Reflections on the revolution in France

What Hacker News says

1. wcareyJul 2020
   Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France is a great read. I wonder which quadrant Graham would put Burke in?
   thread
2. defenOct 2009
   I think this is one of those things where neither of us is going to change his opinion based on what some guy wrote on the internet, but if you haven't read it yet, I recommend Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France". Burke was a British Whig MP who supported the American Revolution, but opposed the French. It's an interesting contemporary account of the early days of the French Revolution. You can read it here: http://www.constitution.org/eb/rev_fran.htm

   I'd love to read some pro-Revolution writings if you can recommend any.

   Show morethread
3. stereolambdaJun 2023
   Disclaimer: personally I think Burke is one of the more overrated thinkers and the meanderings of his prose, ultimately not making much of a strong argument (I mean his main book here), just made it easier for people to read things into it. An example of books serving as totem authority more than being actually interacted with. I misread the title for Edward Gibbon initially...

   But on the topic of "complication", it is worth for people to be aware of two connections of Burke. First is to Thomas Paine, whose Rights of Man prompted Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Paine argued, ultimately in line with Jefferson, that the French Revolution is justified because it vindicates the natural rights of people which are discoverable by reason. Burke's response is more of less that you cannot reason about politics from first principles, and there are mobs and brutality in France. Which could lead us to a historical discussion about standards of mobs, brutality and state violence in the 18th century in general.

   [edit: I checked and it is actually the other way around, it was Paine responding to Burke, but the books can be read as a debate on similar points anyway]

   Second, there is a traditional comparison in political science between Burke and de Maistre, which makes me queasy about calling Burke a "reactionary" (even discounting his positive stance on American Revolution). De Maistre argued for eternal authority of Catholic Church barring any change to society, while Burke is seen as an "evolutionary" conservative allowing some change if it is slow and invisible to people, essentially. (One interpretation of course.) It's not that we "haven't realized" it, as TFA suggests, maybe just politicians lack education and basic underpinnings of what they claim to believe.

   Show morethread
4. kobiguruApr 2019
   “An ignorant man, who is not fool enough to meddle with his clock, is however sufficiently confident to think he can safely take to pieces, and put together at his pleasure, a moral machine of another guise, importance and complexity, composed of far other wheels, and springs, and balances, and counteracting and co-operating powers. Men little think how immorally they act in rashly meddling with what they do not understand. Their delusive good intention is no sort of excuse for their presumption. They who truly mean well must be fearful of acting ill.”

   -- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

   Show morethread
5. jxramosJan 2018
   Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grasshoppers#Quotes
   Show morethread
6. lexcorvusDec 2015
   Burke's an interesting case. Although revered by many contemporary American conservatives, he was a member of Britain's more left-wing political party, the Whigs (the counterpart to the more right-wing Tories).

   Like most Whigs, Burke was a supporter of the American Revolution, but he was horrified by the excesses of its French sequel. He famously wrote his major work on the subject, Reflections on the Revolution in France, as a letter to French aristocrat Charles-Jean-François Depont, and later expanded it into a short book. In the Reflections, Burke predicted—over three years before the Reign of Terror—that the French Revolution would lead to disaster. Moreover, he specifically cited among the causes its abstract foundations disconnected from the reality of human nature.

   La Terreur proved Burke right, of course, and yet the French Revolutionary principles—among them liberté, égalité, and fraternité—are for the most part as fresh as a daisy. Perhaps in the 21st century we could add diversité and inclusivité to the mix, but the basic lesson is clear: the Revolution hasn't ended. Burke's Reflections is thus more than a historical curiosity—it's also an urgent warning for the present.

   Show morethread