Burke questioned the very basic argument that a stable political structure could be established only on the basis of reason. He pointed to the limits of reason and its role in understanding society. In fact, Burke questioned the whole style of rationalistic thought, an argument reiterated by Michael Oakeshott. Quoting Aristotle, he cautioned against a prior deductive reasoning in moral arguments.
The philosophy of the French Revolutionaries was a ‘false philosophy’, because of its insistence that all authority derived its sustenance from reason. As opposed to reason. Burke emphasised wisdom as something more than prejudice.
The philosophy of natural rights based on the new principles of liberty and equality was not conducive to the establishment of order. Veneration of authority developed over a period of time, and the denunciation of one authority by a different group led to its denunciation as well.
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The abstract ideology inevitably led from subversion to anarchy, because it brought a consciousness of rights but not of duties of order, discipline and obedience to authority. Burke repeatedly stressed that societies needed awe, superstition, ritual and honour for their stability, and to be able to secure the loyalty and support of those on whom it depended.
He warned that a state, which dismissed this entire edifice aside in the name of rational enlightenment, would ultimately be a state based merely on a lust for power.
Burke emphasised that the dignity of the human being came through socialization. One rendered obedience to society not because it benefitted us, or because we had promised to obey it, but because we saw ourselves as an integral part of it.
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Though he rejected the divine right of kings, he affirmed, like Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), that nothing was more pleasing to God than the existence of human ‘civitates’. He accused the natural rights theorists of not merely “imprudence and intellectual arrogance but of blasphemy and impiety as well.