ABSTRACT
Reflections on the Revolution in France is a text without chapters. In fact, it is set out as a letter. Like many good letters these ideas seem to be constructed as much during the actual writing as previously thought through. The book has little structure; it is precisely what the title says it is; a series of reflections, a collection of thoughts that criss-cross each other at various intervals. That said, the text is not without some order even though it has no clearly defined chapters. It is a very easy and accessible read. As stated above, Burke was a great stylist. It was this that gave the book such a wide appeal when it was published. The book itself does not contain any deeply philosophical or original arguments, but it does build a bridge between a number of classical and – for Burke – contemporary ideas. In so doing he comes up with a strong argument which objects to revolution. If we find that this argument may be said to hold, then it may be said to hold as much now, in our own time, as then. As well as developing a kind of classical challenge to the idea of revolution, Burke also develops a distinctive take on arguments about ‘rights’. We have seen with the social contract theorists – Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau – that each ties his argument to a certain understanding of ‘natural rights’. Today we still discuss ‘rights’ and what they are as an integral part of our politics. Some even argue that the arguments about rights have gone too far. Almost every individual or group of individuals when making a political argument refer to their ‘rights’, some inviolable entitlement that they claim is theirs. So today we are familiar with claims of rights which include claims ranging from human rights to animal rights. Burke was right in the middle of the eighteenthcentury debates that laid the foundations for our own understandings of these contemporary debates.
