Edmund Burke for Our Time by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

5–Moral Imagination and Public Policy

Edmund Burke was one of those rare figures who combined profound political-philosophical observation with a highly active political career. After he entered Parliament, almost all of his writings and speeches addressed some sort of pressing public policy concern. Although Burke’s policy focus provides a great deal of material for political historians and biographers, it poses challenges for political theorists, who must tease political philosophy out of works that were not explicitly written as such. But Burke’s policy focus also offers important advantages. First, one can argue that Burke’s public career helps keep his thought attuned to “real-world” issues in all their messiness and complexity, and forces him to consider information that more speculative thinkers might disregard. Second, Burke’s writings and speeches clearly demonstrate the application of particular political-philosophical perspectives to public policy questions. An exploration of the role of Burke’s moral-epistemological outlook in his political activities thus serves to better explicate that outlook and to illustrate how it can shape public policy.

Because Burke was, first and foremost, a practicing politician, any claim that a particular ethical and epistemological outlook is central to an understanding of him should be supported by evidence from his “real-world” political engagements. The fact is that the policy positions, speeches, and writings of Burke, throughout his long parliamentary career, may be used to illustrate the application to practical politics of ideas centered around the concept of the moral imagination. For Burke, those in office need to consider the worldviews of those whom they govern, worldviews we can best understand as moral-imaginative frameworks. Those frameworks shape how governmental actions are perceived, and received, by the public. And, directly or indirectly, public policy helps to shape the moral imagination of a country, for better or for worse. The activities of political actors impact political culture, and public policies can end up shaping societies in profound ways. By influencing the moral imagination and hence society, current public policies have the effect of influencing the sort of public policies that will be adopted in the future.

The policy areas to which we will devote the most explicit attention are American policy, Indian policy, Irish policy, and constitutional reform. These are in fact among the policy areas that receive the most attention in most studies of Burke, and they are widely recognized as most important for developing an understanding of him. Three of these areas—American, Indian, and Irish policy—could of course also be grouped together as “imperial policy.” The importance of Indian policy and Irish policy is certainly unquestionable; these were major areas of concern for Burke for the bulk of his career, as is evidenced by his copious writings on these subjects. Matters of American policy and of constitutional reform make up much smaller portions of his works and activities, but were also demonstrably important to Burke. His writings and speeches in these areas are frequently cited by scholars, whether they are approaching Burke from the perspective of political theory, of rhetoric, or of political history.

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