ABSTRACT
Edmund Burke was a philosopher of an unusual kind. He believed that political philosophy had, at best, a modest function to perform in the life of society. Political philosophy defined questions; it could not solve problems. Nevertheless, Burke saw an inseparable relationship between politics and philosophy. Without the latter, the former would degenerate into a meaningless expediency. His conception of the limited function of political philosophy arose, perhaps, from Burke’s view of man. Burke believed in the essential weakness and corruptibility of human nature, in the incapacity of the average man to resolve his problems in a rational manner, in the irrelevance of most ‘rational’ solutions to political problems, in the dangers inherent in most forms of political activism, especially those radical experiments with existing institutions which might cause unforeseeable damage. Edmund Burke’s conservatism arose, therefore, directly from one of the most fundamental assumptions in his thought. Indeed, it was a function of his own political philosophy to defend the established order of things.
