Edmund Burke was the dominant political thinker of the last quarter of the eighteenth century in England. His reputation depends less on his role as a practising politician than on his ability to set contemporary problems within a wider context of political theory. Above all, he commented on change. He tried to teach lessons about how change should be managed, what limits should not be ...

Presenting a scathing attack on the French revolution's attitudes to existing institutions, property and religion, this work makes a cogent case for upholding inherited rights and established customs. It argues for piecemeal reform rather than revolutionary change, and deplores the influence the revolution might have in Britain.

A work of aesthetics. This book focuses on the quality which is distinguished as 'the sublime' - an all-consuming force beyond beauty that compelled terror as much as rapture in all who beheld it.

An eloquent and sometimes even erotic book, the Philosophical Enquiry was long dismissed as a piece of mere juvenilia. However, Burke's analysis of the relationship between emotion, beauty, and art form is now recognized as not only an important and influential work of aesthetic theory, but also one of the first major works in European literature on the Sublime, a subject that has fascinated ...

Written at a time when most of Europe supported the French Revolution, Edmund Burke's prescient and, at the time, controversial denunciation of its mob rule predicted the Terror, began the modern conservative tradition and still serves as a warning to those who seek to reshape societies through violence.

This volume presents Burke's early literary writings up to 1765, before he became a key political figure. The writings published here introduce readers to Burke's early attempts at a public voice. Edited versions of some of Burke's works including The Vindication of Natural Society are provided.

Intends to propound the author's theory that the sublime and the beautiful should be regarded as wholly separate states - the first, an experience inspired by fear and awe, the second an expression of pleasure and serenity. This work offers an account of our sensory, imaginative and judgmental processes and their relation to artistic appreciation.