Introduction

Burke seems to have turned to this subject after finishing his Philosophical Enquiry, published in 1757. His second edition of 1759 criticized the theory of moral sense as one which had ‘misled us both in the theory of taste and of morals’, specifying that it ‘induced us to remove the science of our duties from their proper basis, (our reason, our relations, and our necessities).’ ‘Religion’ gave Burke's ‘proper basis’ to moral theory in the course of developing a wider argument.

Why should the paper be called ‘Religion’? The common feature of moral sense and deism, two of the objects of Burke's enmity, was to his eyes an insufficient regard for God. The former had no explanatory role for Him in aesthetic or moral theory. Whilst the latter did not involve that omission, it made another by discounting His revealed word. Burke, having attended to aesthetics, turned to morals and revelation in order to relate them both to his understanding of God.

How did Burke's moral explanation use ‘our reason, our relations, and our necessities’? Relation and reason are important at the most general level. Burke used them to explain duty. He took it that we ‘cannot conceive that a reasonable Creature can be placed in any Relation that does not give rise to some Duty’. Relation, a term of scholastic origin, denotes the comparing of two ideas. For instance, we might conceive God as powerful and man as weak.