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Burke and Natural Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Russell Kirk
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Extract

Edmund Burke was at once a chief exponent of the Ciceronian doctrine of natural law and a chief opponent of the “rights of man.” In our time, which is experiencing simultaneously a revival of interest in natural-law theory and an enthusiasm for defining “human rights” that is exemplified by the United Nations' lengthy declaration, Burke's view of the natural juridic order deserves close attention.

Unlike Bolingbroke and Hume, whose outward politics in some respects resembled the great Whig statesman's, Burke was a pious man. “The most important questions about the human race Burke answered … from the Church of England's catechism.” He takes for granted a Christian cosmos, in which a just God has established moral principles for man's salvation. God has given man law, and with that law, rights; such, succinctly, is Burke's premise in all moral and juridical questions.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , October 1951 , pp. 441 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1951

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References

1 Hoffman, Ross and Levack, Paul, Burke's Politics (New York, 1949), xiv–xv.Google Scholar

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