Philosophy Eliot, Charles W. (editor): Harvard Classics Volume 24 V1.0 4 Jan 2014

[GeorgeH]

The Harvard Classics Volume 24 (Burke) Published 1909

Edited by Charles W Eliot LL D. (March 20, 1834 - August 22, 1926)

Edmund Burke PC (12 January [NS] 1729 – 9 July 1797) was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher, who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party.

He is mainly remembered for his support of the cause of the American Revolutionaries, and for his later opposition to the French Revolution. The latter led to his becoming the leading figure within the conservative faction of the Whig party, which he dubbed the "Old Whigs", in opposition to the pro–French Revolution "New Whigs", led by Charles James Fox.

Burke was praised by both conservatives and liberals in the 19th century. Since the 20th century, he has generally been viewed as the philosophical founder of modern conservatism.

On Taste is an introductory discourse on the premise that "it is probable that the standard both of reason and taste is the same in all human creatures."

A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful is a 1757 treatise on aesthetics written by Edmund Burke. It attracted the attention of prominent thinkers such as Denis Diderot and Immanuel Kant. In short, the Beautiful, according to Burke, is what is well-formed and aesthetically pleasing, whereas the Sublime is what has the power to compel and destroy us. The preference for the Sublime over the Beautiful was to mark the transition from the Neoclassical to the Romantic era.

Reflections on the Revolution in France is a 1790 book by Edmund Burke and one of the best-known intellectual attacks against the French Revolution. The tract has been used as a defining piece of modern conservatism as well as an important contribution to international theory. Above all else, it has been one of the defining efforts of Edmund Burke's transformation of "traditionalism into a self-conscious and fully conceived political philosophy of conservatism.".

A Letter to a Noble Lord is Burke's brilliant defence of his pension granted by the then prime minister, the younger William Pitt, which holds up his opponents to derision.

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