Burke’s Liberalism: Prejudice, Habit, Affections, and the Remaking of the Social Contract

Abstract

Many of the critiques of liberalism broadly center on the way its over-dependence on individual rationality has the effect of isolating individuals from their communities. Critics from both the right and the left have argued, particularly recently, as in the works of Thomas Piketty or Patrick Deneen, that liberalism has failed in its quest to create a society of free and responsible individuals in part because of the success of its principles. Part of this failure may lie in the way in which liberal commitments to principles like reason, consent, and even freedom have been pushed to extremes in a way that harms the fundamental balance required between individual rights and community interests. The work of Edmund Burke serves as an antidote to this extremism. Far from being a conservative as he is often characterized, Burke’s liberalism is one that provides a supplement or corrective to the excesses of more extreme versions of liberalism. He offers an “affectionate liberalism,” one rooted in the particulars of time and place and one that, far from rejecting liberal values, believes that they are best protected within robust communities of individuals who are connected by a shared past, present, and future.