliamentary System / Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Virtue / Harmony
What is the highest good? - Perception
- Conceptual Mediation
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Tradition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue / Natural Law
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Authority
- Sacred Tradition / Custom
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Speech Act / Conventional
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Customary Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Human Nature
- Redeemably Corrupted
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Family / Nation
What is your primary bond and loyalty?