For to deny the possibility of rational argument playing the...

For to deny the possibility of rational argument playing the role of arbiter means that in advancing one’s views one cannot be appealing to any criterion by which they may be established. But if this is so, then not only can one not argue in one’s own favor, but one has made it difficult to understand what it could mean to call one’s views “true” or “false.” For the application of these predicates always involves an appeal to some criterion.

Suppose, however, that at this point we look to Burke’s practice of arguing rather than to his principle of condemning argument. We shall then find in his arguments two mistakes, both diagnosed by William Godwin, the anarchist, in what is in effect a reply to Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, Political Justice. First of all, Burke confuses society and the state. He assimilates particular forms of political institution to institutions in general.

From premises which assert merely the need for stable and established social arrangements he tries to derive the conclusion that Louis XVI’s head should not be cut off. The roots of this confusion are more interesting than the confusion itself. Burke understands that appeal to moral and other norms presupposes an established form of social life.

He tries to picture the revolutionary theorist as a man who wishes to destroy the very social life which is necessary to give meaning to the norms in the name of which he intends to carry out his act of destruction. But in so doing, he equates the notion of an established form of social life with the notion of an established set of institutional arrangements. In fact, the institutions of a society may well be at odds with its norms. To maintain these institutions may be fatally destructive.

Burke never noticed the fact that revolutions are extremely difficult to make. Theorists become revolutionaries only when their theories are able to articulate a deep dissatisfaction which the theorists did not invent. And at this point it is the refusal to destroy and recreate social institutions which is destructive of social life itself. The true nihilists in history were all kings: Charles I, Louis XVI, and Tsar Nicholas.

The revolutionaries in their societies had to save social life from their rulers’ destructive maintenance of the existing order. Secondly, Burke’s defense of prejudice and habit against reflective criticism rests on an inadequate analysis of the notion of following a rule.