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Edmund Burke: The First Conservative
A provocative biography of Edmund Burke, the underappreciated founder of modern conservatismEdmund Burke is both the greatest and the most underrated political thinker of the past three hundred years. A brilliant 18th-century Irish philosopher and statesman, Burke was a fierce champion of human rights and the Anglo-American constitutional tradition, and a lifelong campaigner against arbitrary power. Once revered by an array of great Americans including Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Burke has been almost forgotten in recent years. But as politician and political philosopher Jesse Norman argues in this penetrating biography, we cannot understand modern politics without him.As Norman reveals, Burke was often ahead of his time, anticipating the abolition of slavery and arguing for free markets, equality for Catholics in Ireland, responsible government in India, and more. He was not always popular in his own lifetime, but his ideas about power, community, and civic virtue have endured long past his death. Indeed, Burke engaged with many of the same issues politicians face today, including the rise of ideological extremism, the loss of social cohesion, the dangers of the corporate state, and the effects of revolution on societies. He offers us now a compelling critique of liberal individualism, and a vision of society based not on a self-interested agreement among individuals, but rather on an enduring covenant between generations. Burke won admirers in the American colonies for recognizing their fierce spirit of liberty and for speaking out against British oppression, but his greatest triumph was seeing through the utopian aura of the French Revolution. In repudiating that revolution, Burke laid the basis for much of the robust conservative ideology that remains with us to this one that is adaptable and forward-thinking, but also mindful of the debt we owe to past generations and our duty to preserve and uphold the institutions we have inherited. He is the first conservative.A rich, accessible, and provocative biography, Edmund Burke describes Burke's life and achievements alongside his momentous legacy, showing how Burke's analytical mind and deep capacity for empathy made him such a vital thinker-both for his own age, and for ours.thread on pub day of what people at basic like about it (editors)"You won't find a more impressive political philosopher than the 18th-century MP who more or less invented Anglosphere conservatism. And you won't find a pithier, more readable treatise on his life and works than this one." --Wall Street Journal
338 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 7, 2013
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1101 people want to read
About the author
Jesse Norman
20 books32 followersJesse Norman, MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire, is a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange, the most influential British conservative think tank based in London. He is widely regarded as one of the architects of New Conservatism, a political philosophy that stresses using traditionally conservative techniques and concepts in order to improve the general welfare of society.
Norman was educated at Eton College and Merton College, Oxford, graduating with a 2:2 in classics. He did further study at University College London, where he held an honorary research fellowship in philosophy and obtained a PhD. His books include The Achievement of Michael Oakeshott (ed), After Euclid and The Big Society: The Anatomy of the New Politics.
Norman was educated at Eton College and Merton College, Oxford, graduating with a 2:2 in classics. He did further study at University College London, where he held an honorary research fellowship in philosophy and obtained a PhD. His books include The Achievement of Michael Oakeshott (ed), After Euclid and The Big Society: The Anatomy of the New Politics.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 82 reviews
February 16, 2021
This book is easy to read and is interesting, but I cannot help feel there is something wrong. The first part of the book is an average biography of Edmund Burke (1729-1797). But, the last half of the book appears to me to be Jesse Norman’s opinions and viewpoints not that of Burke. I maybe wrong, but that is the impression I came away with.
Burke was born in Dublin, Ireland, and graduated from Trinity College, Dublin. He became a member of the British Parliament from 1765 to 1794 and was known for standing up for America during the Revolution.
I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is nine hours and forty-seven minutes. Anthony Ferguson does a good job narrating the book. Ferguson is a classically trained British actor. He has narrated many audiobooks and has won an Audiofile Magazine Earphone Award for his narration.
Burke was born in Dublin, Ireland, and graduated from Trinity College, Dublin. He became a member of the British Parliament from 1765 to 1794 and was known for standing up for America during the Revolution.
I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is nine hours and forty-seven minutes. Anthony Ferguson does a good job narrating the book. Ferguson is a classically trained British actor. He has narrated many audiobooks and has won an Audiofile Magazine Earphone Award for his narration.
October 30, 2025
Philosopher, Pioneer, Prophet
Jess Norman has written this book in an attempt to connect the famous Irish politician Edmund Burke to modern conservatism in the United Kingdom. Burke is seen as a prophet for ideas of big society and the decent citizen who gets involved in their community. A proud citizen who helps their neighbour, volunteers and gives to charity. Thus giving something back, getting a sense of belonging and worth. In turn the people they help benefit from this support. Norman believes this was born with Burke who also believed in the rights of man but also the limit of power. For me Burke is more important in his campaigns for people’s freedom and basic rights. He also recognised the disaster of the French Revolution after its initial hope. His observations are absolutely crucial to understanding the huge shockwave in history. I feel Norman is more concerned about the foundation ideas of his politics rather than this grand history and this is where we both differ.
Edmund Burke is split into two halves, one as a general overview of Burke’s life and the other around his ideology. We learn of a general background to Burke and his life, that he only held office for two years and as a politician he achieved very little. The second half is what pushes Burke to the top, his thinking. Where he stands alongside other great thinkers of the age: Locke, Hobbs and Rousseau. For me, neither satisfied my curiosity and I was left feeling this all could have been done better, perhaps more of a focus on the biographical element with thematic chapters. I feel this would have prevented the book getting stagnant as it did in Norman’s work.
For a longtime Burke has been cast aside in British history, only coming to prominence in the last 50-60 years. He has been hard to understand, why did he support the American Revolution, seek to prosecute East India Company men such as Warren Hastings, fight against slavery and the opium trade? And then heavily criticise the French Revolution especially after the execution of King Louis VXI and the rule of the Jacobins? The answer is simple he believed in traditional conservative principles of the rights and freedom of men. His thoughts and ideology actually are consistent. He was also against the theft of property or the abuse of power. In this sense he was a great political thinker. A member of the Protestant Church of Ireland, his mother was a Catholic and this was an advocate of Catholic rights in the country when the Church of Ireland held an unnaturally tight grip. This was also admirable, religious tension was so high, it would take over 30 years after his death to achieve Catholic Emancipation.
Unfortunately I left Edmund Burke feeling disappointed. Burke is a great political thinker in British and Irish history, who hasn’t had the right revisit he needs. An important man of the Georgian era who held an early warning about the French Revolution. Norman has provided a book more focused on political foundations for neoconservatism which Burke is only loosely connected. I wanted more on this history and the 18th century politics. Take or leave this one.
Jess Norman has written this book in an attempt to connect the famous Irish politician Edmund Burke to modern conservatism in the United Kingdom. Burke is seen as a prophet for ideas of big society and the decent citizen who gets involved in their community. A proud citizen who helps their neighbour, volunteers and gives to charity. Thus giving something back, getting a sense of belonging and worth. In turn the people they help benefit from this support. Norman believes this was born with Burke who also believed in the rights of man but also the limit of power. For me Burke is more important in his campaigns for people’s freedom and basic rights. He also recognised the disaster of the French Revolution after its initial hope. His observations are absolutely crucial to understanding the huge shockwave in history. I feel Norman is more concerned about the foundation ideas of his politics rather than this grand history and this is where we both differ.
Edmund Burke is split into two halves, one as a general overview of Burke’s life and the other around his ideology. We learn of a general background to Burke and his life, that he only held office for two years and as a politician he achieved very little. The second half is what pushes Burke to the top, his thinking. Where he stands alongside other great thinkers of the age: Locke, Hobbs and Rousseau. For me, neither satisfied my curiosity and I was left feeling this all could have been done better, perhaps more of a focus on the biographical element with thematic chapters. I feel this would have prevented the book getting stagnant as it did in Norman’s work.
For a longtime Burke has been cast aside in British history, only coming to prominence in the last 50-60 years. He has been hard to understand, why did he support the American Revolution, seek to prosecute East India Company men such as Warren Hastings, fight against slavery and the opium trade? And then heavily criticise the French Revolution especially after the execution of King Louis VXI and the rule of the Jacobins? The answer is simple he believed in traditional conservative principles of the rights and freedom of men. His thoughts and ideology actually are consistent. He was also against the theft of property or the abuse of power. In this sense he was a great political thinker. A member of the Protestant Church of Ireland, his mother was a Catholic and this was an advocate of Catholic rights in the country when the Church of Ireland held an unnaturally tight grip. This was also admirable, religious tension was so high, it would take over 30 years after his death to achieve Catholic Emancipation.
Unfortunately I left Edmund Burke feeling disappointed. Burke is a great political thinker in British and Irish history, who hasn’t had the right revisit he needs. An important man of the Georgian era who held an early warning about the French Revolution. Norman has provided a book more focused on political foundations for neoconservatism which Burke is only loosely connected. I wanted more on this history and the 18th century politics. Take or leave this one.
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December 18, 2013Carl T. Bogus reviewed this book for our October print magazine. Here's an excerpt:
"Although Norman has done as well possible in the space he allocated for describing Burke’s life and works, other one-volume biographies of Burke—including those by Russell Kirk and Conor Cruise O’Brien—are more complete. (O’Brien’s runs nearly 700 pages.) At times, Norman’s brevity has costs. An example is Burke’s detailed plan for ending slavery in the British Caribbean. It is important because it demonstrates that not only was Burke an incremental reformer, but when circumstances merited it Burke could be a radical reformer. Even then Burke was, well, a Burkean reformer: he studied the situation with great care, worked mightily to anticipate and ameliorate adverse consequences, and believed that culture and institutions would be more potent than legislation. Norman mentions that this design is underappreciated, but then brushes past it in a single paragraph.
But it is “Part Two: Thought” that distinguishes Norman’s book and makes it so important. The “Thought” here is a much Norman’s as Burke’s: Norman situates Burke within Western political philosophy and argues that his thinking is essential today. He begins by contrasting and comparing Burke to Newton, Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, Adam Smith, Kant, John Stuart Mill, Abraham Lincoln, and others. If this sounds heavy going, be not afraid! Norman is clear and fluid; never does his fascinating discussion bog down. Moreover, this philosophic tour is not of mere academic interest. Everything drives forcefully toward Norman’s argument about why we need Burke today."
Read the full review here: http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
"Although Norman has done as well possible in the space he allocated for describing Burke’s life and works, other one-volume biographies of Burke—including those by Russell Kirk and Conor Cruise O’Brien—are more complete. (O’Brien’s runs nearly 700 pages.) At times, Norman’s brevity has costs. An example is Burke’s detailed plan for ending slavery in the British Caribbean. It is important because it demonstrates that not only was Burke an incremental reformer, but when circumstances merited it Burke could be a radical reformer. Even then Burke was, well, a Burkean reformer: he studied the situation with great care, worked mightily to anticipate and ameliorate adverse consequences, and believed that culture and institutions would be more potent than legislation. Norman mentions that this design is underappreciated, but then brushes past it in a single paragraph.
But it is “Part Two: Thought” that distinguishes Norman’s book and makes it so important. The “Thought” here is a much Norman’s as Burke’s: Norman situates Burke within Western political philosophy and argues that his thinking is essential today. He begins by contrasting and comparing Burke to Newton, Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, Adam Smith, Kant, John Stuart Mill, Abraham Lincoln, and others. If this sounds heavy going, be not afraid! Norman is clear and fluid; never does his fascinating discussion bog down. Moreover, this philosophic tour is not of mere academic interest. Everything drives forcefully toward Norman’s argument about why we need Burke today."
Read the full review here: http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
November 7, 2015
There is such a thing as society...
There have been at least three editions of this biography since it was first published in 2013, each with a different subtitle: The Visionary Who Invented Modern Politics; The First Conservative; and Philosopher, Politician, Prophet. Pretty impressive claims for one man! The message that the book is going to be complimentary to its subject is reaffirmed in the first sentence of the introduction:-
Edmund Burke is both the greatest and the most underrated political thinker of the past 300 years.
I must admit that all of this made me worried that the book was going to be completely hagiographic. While I prefer biographies that are sympathetic, I also look for biographers to take a balanced approach and to criticise where criticism is due. I'm glad to say that the bulk of the book is not quite as fawningly sycophantic as these early impressions had made me fear, though it is clear that the author is coming at his subject from a position of deep admiration.
Jesse Norman is a British politician and a Conservative Member of Parliament. Prior to that, he gained a degree in Classics from Oxford, and went on to study and later lecture in philosophy. In the introduction, he advises that the book does not contain primary research, but instead represents his personal interpretation of Burke's life, philosophy and legacy.
The book has a rather unusual structure for a biography. The first half is given over to a fairly standard account of Burke's life and career, while the second part takes a closer look at his thought. I felt this divide worked quite well, although since Burke's life was considerably less interesting than his thought, equally the second half of the book was a good deal more interesting than the first.
Born in Dublin in 1730, Burke saw at first hand the repression of the Catholics in Ireland and the negative effect this had on society. Norman suggests this early experience remained an influence throughout his life, feeding along with later experiences into the seemingly contradictory stances he took over the American and French Revolutions at the end of the century. In summing up Burke's core beliefs, Norman says he held that “the purpose of politics is not to satisfy the interests of individuals living now: it is to preserve an evolving social order which meets the needs of generations past, present and future.” Thus, he agreed with the American colonists that there should be no taxation without representation and felt that it was important that colonies were embedded socially by creation of the kinds of institutions that existed in nation states, rather than being controlled remotely from afar. On the other hand, while he accepted the cruelties of the inequalities that led to the French Revolution, there he felt that the revolutionaries were crushing and destroying those very institutions that are required to maintain social cohesion.
This dichotomy gives the impression of him as a very practical politician and philosopher, willing to examine each event on its own merits, but with his opinions firmly embedded in his core beliefs. However this in turn meant that he didn't please those in power all the time, being in and out of favour with his electorate, political colleagues and the King depending on what subject was uppermost at the time. This may explain why, despite his obvious intellect and talents, he never reached the upper echelons of parliamentary power. However, Norman shows the influence that Burke's thinking had on how Parliament developed in Britain (and, Norman claims, in America) – an influence still felt today. It was Burke who argued that government should be representative – that once in Parliament MPs should be governed by their own opinions rather than bowing directly to the wishes of their electorate. This rested on his idea that it is the duty of politicians to study deeply and understand the history behind current events and the institutions that form the basis of stable societies.
There really is too much in the book to cover in a review without it becoming unwieldy. I found it well written and accessible, and Norman has the ability to compress large historical subjects into easily understood summaries, leaving him plenty of room to make his arguments about Burke's influence and importance. As usual, I am in the position of not being able to speak to the accuracy of either the facts nor Norman's interpretation of them, but I found his arguments convincing. Bearing in mind that Norman is a practising Conservative politician, his conclusions read a little like a plea for the Conservative Party, amongst others, to reacquaint themselves with the founding principles of the party – to accept, for instance, that, contrary to Mrs Thatcher's claim, in fact there is such a thing as society, and that markets and other institutions are cultural artefacts to be mediated through good governance rather than to be left entirely to their own devices. Norman also makes the point that Burke believed that, since man is a social animal, then society's needs should take precedence over the wishes of the individual – something that seems to have become forgotten in the last few decades of rampant individualism. (Interestingly, he points out that since most social studies research is carried out in American Universities with students as subjects, then this may skew results to increase the apparent appeal of liberal individualism.)
Overall, a thought-provoking read which doesn't require any pre-knowledge of Burke's contribution to philosophy or political thinking – interesting both in its historical context and in how Burke's influence still resonates in politics today.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
There have been at least three editions of this biography since it was first published in 2013, each with a different subtitle: The Visionary Who Invented Modern Politics; The First Conservative; and Philosopher, Politician, Prophet. Pretty impressive claims for one man! The message that the book is going to be complimentary to its subject is reaffirmed in the first sentence of the introduction:-
Edmund Burke is both the greatest and the most underrated political thinker of the past 300 years.
I must admit that all of this made me worried that the book was going to be completely hagiographic. While I prefer biographies that are sympathetic, I also look for biographers to take a balanced approach and to criticise where criticism is due. I'm glad to say that the bulk of the book is not quite as fawningly sycophantic as these early impressions had made me fear, though it is clear that the author is coming at his subject from a position of deep admiration.
Jesse Norman is a British politician and a Conservative Member of Parliament. Prior to that, he gained a degree in Classics from Oxford, and went on to study and later lecture in philosophy. In the introduction, he advises that the book does not contain primary research, but instead represents his personal interpretation of Burke's life, philosophy and legacy.
The book has a rather unusual structure for a biography. The first half is given over to a fairly standard account of Burke's life and career, while the second part takes a closer look at his thought. I felt this divide worked quite well, although since Burke's life was considerably less interesting than his thought, equally the second half of the book was a good deal more interesting than the first.
Born in Dublin in 1730, Burke saw at first hand the repression of the Catholics in Ireland and the negative effect this had on society. Norman suggests this early experience remained an influence throughout his life, feeding along with later experiences into the seemingly contradictory stances he took over the American and French Revolutions at the end of the century. In summing up Burke's core beliefs, Norman says he held that “the purpose of politics is not to satisfy the interests of individuals living now: it is to preserve an evolving social order which meets the needs of generations past, present and future.” Thus, he agreed with the American colonists that there should be no taxation without representation and felt that it was important that colonies were embedded socially by creation of the kinds of institutions that existed in nation states, rather than being controlled remotely from afar. On the other hand, while he accepted the cruelties of the inequalities that led to the French Revolution, there he felt that the revolutionaries were crushing and destroying those very institutions that are required to maintain social cohesion.
This dichotomy gives the impression of him as a very practical politician and philosopher, willing to examine each event on its own merits, but with his opinions firmly embedded in his core beliefs. However this in turn meant that he didn't please those in power all the time, being in and out of favour with his electorate, political colleagues and the King depending on what subject was uppermost at the time. This may explain why, despite his obvious intellect and talents, he never reached the upper echelons of parliamentary power. However, Norman shows the influence that Burke's thinking had on how Parliament developed in Britain (and, Norman claims, in America) – an influence still felt today. It was Burke who argued that government should be representative – that once in Parliament MPs should be governed by their own opinions rather than bowing directly to the wishes of their electorate. This rested on his idea that it is the duty of politicians to study deeply and understand the history behind current events and the institutions that form the basis of stable societies.
There really is too much in the book to cover in a review without it becoming unwieldy. I found it well written and accessible, and Norman has the ability to compress large historical subjects into easily understood summaries, leaving him plenty of room to make his arguments about Burke's influence and importance. As usual, I am in the position of not being able to speak to the accuracy of either the facts nor Norman's interpretation of them, but I found his arguments convincing. Bearing in mind that Norman is a practising Conservative politician, his conclusions read a little like a plea for the Conservative Party, amongst others, to reacquaint themselves with the founding principles of the party – to accept, for instance, that, contrary to Mrs Thatcher's claim, in fact there is such a thing as society, and that markets and other institutions are cultural artefacts to be mediated through good governance rather than to be left entirely to their own devices. Norman also makes the point that Burke believed that, since man is a social animal, then society's needs should take precedence over the wishes of the individual – something that seems to have become forgotten in the last few decades of rampant individualism. (Interestingly, he points out that since most social studies research is carried out in American Universities with students as subjects, then this may skew results to increase the apparent appeal of liberal individualism.)
Overall, a thought-provoking read which doesn't require any pre-knowledge of Burke's contribution to philosophy or political thinking – interesting both in its historical context and in how Burke's influence still resonates in politics today.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
January 1, 2021
Very interesting and extremely well written. The first half of the book is a biography of Burke with excellent historical context. The second half is an analysis of Burke's political philosophy, and a wide ranging examination of how it relates to today's world, delving into political science, anthropology, psychology, and sociology. I found it quite edifying and mentally stimulating. Highly recommended.
May 13, 2020
This is an incredibly readable biography of a man who is styled the father of conservatism. I have to admit, I do have a passing acquaintance with the work of Edmund Burke, but there is so much more to him that I freely admit my previous ignorance. The title of the book claims that Burke invented modern politics. Let's start with that question.
I am inclined to agree with the proposition. Before Burke, parliamentary politics was driven by faction and personal rivalry. After Burke, parliament was driven by party organisation and ideology. The author makes a good case that Burke was central in both of these developments.
It may sound odd to modern ears, but political parties are quite beneficial. They provide an ordered and organised means of political succession, they allow a 'government in waiting' to be created, and they provide a loyal means of ministerial opposition. This is why they are important. They allow politicians to oppose the executive power without being seditious or treasonous and it represents a point at which a polity moves from being an autocracy to becoming a democracy. This book explained that point to me very gently and in easy steps.
It would be possible for political parties to coalesce around a dominant personality, but that wouldn't augur well for longevity. To make the process sustainable, there needs to be a coalescence around a set of key ideas, beliefs, and values. This shared mindset is the glue that holds together a set of disparate individuals who unite for common action through a political party. It provides the common enterprise element of political action. Much of the work starting this process of coalescence can be ascribed to Burke.
Does that make him the father of modern conservatism? In some cases yes, and in others no. The author tackles this question head on. Burke wasn't a defender of established privilege. He championed the rights of Catholics, the rights of slaves, the rights of the Americas. All of this went against the blind defence of the established order. On the other hand, he was very wary of radicalism and revolution for its own sake. He would prefer to reform existing institutions rather than sweep them away, to be replaced by untried and untested novel institutions. He saw that the consequence of the French Revolution would be terror, followed by tyranny. In that sense he was a conservative.
I really enjoyed this book. It is well written and explained with great clarity. It led me to feel a great deal of sympathy with Burke and admiration for his biographer. It must help matters if the biographer is broadly sympathetic with his subject. This shines through the book. It's a great read and I would thoroughly recommend it.
I am inclined to agree with the proposition. Before Burke, parliamentary politics was driven by faction and personal rivalry. After Burke, parliament was driven by party organisation and ideology. The author makes a good case that Burke was central in both of these developments.
It may sound odd to modern ears, but political parties are quite beneficial. They provide an ordered and organised means of political succession, they allow a 'government in waiting' to be created, and they provide a loyal means of ministerial opposition. This is why they are important. They allow politicians to oppose the executive power without being seditious or treasonous and it represents a point at which a polity moves from being an autocracy to becoming a democracy. This book explained that point to me very gently and in easy steps.
It would be possible for political parties to coalesce around a dominant personality, but that wouldn't augur well for longevity. To make the process sustainable, there needs to be a coalescence around a set of key ideas, beliefs, and values. This shared mindset is the glue that holds together a set of disparate individuals who unite for common action through a political party. It provides the common enterprise element of political action. Much of the work starting this process of coalescence can be ascribed to Burke.
Does that make him the father of modern conservatism? In some cases yes, and in others no. The author tackles this question head on. Burke wasn't a defender of established privilege. He championed the rights of Catholics, the rights of slaves, the rights of the Americas. All of this went against the blind defence of the established order. On the other hand, he was very wary of radicalism and revolution for its own sake. He would prefer to reform existing institutions rather than sweep them away, to be replaced by untried and untested novel institutions. He saw that the consequence of the French Revolution would be terror, followed by tyranny. In that sense he was a conservative.
I really enjoyed this book. It is well written and explained with great clarity. It led me to feel a great deal of sympathy with Burke and admiration for his biographer. It must help matters if the biographer is broadly sympathetic with his subject. This shines through the book. It's a great read and I would thoroughly recommend it.
April 3, 2019
Pretty short and readable biography of Burke. The first half is biographical while the second is more concerned with his thoughts. In regards to the first Burke lead a pretty good life, refusing to profit off of his office, and working for good causes. He plead for more gracious treatment of Americans before the revolution, he tried to impeach Hastings, who headed the East Indian Company, for the treatment of Indians, and worked to emancipate catholics in Britain. He made major contributions to the concept of political parties, promoting them as stable institutions and repositories of wisdom that would not dissolve on political defeat but maintain an ideology. He did not seen them as factions but as training grounds for politicians, removing the total dependence of the state on the internal virtues of individual statesmen and core to the deliberative nature of politics. Burke also developed the "trustee" conception of a statesman, in a remarkable speech that he would not sacrifice his judgement for popularity with his constituents (eventually losing his seat when he promoted free trade policies in tension with his port city voters). In many ways Burke's life was rather tragic, he spent most of his political life in opposition, he was constantly accused of being a crypto-catholic, he had to bury his son just as his son was elected to office (apparently Burke considered suicide), and was deeply in debt for most of life (he considered fleeing to America to avoid debtors near the end of his life).
Of course, the book discusses Burke's most famous ideas in relation to the French Revolution. Burke was supportive of individual rights, but was against what he saw was abstracting those rights without regard to the historical development of those rights. Burke supported the American revolution as a recovery of traditional rights, while he disparaged the French revolution for razing their institutions and practices for abstract rights. Burke was famous for predicting the reign of terror, and rise of Napoleon in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke was "anti-liberal" to the extent that he thought excessive focus on individuals as the unit of rights would be destructive. To him, it was nonsense to build society starting from individuals in a state of nature, individuals are inherently sociable creatures. The society shapes and constitutes individuals, and are not just vehicles for individuals seeking their goals. Burke was anti-rational to the extent that he believed that much of politics could never be reduced to a consistent science, but it would be safer to instead rely on the accumulated wisdom of the ages through a country's history and institutions.
The book drags at certain points, and I am not very interested in UK politics, but overall a good introduction to Burke. Has definitely made me want to read Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France and does a good job summarizing a complex figure.
Of course, the book discusses Burke's most famous ideas in relation to the French Revolution. Burke was supportive of individual rights, but was against what he saw was abstracting those rights without regard to the historical development of those rights. Burke supported the American revolution as a recovery of traditional rights, while he disparaged the French revolution for razing their institutions and practices for abstract rights. Burke was famous for predicting the reign of terror, and rise of Napoleon in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke was "anti-liberal" to the extent that he thought excessive focus on individuals as the unit of rights would be destructive. To him, it was nonsense to build society starting from individuals in a state of nature, individuals are inherently sociable creatures. The society shapes and constitutes individuals, and are not just vehicles for individuals seeking their goals. Burke was anti-rational to the extent that he believed that much of politics could never be reduced to a consistent science, but it would be safer to instead rely on the accumulated wisdom of the ages through a country's history and institutions.
The book drags at certain points, and I am not very interested in UK politics, but overall a good introduction to Burke. Has definitely made me want to read Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France and does a good job summarizing a complex figure.
September 1, 2025
Superb and surprising biography of this much misunderstood figure, who urged better treatment of the Irish, supported the Americans against his country’s oppression, tried to restrain royal power and patronage, was active against the East India Company exploitation of India, and a prescient critic of the horrors in France. And whose ideas would greatly benefit us now but are ignored by both the left and right.
December 1, 2013
I generally loathe biographies and am not sure why I read this one. But it truly is terrific -- a wonderfully informative and entertaining political bio of a truly seminal modern political thinker. Highly recommended!
November 3, 2013
British MP Jesse Norman has written an engaging and accessible biography of the great foundational philosopher of Anglo-American conservatism Edmund Burke (1729-1797). Biographies of their forebears appears to be something of a tradition among Conservative politicians: William Hague, Britain’s foreign minister, wrote a well-received study of Burke’s Tory rival, William Pitt the Younger, in 2007.
Burke’s intellectual heft remains widely acknowledged, but in the United States the rightwing surge in the Republican Party has reduced him to a few battered redoubts manned by commentators like David Brooks and scattered survivors of William F. Buckley’s National Review. With the exception of a few citations from Reflections on the French Revolution, Burke is little read here outside academic circles. That’s too bad, because as Norman makes clear, Burke was a thinker of fascinating complexity and scope, and a stalwart defender of the critical role that political parties play in any democracy worthy of its name, at a time when such parties languish in often richly deserved disrepute.
One problem is that Burke, ironically a great champion of America, is an uncomfortable fit in the U.S. political context, with its heavy emphasis on individual rights and autonomy – a stance that Burke criticized as a fundamental error which, along with an over-emphasis on rationality, inevitably led to the horrors of the French Revolution. Society, with its relationships, inheritances, customs, and traditions, was the essence of the nation, in Burke’s view, not autonomous individuals or the chimera of Rousseau’s “natural rights,” which he detested.
The essence of good government, for Burke, was not the need to protect the individual, but to defend a society anchored in custom and tradition, and to work incremental change, although he was a champion of two revolutions: America’s in 1776 and Britain’s own Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Burke lived and clubbed with the giants of the 18th century – Samuel Johnson, Adam Smith, Joshua Reynolds, and David Hume – and he became the most influential political thinker of his time. But his time in government was fleeting, in large part because he had the misfortune of competing with lesser intellects but far more consummate politicians. The first was Pitt the Younger, who became Tory prime minister at the incredible age of 24, with little more in the way of qualifications than an aristocratic family and an education in the classics. The other was the unscrupulous but nimble Charles James Fox, nominally part of the proto-Whig party that Burke belonged to – but willing to make deals and adjust his scruples, when he could tear himself away from the card table and horse racing.
Inevitably, Burke and Fox fell out, and just as inevitably, the obstinate and often self-righteous Burke came out on the losing end. But if Burke lost the immediate scramble for power, he won the long war with his eloquent and sophisticated defense of the baggy, custom-built British Constitution, with its accretions of tradition and common law and slow, often agonizingly slow change. There is a Candide-like quality to some of Burke’s appeals to the genius of established society and the sacredness of private property as somehow near to being the best of all possible worlds: this was, after all, an era of deep political corruption, rotten boroughs in Parliament, and entrenched aristocratic power.
On the other hand, Burke was an outspoken opponent of the abuse of power, especially by monarchs like George III, but also of discriminatory laws against Catholics in Ireland, British policy in the American colonies, and imperial abuses in India. With the coming of the French Revolution, Burke found his greatest theme in the condemnation of absolutist ideology and the ravaging of society that occurs when a contempt for tradition combines with a myopic focus on individual rights.
Burke’s rhetoric can often seem overblown except for one inconvenient fact. He was right in almost every respect about the course that the French Revolution would take, from the Jacobin terror to the ultimate rise of a military leader, which he predicted well before anyone in England had even heard Napoleon Bonaparte’s name.
Burke’s critique of “liberal individualism” is central to his legacy in Norman’s view – and one that Republicans might wish to rediscover as they contemplate the toxic brew that Tea Party ideologues and libertarian fundamentalists have made of their party. I’m on the other side of the political fence, but I still long for a genuinely conservative Republican party that aspires to the principled, expansive vision of Edmund Burke.
Burke’s intellectual heft remains widely acknowledged, but in the United States the rightwing surge in the Republican Party has reduced him to a few battered redoubts manned by commentators like David Brooks and scattered survivors of William F. Buckley’s National Review. With the exception of a few citations from Reflections on the French Revolution, Burke is little read here outside academic circles. That’s too bad, because as Norman makes clear, Burke was a thinker of fascinating complexity and scope, and a stalwart defender of the critical role that political parties play in any democracy worthy of its name, at a time when such parties languish in often richly deserved disrepute.
One problem is that Burke, ironically a great champion of America, is an uncomfortable fit in the U.S. political context, with its heavy emphasis on individual rights and autonomy – a stance that Burke criticized as a fundamental error which, along with an over-emphasis on rationality, inevitably led to the horrors of the French Revolution. Society, with its relationships, inheritances, customs, and traditions, was the essence of the nation, in Burke’s view, not autonomous individuals or the chimera of Rousseau’s “natural rights,” which he detested.
The essence of good government, for Burke, was not the need to protect the individual, but to defend a society anchored in custom and tradition, and to work incremental change, although he was a champion of two revolutions: America’s in 1776 and Britain’s own Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Burke lived and clubbed with the giants of the 18th century – Samuel Johnson, Adam Smith, Joshua Reynolds, and David Hume – and he became the most influential political thinker of his time. But his time in government was fleeting, in large part because he had the misfortune of competing with lesser intellects but far more consummate politicians. The first was Pitt the Younger, who became Tory prime minister at the incredible age of 24, with little more in the way of qualifications than an aristocratic family and an education in the classics. The other was the unscrupulous but nimble Charles James Fox, nominally part of the proto-Whig party that Burke belonged to – but willing to make deals and adjust his scruples, when he could tear himself away from the card table and horse racing.
Inevitably, Burke and Fox fell out, and just as inevitably, the obstinate and often self-righteous Burke came out on the losing end. But if Burke lost the immediate scramble for power, he won the long war with his eloquent and sophisticated defense of the baggy, custom-built British Constitution, with its accretions of tradition and common law and slow, often agonizingly slow change. There is a Candide-like quality to some of Burke’s appeals to the genius of established society and the sacredness of private property as somehow near to being the best of all possible worlds: this was, after all, an era of deep political corruption, rotten boroughs in Parliament, and entrenched aristocratic power.
On the other hand, Burke was an outspoken opponent of the abuse of power, especially by monarchs like George III, but also of discriminatory laws against Catholics in Ireland, British policy in the American colonies, and imperial abuses in India. With the coming of the French Revolution, Burke found his greatest theme in the condemnation of absolutist ideology and the ravaging of society that occurs when a contempt for tradition combines with a myopic focus on individual rights.
Burke’s rhetoric can often seem overblown except for one inconvenient fact. He was right in almost every respect about the course that the French Revolution would take, from the Jacobin terror to the ultimate rise of a military leader, which he predicted well before anyone in England had even heard Napoleon Bonaparte’s name.
Burke’s critique of “liberal individualism” is central to his legacy in Norman’s view – and one that Republicans might wish to rediscover as they contemplate the toxic brew that Tea Party ideologues and libertarian fundamentalists have made of their party. I’m on the other side of the political fence, but I still long for a genuinely conservative Republican party that aspires to the principled, expansive vision of Edmund Burke.
October 29, 2021
Misleading (because Burke was not a conservative in any modern meaning of the term) and hagiographical (because we all need a hero, but why choose this one?), and also readable and kind of fun.
July 12, 2024
3.5
Probably my fault for not checking to see who the author was. Definitely an ick-factor associated with most writing from a sitting politician. The second half of the book devolved into vanilla pudding statistics trying to vindicate Burke's ideas according to "human flourishing."
Probably my fault for not checking to see who the author was. Definitely an ick-factor associated with most writing from a sitting politician. The second half of the book devolved into vanilla pudding statistics trying to vindicate Burke's ideas according to "human flourishing."
September 27, 2013
The book on a whole was fairly well done though, I have a love/hate kind of feeling for how it was laid out. Part I focuses on his life, and Part II focuses on his thought. I believe the author did a very good job on presenting his biography and enjoyed this part to the extreme. Where I faltered was in the part focusing on his thought. This seemed to me to be less on his thought and more on his influence and the author's feelings concerning it. I would of been happier with a step by step analysis of his thought and how it evolved but it would seem that for that I will have to go to his original writings and read it from there myself. Considering all this it would seem that for a fuller biography one may have to go elsewhere (and this being my first of his to read cannot recommend one to go to)but at the same time for a nice short familiarization with Burke then read the first half and be happy because it is great for that.
July 21, 2015
This is an excellent introduction to both the life and the thinking of Edmund Burke. As a Conservative MP, Jesse Norman is well placed to write about Burke's life since he (Burke) is at the root of the strongest aspect of conservative thinking in Britain. Although in recent years, the influence of the US Conservatives has grown much stronger in its dogmatism and its self belief, there is an integral scepticism here which counters this in the less weak minded Tories. In a short book Jesse Norman manages to place Burke in his late eighteenth century context and traces his influence and his relevance to the present Tory Party in the UK.
July 17, 2013
I found this rather dry. The first half of the book is biographical and the second half is supposed to be a review of Burke's thoughts. But it turned into Norman's take on why he thinks Burke was right about human nature and society according to psychological and sociological research. This is not why I read the book certainly.
August 21, 2013
Very short read, but still good none the less. The second part of the book which summarizes Burke's philosophy is where the book shines.
September 13, 2022
While ultimately not a page turner, Jesse Norman does a decent job of summarizing Burke's life as well as ideas. I gave it four stars since the author accomplishes what he intended, creating a work that is easy to read and digest. Burke is often thought of as the father of modern conservatism, and thus I didn't think I would identify with Burke's perspective as much as I did. However, it's important to put his ideas into the context of the times he lived. Burke would not have neatly fit in with the modern conservative movement. Of course the defining event in Burke's lifetime was the French Revolution which he viewed as the culmination of the dangerous ideas of enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau and to a lesser extent John Locke. Burke believed that man had no natural rights except as they were given to him by the social fabric in which he lived. Thus institutions as well as the constitution are paramount as they are the result of inherited wisdom passed down through the centuries. Any change however small will end up changing the social fabric. Burke was not against reform only that reform should be targeted to the exact problem at hand and no more. In fact the point of politics is to preserve the social order. Political parties in contrast to factions were an example of good government. Wealth inequality was a fact of life but all members of society, the commoners, king and aristocrats were expected to act in accordance with a social contract to the benefit of society. This is why Burke would not have supported liberal individualism as well as its later carnation of neoliberalism. Individualist thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill proposed that society was merely a collection of its most indivisible part, the person - whose self-interest in the pursuit of his own wealth was all that mattered. Anything that deviated from a market economy worsens society. Burke, while a supporter of free markets, would have not have gone for this. One problem that Burke had with Rousseau is that he prized the individual above the social fabric. Burke was also suspicious of financial wealth and speculation believing that it played a role in the French Revolution especially when aristocratic lands were confiscated. The French Revolution threw off centuries of culminated wisdom and would most likely create a power vacuum. In fact in his Reflections on the Revolution in France written in 1790 Burke predicted the reign of terror as well as the rise of a figure such as Napolean. Unlike others who saw the French Revolution as creating a constitutional monarchy much like the Glorious Revolution for England, Burke compared events in France to the English revolution of 1640 after which followed the beheading of a king and a civil war.
At his core Burke was a conservative but he wasn't against reform. He was anti-slavery, supported the American Revolution as well as spoke out against English abuses in India. In Parliament he impeached Warren Hastings, the former governor-general to Bengal. However, these views were still consistent with his conservatism as he viewed the American colonists as embodying English values being usurped by an overbearing British government.
All in all Burke seems like a very honorable and outstanding character. I think some of his ideas could potentially be applicable today, especially considering how much money has infested the American political system. His basic philosophy though of only incremental change might not completely serve many of the challenges we face today such as climate change. But for anyone wanting to understand Edmund Burke, I highly recommend Jesse Norman's biography. He lays out all of Burke's ideas in a very clear and understandable manner. Definitely worth the read.
At his core Burke was a conservative but he wasn't against reform. He was anti-slavery, supported the American Revolution as well as spoke out against English abuses in India. In Parliament he impeached Warren Hastings, the former governor-general to Bengal. However, these views were still consistent with his conservatism as he viewed the American colonists as embodying English values being usurped by an overbearing British government.
All in all Burke seems like a very honorable and outstanding character. I think some of his ideas could potentially be applicable today, especially considering how much money has infested the American political system. His basic philosophy though of only incremental change might not completely serve many of the challenges we face today such as climate change. But for anyone wanting to understand Edmund Burke, I highly recommend Jesse Norman's biography. He lays out all of Burke's ideas in a very clear and understandable manner. Definitely worth the read.
November 28, 2023
Jesse Norman and I agree on at least one thing, that Edmund Burke is important. And just like me, Norman has absolutely no way of properly explaining why Burke is important without just talking about ourselves. Thomas Paine
I do like the approach that Norman had for this book, separating the book into a biographical half and a philosophical half, separating the life and works of Burke into two distinct sections.
However, both halves of the book suffer from very similar issues, namely that Norman just can't help but inject himself into what should be the story of Burke.
The biography itself is fine. It's a pretty good overview of Burke's life and career, with some good pointers on the most important parts of what made Burke such an important politician in 18th century Britain.
But the biography also contains weird comments on the people that Burke had any kind of disagreement with. Norman at no point concedes that Burke could have been wrong. However many leaps that Norman has to make, he never fails to point the blame people like Thomas Paine and Charles James Fox. In Norman's rendition of Burke, Burke takes on an almost messiah-like position. Burke was always a man of principle and he was always right about any and all things he thought and did.
The section on Burke's philosophy is really not about Burke at all. Rather, it's about Norman defending his own political opinions. Burke is certainly mentioned, but only to bolster the things Norman already considers to be proper politics, be it social, economic or more generally philosophical.
Especially Norman's final page, where he, as is tradition with books by Conservative politicians and pundits, touches on post-modernism. Boiling down post-modernism as an epistemological system that contains no truths, and contrasting that with Burke that based his politics and philosophy on truth assumptions.
Overall, this isn't very important, as it is a very small part of the book, but it perfectly demonstrates Norman's ability to skim over any and all deeper analysis. Like, it's because of people like Burke referencing history to support his position that post-modern theorists saw fit to question how we have conceptualized history.
So, just saying "post-modernism offers no truth, but Burke does" is not a good argument as to why Burke is important.
I do like the approach that Norman had for this book, separating the book into a biographical half and a philosophical half, separating the life and works of Burke into two distinct sections.
However, both halves of the book suffer from very similar issues, namely that Norman just can't help but inject himself into what should be the story of Burke.
The biography itself is fine. It's a pretty good overview of Burke's life and career, with some good pointers on the most important parts of what made Burke such an important politician in 18th century Britain.
But the biography also contains weird comments on the people that Burke had any kind of disagreement with. Norman at no point concedes that Burke could have been wrong. However many leaps that Norman has to make, he never fails to point the blame people like Thomas Paine and Charles James Fox. In Norman's rendition of Burke, Burke takes on an almost messiah-like position. Burke was always a man of principle and he was always right about any and all things he thought and did.
The section on Burke's philosophy is really not about Burke at all. Rather, it's about Norman defending his own political opinions. Burke is certainly mentioned, but only to bolster the things Norman already considers to be proper politics, be it social, economic or more generally philosophical.
Especially Norman's final page, where he, as is tradition with books by Conservative politicians and pundits, touches on post-modernism. Boiling down post-modernism as an epistemological system that contains no truths, and contrasting that with Burke that based his politics and philosophy on truth assumptions.
Overall, this isn't very important, as it is a very small part of the book, but it perfectly demonstrates Norman's ability to skim over any and all deeper analysis. Like, it's because of people like Burke referencing history to support his position that post-modern theorists saw fit to question how we have conceptualized history.
So, just saying "post-modernism offers no truth, but Burke does" is not a good argument as to why Burke is important.
January 16, 2023
Having heard Edmund Burke's name often in recent podcasts related to concepts like ordered liberty, the value of institutions, and the need for incremental change, I decided to follow my curiosity.
In trying to find anything about him, though, it was a challenge. The downtown library had only one book, so that's the one I read. Luckily it was exactly what I was looking for, with the first half reviewing Burke's life and the second presenting his ideas and contributions... even predictions... related to society. He may be most famous for his criticism of the French Revolution, proven right in almost every way imaginable, from the mob violence to the inevitable return of tyranny, but his most important contributions may have come prior to 1789.
Burke was Irish but still managed to gain a respected reputation in Britain and serve in the House of Commons. He took unpopular stances, such as supporting the American colonies in their revolution, as well as protesting the actions of English companies in India and the treatment of both Catholics and Irish at home. Apparently he was an eloquent speaker and writer, had a stable family life, was constantly in debt due to supporting others, and a vibrant social life hanging out with folks like David Hume while giving Adam Smith's latest book a positive review.
But Burke was also proud and could burn bridges. He had passion and principle over political ambition, though these are also what allowed him to introduce the concept of viable political parties. Beyond factions, or Whig and Tory sentiments, he organized bodies unified by principals and methods that lasted beyond elections.
I flew through the half of the book dealing with his life, but the half dealing with his ideas took some time, though well worth it. As we turn away from human connection and toward atomized individuals, depression and polarization will follow. When institutions break down, social values and compassion do, too. Even politicians themselves must have virtue, otherwise public service breaks down into an "ethics of vanity." Simply put, he was right.
Jesse Norman, the author, deserves credit for this complete picture of Edmund Burke.
In trying to find anything about him, though, it was a challenge. The downtown library had only one book, so that's the one I read. Luckily it was exactly what I was looking for, with the first half reviewing Burke's life and the second presenting his ideas and contributions... even predictions... related to society. He may be most famous for his criticism of the French Revolution, proven right in almost every way imaginable, from the mob violence to the inevitable return of tyranny, but his most important contributions may have come prior to 1789.
Burke was Irish but still managed to gain a respected reputation in Britain and serve in the House of Commons. He took unpopular stances, such as supporting the American colonies in their revolution, as well as protesting the actions of English companies in India and the treatment of both Catholics and Irish at home. Apparently he was an eloquent speaker and writer, had a stable family life, was constantly in debt due to supporting others, and a vibrant social life hanging out with folks like David Hume while giving Adam Smith's latest book a positive review.
But Burke was also proud and could burn bridges. He had passion and principle over political ambition, though these are also what allowed him to introduce the concept of viable political parties. Beyond factions, or Whig and Tory sentiments, he organized bodies unified by principals and methods that lasted beyond elections.
I flew through the half of the book dealing with his life, but the half dealing with his ideas took some time, though well worth it. As we turn away from human connection and toward atomized individuals, depression and polarization will follow. When institutions break down, social values and compassion do, too. Even politicians themselves must have virtue, otherwise public service breaks down into an "ethics of vanity." Simply put, he was right.
Jesse Norman, the author, deserves credit for this complete picture of Edmund Burke.
April 13, 2018
As I like to call it, ‘Conservativism with a Whiggish flavour’. Jesse Norman endeavours to give a full picture of Burke to his readers, and he does this by dividing this book between a first half which focusses on a biographical narrative of Burke’s life and a brief explanation of his thought in the second half.
Edmund Burke was a failed politician by modern standards – of thirty years in parliament, he spent only two in government. Notwithstanding, Burke has been of great influence in his own time and since, and Jesse Norman writes to rectify waning interest in him.
Burke’s story is very interesting, and I particularly enjoyed the first part for this reason. In parliament, Burke supported the American revolutionaries, opposed the French revolutionaries, spoke in favour of freedoms for Catholics, and wrote against slavery and the East India Trading Company: all before any of those things were cool.
His body of work is very much influenced by political realities, but this is what makes his thought so distinctive. Burke is not an ivory tower philosopher, but attempts to recognise the complexity of human nature and society and to balance competing rights and considerations. Society, he believes, is a partnership ‘between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born’. Thus, institutions are important repositories of social wisdom. Burke is not opposed to change, of course, but thought it should be measured and incremental, and believed that this was to be achieved by the competing interests of the people, the aristocracy, and the monarchy.
This book contains a great deal of historical information – a snapshot of a life that was caught up with some of the most important events of the last three hundred years. For that reason and for hardly more than a taste of Burke’s multi-faceted political thought, for Burke’s complete mastery of English prose, for a better way forward for politics today, Edmund Burke is worth a read.
Edmund Burke was a failed politician by modern standards – of thirty years in parliament, he spent only two in government. Notwithstanding, Burke has been of great influence in his own time and since, and Jesse Norman writes to rectify waning interest in him.
Burke’s story is very interesting, and I particularly enjoyed the first part for this reason. In parliament, Burke supported the American revolutionaries, opposed the French revolutionaries, spoke in favour of freedoms for Catholics, and wrote against slavery and the East India Trading Company: all before any of those things were cool.
His body of work is very much influenced by political realities, but this is what makes his thought so distinctive. Burke is not an ivory tower philosopher, but attempts to recognise the complexity of human nature and society and to balance competing rights and considerations. Society, he believes, is a partnership ‘between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born’. Thus, institutions are important repositories of social wisdom. Burke is not opposed to change, of course, but thought it should be measured and incremental, and believed that this was to be achieved by the competing interests of the people, the aristocracy, and the monarchy.
This book contains a great deal of historical information – a snapshot of a life that was caught up with some of the most important events of the last three hundred years. For that reason and for hardly more than a taste of Burke’s multi-faceted political thought, for Burke’s complete mastery of English prose, for a better way forward for politics today, Edmund Burke is worth a read.
July 11, 2018
This is a brief exploration of Burke's life and thought written by a busy politician to be read by busy politicians. As an introduction to Burke it serves reasonably well, though the biographical part of the book is so slim as to be of little practical use. The obsessiveness with which Burke pursued the Warren Hastings impeachment is dealt with in a very cursory manner.
The second part on Burke's thought is more helpful, and Norman acknowledges that Burke was far from a systematic thinker making any summation of his thought difficult. The essential points are very well covered although the deliberate attempts to make Burke relevant to the modern world are painfully intrusive. To call Burke the first of the post-moderns is just weird. If anything Burke was the last of the pre-moderns. Modernity had barely got going in the late eighteenth century and the fact that Burke stands out against the later developments of liberal individualism does not necessarily make him as prophetic as Norman would have him. The best biographies allow their protagonists to speak to their own times and let the reader make such leaps as he or she feels that they can.
Whilst acknowledging that Burke could justly be called amongst the first of the political "conservatives" (small c, note), that hardly makes him the ancestor of today's Conservative party. Norman hints that the modern free-marketeers that make up much of the present Tories would not have met with Burke's approval he does not go quite as far as to affirm, in my view the obvious, that Burke would have been appalled with the philosophy that went by the name of Thatcherism. Burke belongs to no modern political party, mores the pity.
The second part on Burke's thought is more helpful, and Norman acknowledges that Burke was far from a systematic thinker making any summation of his thought difficult. The essential points are very well covered although the deliberate attempts to make Burke relevant to the modern world are painfully intrusive. To call Burke the first of the post-moderns is just weird. If anything Burke was the last of the pre-moderns. Modernity had barely got going in the late eighteenth century and the fact that Burke stands out against the later developments of liberal individualism does not necessarily make him as prophetic as Norman would have him. The best biographies allow their protagonists to speak to their own times and let the reader make such leaps as he or she feels that they can.
Whilst acknowledging that Burke could justly be called amongst the first of the political "conservatives" (small c, note), that hardly makes him the ancestor of today's Conservative party. Norman hints that the modern free-marketeers that make up much of the present Tories would not have met with Burke's approval he does not go quite as far as to affirm, in my view the obvious, that Burke would have been appalled with the philosophy that went by the name of Thatcherism. Burke belongs to no modern political party, mores the pity.
June 4, 2023
I finally had to give up on this book. I really had a lot of interest in learning more about Edmund Burke after reading the biography on Thomas Paine. The two were great political thinkers, writers, and sometimes rivals during rather pivotal points in history. Unfortunately, this book really has difficulty with explaining it's thesis about Edmund Burke being the first conservative (at least for England). The book is split into two sections. The first section covers his life, sort of. It glosses over his personal life and also major historical events like the American Revolution. It's too bad because Burke defended the revolutionaries in Parliament which is quite extraordinary. The first section is only about 150 pages. In comparison the biography on Thomas Paine is around 800 pages with a lot of detail. While I caught glimpses of Burke, I still don't really know who he is.
The second section of the book is an analysis of Burke's life and writing. Even that is a bit confusing because the author brings up philosophers of the Enlightenment and tries to place Burke somewhere along that spectrum. It reads like a master's thesis with the author trying to view Burke through different lenses.
The writing is incredibly dull and tedious. I would fall asleep after a few page and it was taking forever to get through such a short book. So while I did learn a few things about Burke, I still don't really know who he is and what he did. It is too bad because I think Burke's story is worth telling.
The second section of the book is an analysis of Burke's life and writing. Even that is a bit confusing because the author brings up philosophers of the Enlightenment and tries to place Burke somewhere along that spectrum. It reads like a master's thesis with the author trying to view Burke through different lenses.
The writing is incredibly dull and tedious. I would fall asleep after a few page and it was taking forever to get through such a short book. So while I did learn a few things about Burke, I still don't really know who he is and what he did. It is too bad because I think Burke's story is worth telling.
June 28, 2013
Jesse Norman, author of this extremely well-researched biography, is a Conservative MP in the British Parliament. That Norman is a British politician is the source of some typically British vituperative snideness by critics who argue that he is gussying up Burke’s image so as to lay an intellectual foundation for the modern Conservative part—the Brits never seem to relish civil disagreement. But even if Norman’s book has given Burke a positive slant, it describes an admirable political thinker who deserves respect as being well ahead of his time. Let the snipers snipe!
Edmund Burke was a leading political theorist in 18th century England. He was born during the enlightenment in 1730, just 40 years after the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 that established a constitutional foundation to Britain’s governance—a foundation that still left the King with immense autocratic authority, including the power to dissolve Parliament. A friend of such enlightenment thinkers as Samuel Johnson (literary polymath and creator of the first English dictionary), Joshua Reynolds (painter), Adam Smith, and David Hume (Scottish philosophers and economists), Burke was a Whig—an advocate of a Parliamentary system of constitutional monarchy and a supporter of the Catholic James II in the Glorious Revolution that brought William of Orange to the British throne. Johnson, on the other hand, was a Tory who supported the absolute rule of a monarch and took the Dutch side in the Glorious Revolution. (Yes, the Revolution was over but like our Civil War, it was still hotly debated.) Political foes, they interacted to temper and inform each other and dominated an intellectual group called “The Club.”
Burke’s political writings were widely read by both supporters and foes. They became a factor in the debates of his time and many are still read today. His reshaping of British governance was profound. In Burke’s day there was no party system—Parliament’s House of Commons had MPs who were each sui generis—obligated only to their electors and themselves. Factions were formed, but they were temporary and shifting things, without loyalty. Burke was instrumental in forming a long-standing Whig party in a partially-successful effort to turn the MPs’ efforts toward a common good as opposed to special interests, and to tame the cacophony of voices. Whatever we think of political parties today, this was a major innovation.
Burke often championed unpopular positions, including reforms of the corrupt system into which he was born. He supported the American bid for freedom, arguing, correctly, that conciliation was better for all concerned than military force; force, he noted, would, even in victory, leave the colonies disgruntled and uncooperative, resistant to trade with the oppressor and siding with Britain’s enemies; he believed in maintaining traditional institutions with evolution as the model of modification rather than revolution; he sided with those who sought freedom from monarchy’s abuses, arguing for religious tolerance in an age when Catholic/Protestant animosity was high, and an end to England’s oppression in Ireland and to the corruption and oppression of the East India Company in India. He was a lifelong opponent of public profligacy and of the then-rife patronage system, in which politics was entered for personal enrichment rather than general good. He was the father of the current conservative party in Britain (Tories), though he was far from the extreme conservatism of America’s Tea Partiers.
Burke was also remarkably far sighted, reflecting a deep understanding of human nature and of global events. As a Cassandra of his day, he was often correct in his predictions yet destined to be ignored until it was too late. His predictions about the futility of military force in America were correct. His predictions about the French Revolution—initially received in Britain as a sign of progress—were spot on: enthusiasm would give way to violence (The Reign of Terror), and violence would give rise to a military dictatorship and war (Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars). Burke understood the way that human nature shaped events as did few others in his day.
Burke, like Churchill, paid the price of the independent thinker. He was an MP for almost 30 years but he never rose above that level to Cabinet or Prime Minister because he refused to be corrupted or to stifle his voice. Because politics was a way to wealth, he never achieved the high material status that many MPs reached. Even so, he was arguably the most powerful political thinker of his time—and, perhaps, among the most powerful of all time. The most positive image of our Republican party—a party that subscribes to fiscal responsibility and social sensitivity, a party of moderation—is Burkean in its origins.
This biography is split into two parts. In the first, titled “Life,” we learn of his Irish origins, his poor relationship with his lawyer father who insisted that Burke become a lawyer, his association with leading London thinkers, and of the issues he faced and the basic elements of his stances until his death in 1797. This section is sufficient to the biography’s cause—it tells us who Edmund Burke was, what he thought, and how much he contributed.
The second part , titled “Thought,” is about Burke’s political theory. Burke, Norman argues, was not essentially a philosopher. Rather, he was a practitioner who understood philosophy and used it along with his understanding of human nature and of British traditions to develop a unique view of what worked in political reality.
Norman describes how Burke’s political philosophy contrasted with that of Hobbs, Locke and Rousseau. Their notion of government as arising from a social contract among free and unfettered beings "in a state of nature" gave rise to the concept of “natural rights,” an anathema to Burke because it fostered revolution by urging revolution if a group felt that the unwritten contract was broken—-the French Revolution was a current example. Burke felt that rather than natural rights there was Natural Law—rules derived from human nature and tradition that worked to smooth the path of each culture, each in its own way. "Reform" that ignored traditional institutions and human nature was destined to be a chaotic failure.
September 13, 2018
I bought this book at a talk that the Author, Conservative MP Jesse Norman, gave on Burke in Bristol.
In fact, Jesse very kindly signed it. Burke was an MP for Bristol in 1774 to 1780. There is a statue of him in the city centre which has featured in a couple of historic walks that I have co-led. The book is divided into 2 sections, Burke's life and his thought. I really enjoyed the first, which gave a detailed look not only at his life, politics, writings and causes, but also gave a brilliant snapshot of the political life of the later 18th Century. I have never found politics so interesting!
The second part didn't grab me so much, but I am a history buff, so to be fair this probably says more about me than this part of the book.
I hope to do a blog post about Burke at some point and if I do I will include a link to it in this review.
2 quick things to be aware of, first this edition is not kindle but a paperback, second this book has had a number of different subtitles, so don't accidentally buy the same book twice!
In fact, Jesse very kindly signed it. Burke was an MP for Bristol in 1774 to 1780. There is a statue of him in the city centre which has featured in a couple of historic walks that I have co-led. The book is divided into 2 sections, Burke's life and his thought. I really enjoyed the first, which gave a detailed look not only at his life, politics, writings and causes, but also gave a brilliant snapshot of the political life of the later 18th Century. I have never found politics so interesting!
The second part didn't grab me so much, but I am a history buff, so to be fair this probably says more about me than this part of the book.
I hope to do a blog post about Burke at some point and if I do I will include a link to it in this review.
2 quick things to be aware of, first this edition is not kindle but a paperback, second this book has had a number of different subtitles, so don't accidentally buy the same book twice!
November 22, 2018
Neither a hagiography or a perfectly balanced critique
The book is divided into two parts - a chronological review of Burke’s life and a more subjective interpretation of his life and work. Generally the author makes Burke’s case for his political philosophy. The value of the book will depend on the initial perspective and prejudices of the reader(a “Burkean” view). A progressive liberal can read this book as a means of testing the strength of his or her views. A conservative might use this book as a means of ascertaining what sort of conservative they really are. A person in the middle or someone who is struggling with the Trump age and doesn’t find Bernie Sanders Democratic Party too appealing will adore this book. History readers trying to learn about the political philosophy of this age may need to read other books to be able to articulate Burke’s faults and errors of judgement. The author acknowledges that Burke was far from perfect. For those who want a more biting critique will need to go elsewhere.
The book is divided into two parts - a chronological review of Burke’s life and a more subjective interpretation of his life and work. Generally the author makes Burke’s case for his political philosophy. The value of the book will depend on the initial perspective and prejudices of the reader(a “Burkean” view). A progressive liberal can read this book as a means of testing the strength of his or her views. A conservative might use this book as a means of ascertaining what sort of conservative they really are. A person in the middle or someone who is struggling with the Trump age and doesn’t find Bernie Sanders Democratic Party too appealing will adore this book. History readers trying to learn about the political philosophy of this age may need to read other books to be able to articulate Burke’s faults and errors of judgement. The author acknowledges that Burke was far from perfect. For those who want a more biting critique will need to go elsewhere.
September 27, 2018
Jesse Norman delivers a well written account for the life and politics of Edmund Burke who is arguably one of the most underrated political figures of the 18th century. Possibly overshadowed by other great figures of his time, for example Wellington, Wilberforce and Peel. Burkes beliefs and teachings now resonates with modern day traditional conservatives, particularly since the disastrous foreign campaigns and interventions in the middle east. The return of Burkean conservatism has deep routed beliefs on western values, strong families, natural law and increased personal liberty.
The book itself is divided into two parts: the life of Edmund Burke and his politics with the connotations it has today. It is very in depth at times and can be difficult for the standard novice to follow however by the end of the book you will feel gratified at the depth of knowledge you have acquired because of that.
The book itself is divided into two parts: the life of Edmund Burke and his politics with the connotations it has today. It is very in depth at times and can be difficult for the standard novice to follow however by the end of the book you will feel gratified at the depth of knowledge you have acquired because of that.
February 28, 2022
I'd give the first half of the book, which is a very brief biography of Burke, 5 stars. I didn't know much about this period in British history. The author does an excellent job of providing some overviews and historical context. He has an excellent prose style.
The second half of the book, which is analyzing Burke's ideas as the affected future events, 2 stars. It found it somewhat garbled, rambling, and just not as interesting as part 1.
The author does not understand Lincoln with regards to slavery in the least. The author does not understand some economics. He chastises Burke for living in debt, but when Burke passes away and his debts are settled, the family comes out ahead. This is how it is supposed to work. If Burke passed away and his debtors were stiffed, then the author's comments would be correct. The author must revisit the subject 5 times, making it a headscratcher.
Excellent narrator.
The second half of the book, which is analyzing Burke's ideas as the affected future events, 2 stars. It found it somewhat garbled, rambling, and just not as interesting as part 1.
The author does not understand Lincoln with regards to slavery in the least. The author does not understand some economics. He chastises Burke for living in debt, but when Burke passes away and his debts are settled, the family comes out ahead. This is how it is supposed to work. If Burke passed away and his debtors were stiffed, then the author's comments would be correct. The author must revisit the subject 5 times, making it a headscratcher.
Excellent narrator.
August 29, 2022
I always knew that my philosophy regarding politics owed much to Edmund Burke now I know for sure after reading this book. He may not have been a successful politician in his time but he was right about almost invariably on the great issues of the day including both the American & French Revolution. It is also could be said with a lot of justification that he was the first Conservative even though he never identified himself as one thinking himself instead a Whig. He also invented the idea of political party being a group of politicians & their supporters united by a set of ideas along with a policy program. Jesse Norman also shows how Burke was not just a man of his time but also of ours whose ideas are still very relevant today. Getting acquainted with ideas of Edmund Burke is something I would recommend for everyone.
August 4, 2018
My review is mixed -- the first part, covering a more traditional biography of Burke, is very good. But when the author tries switching to focusing on Burke's thoughts, it falls apart. The author tries too hard to make Burke "contemporary", pulling in political concerns at high pitch around 2012... and immediately dates the book. There is no problem with focusing on British politics, but those not involved in that may be confused with some of the contemporary references of British politics.
Some of the discussion of thoughts, especially contrasting Burke against liberal individualism, was good, but again, too much focus on the time the book was written weakens the text.
Some of the discussion of thoughts, especially contrasting Burke against liberal individualism, was good, but again, too much focus on the time the book was written weakens the text.
January 20, 2019
A good look at the life and philosophy of the 18th-century politician Edmund Burke. I really appreciated the first half of the work, detailing Burke's life and major political endeavors. In the last half, primarily about Burke's thought and writings, I felt like I could really see the author's day job as a conservative MP coming through. I did like how Burke was tied to other Enlightenment figures, such as Rousseau, and the focus on how Burke is relevant today, but sometimes these pieces felt a little forced and overreaching. Overall, a good overview of a subject I hope to read more about.
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