PO236 Lecture 4: BURKE ON TRADITION AND CHANGE
Document Summary
The humility of reason and the importance of history and tradition: hume is very constructive, condemns those who would quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them . Burke on tradition and wisdom: shares with hume a deep scepticism with the powers of reason, but also the importance of sentiments: the passions are not necessarily the problem they were for hobbes and locke. Nobility: every person struggles to preserve possession of what belongs to him and to distinguish him, an instinct to preserve property and communities in a settled state, a graceful ornament to the civil order. Cooperation: when it should occur and when it should not. Conventional vs. emotion: laws and ethics are constructed according to the time and place, we try to construct laws but there is so little convention because of emotion. Constructive: what knowledge is our brain constructs this, hume shows us this.
