The Metaphysics of Edmund Burke

The most recent commentators on Edmund Burke have renewed the charge that his political thought lacks the consistency and coherency necessary to even claim the status of a political philosophy and that he is indeed a utilitarian. They mark him off as an ideologist a rhetorician and a deliberate propagandist. Even Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France his most profound statement of a political philosophy is regarded by some as a work of mere persuasion not philosophy. All this occurs in spite of the seminal work of Stanlis Canavan and Wilkins who in the 1950s and ‘60s demonstrated the natural law foundations of Burke’s politics. Burke revisionists forced to acknowledge his use of the natural law label such use as a rhetorical means for utilitarian ends. Directly opposed to this renewed utilitarian interpretation of Burke is Joseph Pappin’s work The Metaphysics of Edmund Burke. Not only does this work challenge the utilitarian view of Burke it sets out as not other work on Burke has attempted to do to make explicit the implicit metaphysical core of Burke’s political thought. Pappin does this by examining both Burke’s critics and Burke’s own attack on a rationalist ideologically inspired metaphysics. Drawing from Burke’s vast writings Pappin establishes as his goal to demonstrate that Burke’s political philosophy is grounded in a realist metaphysic one that is basically consonant with the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. Does the author succeed? According to Francis Canavan in his Foreword to this work the explanatory key of a realist metaphysics grounding Burke’s politics is a key that fits the lock better than any other that scholars have offered. Canavan further holds that the author offers us a more thorough analysis of Burke’s understanding of God the creation nature man and society than has previously appeared.