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Edmund Burke and the Anglo-American Tradition of Liberty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2017

Extract

It is proper for more reasons than the most obvious one that I should open this talk by quoting a former President of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, Lord Quinton, whose works on political philosophy I have so much enjoyed—and learnt from.

In a chapter on political philosophy, which he contributed to the Oxford History of Western Philosophy, Lord Quinton says that ‘the effect of the importation of Locke's doctrines in to France was much like that of alcohol in an empty stomach’. In Britain, Lord Quinton adds, Locke's principles ‘served to endorse a largely conservative revolution against absolutist innovation’, whereas in France the importation of Locke's ideas would lead to the radicalism of the French revolution. Why was this so?

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Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2006

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References

1 Quinton, A., ‘Political Philosophy’, The Oxford Illustrated History of Western Philosophy, Kenny, Anthony (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 327.Google Scholar

2 Op. cit. note 1, 327.

3 Burke, E., ‘Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs’, The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, IV (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1866), 165166.Google Scholar

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