19. The Burkean Outlook

What this lecture covers

Having spent the course on Enlightenment thinkers, the lecture turns to their most radical critic: Edmund Burke. It explains why Burke, though politically conservative, mounts a deeper philosophical challenge to the Enlightenment than Marx does, rejecting both its faith in science and reason and its doctrine of individual rights. The lecture closes with a twentieth-century extension of Burke's outlook, Lord Devlin's argument against decriminalizing homosexuality and prostitution.

After watching, you should be able to explain why Burke has no "theory" of politics in the sense used for earlier thinkers in the course, describe his view of rights as an inherited entailment rather than a universal or rational construct, and explain Devlin's argument that a shared morality, not just harm avoidance, holds society together.

Key ideas

• Burke's radicalism: though politically conservative, Burke rejects the Enlightenment project more completely than Marx, who Shapiro treats as still working within it.
• No theory, only disposition: Burke does not offer premises and conclusions like Locke or Kant; he offers an attitude of caution grounded in distrust of anyone claiming certain knowledge of society.
• Caution over reform: Burke warns against sweeping away existing institutions, since the long-run effects of political change are unpredictable and often the opposite of what reformers expect.
• Conservatism versus reaction: Burke's conservatism, "changing what you have to in order to conserve what you can," is not blanket resistance to all change, and differs from Nozick's anti-statist libertarian conservatism.
• Rights as inheritance: for Burke, rights are not universal or derived from reason; they are the particular, inherited rights of a people, such as "the rights of Englishmen," transmitted across generations.
• A right to be restrained: Burke holds that restraint of the passions, not just freedom to create and own, is itself among the rights society owes its members.
• The indissoluble social contract: Burke describes society as a partnership between the living, the dead, and those yet to be born, which no living generation has the authority to dissolve.
• Devlin's moral-glue argument: Lord Devlin argues that a shared morality, rooted historically in religion, holds a society together, so acts causing no direct harm can still be legitimately outlawed if they offend that shared morality.

Walkthrough

The Anti-enlightenment: Edmund Burke (1729-97) (0:00)

Shapiro introduces Burke as a more radical thinker than Marx despite his conservative politics, and situates his 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France as a response to the violence of the French Revolution. He contrasts Burke's view of the 1688 Glorious Revolution in England, which Burke saw as a minor course correction rather than a break with the past, with the wholesale destruction he witnessed in France.

The Human Condition: Fumbling in the Dark (7:27)

Unlike Locke, Kant, or Bentham, Burke offers no systematic theory. His outlook rests on the conviction that human society is far too complex to be understood scientifically, so those who claim to grasp it are, in Burke's view, fools or charlatans. Political effects unfold slowly and unpredictably, meaning apparently good reforms can produce bad outcomes and apparently bad conditions can lead somewhere good.

The Value of Caution (9:07)

Because our grasp of political cause and effect is so limited, Burke counsels extreme caution before dismantling institutions that have worked "in any tolerable degree." Shapiro reads this against the French revolutionaries' attempt to rebuild society from scratch, which Burke saw as reckless. He distinguishes Burke's traditionalist conservatism, aimed at conserving what can be conserved, from reactionary opposition to any change at all, and from Nozick's very different, anti-statist libertarian conservatism.

Rights: Limited, Inherited, Not Reasoned (14:48)

Where Locke grounds rights in a theological account of individual, God-given capacities, Burke treats rights as inherited, particular, and limited. They are "the rights of Englishmen," passed down like property through a specific tradition, not universal claims derivable by reason. Burke also argues that restraint of the passions is itself among our rights, since society requires curbing individual will as much as protecting it, a view Shapiro notes has some resemblance to Hobbes, though Burke goes further than Hobbes in denying any residual right of resistance.

An Indissoluble Social Contract (24:10)

Burke reframes the social contract as an eternal partnership among the living, the dead, and those yet to be born, which no single generation has standing to dissolve. Shapiro shows how this inverts a standard objection to social contract theory, that later generations never actually agreed to anything, by making the contract's multigenerational character the very reason no living person can claim authority over it. This leaves the individual subordinate to inherited community and tradition, the mirror image of the Enlightenment's picture of the sovereign individual.

Lord Devlin and The Wolfenden Report (35:36)

The lecture applies Burke's outlook to a twentieth-century case: the 1959 Wolfenden Report's recommendation to decriminalize homosexuality and prostitution as victimless, consensual acts. Lord Devlin, arguing in the Burkean tradition, rejects the harm principle as sufficient, claiming that society is held together by a shared morality historically rooted in Christianity, and that violating this shared morality is itself a harm to society, independent of any direct injury to a victim. Devlin appeals not to rational proof but to the standards of the ordinary person, "the man on the Clapham omnibus." Shapiro connects this to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision, later overturned as social attitudes shifted, and closes with student objections: that this view could have justified slavery, and that it ties morality too tightly to inherited social structures, leaving little room to challenge injustice from within.

Before you watch

• Recall the Enlightenment's twin commitments to individual rights and to science and reason, since the lecture positions Burke against both.
• Be familiar with Locke's workmanship model of rights and Hobbes's account of why people give up freedom to authority, both used as points of contrast.
• Keep the Pareto-superior exchange concept in mind, since it is applied to the Wolfenden Report's harm-based reasoning.

Check your understanding

1. Why does Shapiro consider Burke a more radical thinker than Marx, despite Burke's conservative politics?
2. In what sense does Burke treat rights as "inherited" rather than universal or rational?
3. How does Burke's account of the social contract as a partnership across generations answer the objection that later generations never consented to it?
4. What does Lord Devlin mean by claiming that certain acts are a "harm against society" even without a direct victim?
5. What objections do students raise against the Burke-Devlin appeal to the "man on the Clapham omnibus," and how does Shapiro respond?