Book contents
- The Persistence of Party
- Ideas In Context
- The Persistence of Party
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the Text
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Background, Contexts, and Discourses
- Chapter 2 Rapin on the Origins and Nature of Party Division in Britain
- Chapter 3 Bolingbroke’s Country Party Opposition Platform
- Chapter 4 David Hume’s Early Essays on Party Politics
- Chapter 5 Faction Detected? Pulteney, Perceval, and the Tories
- Chapter 6 Hume on the Parties’ Speculative Systems of Thought
- Chapter 7 Hume and the History of Party in England
- Chapter 8 Political Transformations during the Seven Years’ War: Hume and Burke
- Chapter 9 ‘Not Men, But Measures’: John Brown on Free Government without Faction
- Chapter 10 Edmund Burke and the Rockingham Whigs
- Chapter 11 Burke’s Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents
- Chapter 12 Burke and His Party in the Age of Revolution
- Chapter 13 Burke and the Scottish Enlightenment
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 13 - Burke and the Scottish Enlightenment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2021
- The Persistence of Party
- Ideas In Context
- The Persistence of Party
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the Text
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Background, Contexts, and Discourses
- Chapter 2 Rapin on the Origins and Nature of Party Division in Britain
- Chapter 3 Bolingbroke’s Country Party Opposition Platform
- Chapter 4 David Hume’s Early Essays on Party Politics
- Chapter 5 Faction Detected? Pulteney, Perceval, and the Tories
- Chapter 6 Hume on the Parties’ Speculative Systems of Thought
- Chapter 7 Hume and the History of Party in England
- Chapter 8 Political Transformations during the Seven Years’ War: Hume and Burke
- Chapter 9 ‘Not Men, But Measures’: John Brown on Free Government without Faction
- Chapter 10 Edmund Burke and the Rockingham Whigs
- Chapter 11 Burke’s Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents
- Chapter 12 Burke and His Party in the Age of Revolution
- Chapter 13 Burke and the Scottish Enlightenment
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This final chapter considers Burke’s relationship to what may loosely be termed ‘enlightenment thought’ with an emphasis on Scotland. The Scottish thinkers particularly relevant for Burke were the usual suspects, including Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and William Robertson. Following the work of Isaiah Berlin, Burke is often read as a counter-Enlightenment thinker. But Burke was not the only ‘enlightenment’ luminary to be confounded by the French Revolution. Edward Gibbon was equally appalled, and it eventually disappointed even the likes of Paine and Sieyès as well. This chapter demonstrates that the differences between Burke and Hume were diminished when Burke was freed from partisanship. He now advanced a sceptical defence of party: it was not exclusively the Whigs, but the old Whig and Tory parties alike, which had sustained the British mixed and balanced constitution ‘by their collision and mutual resistance’. This chapter also considers Adam Smith’s thought on party and faction.
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- The Persistence of PartyIdeas of Harmonious Discord in Eighteenth-Century Britain, pp. 309 - 325Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021