Part of: Select Works of Edmund Burke, 4 vols. Select Works of Edmund Burke, vol. 2
- Francis Canavan (foreword)
- Edmund Burke (author)
Burke’s classic criticism of the French Revolution. It provoked many replies and Burke returned to the issue again and again.
Related People
Key Quotes
Politics & Liberty
If I recollect rightly, Aristotle observes, that a democracy has many striking points of resemblance with a tyranny. Of this I am certain, that in a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority, whenever strong divisions prevail in…
Society
In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.
Critical Responses
The Rights of Man
Thomas Paine
The French Revolution would eventually come for Thomas Paine for failing to be radical enough. But before that happened, he wrote The Rights of Man against Burke’s Reflections, defending the early phases of the Revolution as a movement for liberty against illegitimate and unrestrained power.
A Vindication of the Rights of Men
Mary Wollstonecraft
Not as famous as Wollstonecraft’s later, similarly named feminist treatise, Vindication of the Rights of Men was written as a response to Burke’s Reflections and particularly faulted it for what she believed to be its overwrought, romanticized depictions of social order.