“In 1756 Edmund Burke published his first work: Vindication of Natural Society. Curiously enough it has been almost completely ignored in the current Burke revival.”

— Murray N. Rothbard

"Edmund Burke, Anarchist" http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard11.html, first published as "A Note on Burke’s Vindication of Natural Society" in the Journal of the History of Ideas, 19, 1 (January 1958), p. 114.
Context: In 1756 Edmund Burke published his first work: Vindication of Natural Society. Curiously enough it has been almost completely ignored in the current Burke revival. This work contrasts sharply with Burke’s other writings, for it is hardly in keeping with the current image of the Father of the New Conservatism. A less conservative work could hardly be imagined; in fact, Burke’s Vindication was perhaps the first modern expression of rationalistic and individualistic anarchism. … "Anarchism" is an extreme term, but no other can adequately describe Burke’s thesis. Again and again, he emphatically denounces any and all government, and not just specific forms of government. … All government, Burke adds, is founded on one "grand error." It was observed that men sometimes commit violence against one another, and that it is therefore necessary to guard against such violence. As a result, men appoint governors among them. But who is to defend the people against the governors? … The anarchism of Burke’s Vindication is negative, rather than positive. It consists of an attack on the State rather than a positive blueprint of the type of society which Burke would regard as ideal. Consequently, both the communist and the individualist wings of anarchism have drawn sustenance from this work.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In 1756 Edmund Burke published his first work: Vindication of Natural Society. Curiously enough it has been almost comp…" by Murray N. Rothbard?

Murray N. Rothbard 43

American economist of the Austrian School, libertarian poli… 1926–1995

Related quotes

“A less conservative work could hardly be imagined; in fact, Burke’s Vindication was perhaps the first modern expression of rationalistic and individualistic anarchism.”

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) American economist of the Austrian School, libertarian political theorist, and historian

“[Burke] emphasized that the new forms of politics, which hope to organize society around the rational pursuit of liberty, equality, fraternity, or their modernist equivalents, are actually forms of militant irrationality.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Why I became a conservative," http://newcriterion.com:81/archive/21/feb03/burke.htm The New Criterion (February 2003).

“From the first the progress of man has been slowly but surely from the artificial to the natural, from the arbitrary and chimerical to the simple and scientific. Getting himself and his affairs more and more into natural currents and following them, this is the way man has progressed.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: The Light of Day (1900), Ch. II: From the Artificial to the Natural

“The money-grubber has been floating with the great current of society, while the poor man has been swimming against it.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)

“In fluxus there has never been any attempt to agree on aims or methods; individuals with something unnameable in common have simply naturally coalesced to publish and perform their work.”

George Brecht (1926–2008) American artist and composer

George Brecht (1963), cited in: Hannah Higgins (2002), Fluxus Experience. p. 69
Context: The misunderstandings have seemed to come from comparing fluxus with movements or groups whose individuals ‘have had some principle in common, or an agreed-upon program. In fluxus there has never been any attempt to agree on aims or methods; individuals with something unnameable in common have simply naturally coalesced to publish and perform their work. Perhaps this common something is a feeling that the bounds of art are much wider than they have conventionally seemed, or that art and certain long-established bounds are no longer very useful. At any rate, individuals in europe, the us, and japan have discovered each other’s work and found it nourishing (or something) and have grown objects and events which are original, and often uncategorizable, in a strange new way.

“That the people of America should be severed from Great Britain, even your fellow Congressionalists from the North would not be hardy enough yet to avow; but that this will certainly follow from the measures you have been induced by them to adopt, is obvious to every man who is permitted yet to think for himself. … see ye not that after some few years of civil broils all the fair settlements in the middle and southern colonies will be seized on by our more enterprising and restless fellow-colonists of the North? At first and for a while perhaps they may be contented to be the Dutch of America, i. e. to be our carriers and fishmongers, for which no doubt, as their sensible historian [Edmund Burke] has observed, they seem to be destined by their situation, soil, and climate: but had so sagacious an observer foreseen that a time might come when all North America should be independent, he would, it is probable, have added to his other remark, that those his Northern brethren would then become also the Goths and Vandals of America.”

Jonathan Boucher (1738–1804) English minister

[from a letter to the deputies in Congress representing the Southern Provinces, 1774 or 1775, appended to "Reminiscences"]
"Reminiscences of an American Loyalist" (first published serially in "Notes and Queries", 1874-)

“If you look at Burke closely, you'll see the prototypical abused child: hypervigilant, distrustful. He's so committed to his family of choice—not his DNA-biological family, which tortured him, or the state which raised him, but the family that he chose—that homicide is a natural consequence of injuring any of that family. He's not a hit man. But he shares the same religion I do, which is revenge.”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

Andrew Vachss, Horror Online, May 1999.

“Compared to what human life has mainly been like here on earth, our current societies are WEIRD.”

Michael Stevens (educator) (1986) Internet personality

"Our Narrow Slice", Vsauce (8 October 2013)

“This civilization is the work of man, who high-handedly and ignorant of the true workings of Nature, has created a world without meaning or foundation, which now threatens to destroy him, for through his behavior and his activities, he, who should be her master, has disturbed Nature's inherent unity.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Callum Coats: Water Wizard
Viktor Schauberger: Our Senseless Toil (1934)

“In view of the importance of philanthropy in our society, it is surprising that so little attention has been given to it by economic or social theorists. In economic theory, especially, the subject is almost completely ignored. This is not, I think, because economists regard mankind as basically selfish or even because economic man is supposed to act only in his self-interest; it is rather because economics has essentially grown up around the phenomenon of exchange and its theoretical structure rests heavily on this process.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Kenneth Boulding (1962) " Notes on a Theory of Philanthropy http://www.nber.org/chapters/c1992.pdf" in: Philanthropy and Public Policy. Frank G. Dickinson, ed., New York, National Bureau of Economic Research.
1960s

“In 1756 Edmund Burke published his first work: Vindication of Natural Society. Curiously enough it has been almost completely ignored in the current Burke revival.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Murray N. Rothbard 43

Related quotes

Related topics