{"product_id":"intellectual-life-of-edmund-burke-from-the-sublime-and-beautiful-to-american-independence","title":"The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke: From the Sublime and Beautiful to American Independence","description":"\u003cp\u003eDavid Bromwich's portrait of statesman Edmund Burke (1730-1797) is the first biography to attend to the complexity of Burke's thought as it emerges in both the major writings and private correspondence. The public and private writings cannot be easily dissociated, nor should they be. For Burke--a thinker, writer, and politician--the principles of politics were merely those of morality enlarged. Bromwich reads Burke's career as an imperfect attempt to organize an honorable life in the dense medium he knew politics to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis intellectual biography examines the first three decades of Burke's professional life. His protest against the cruelties of English society and his criticism of all unchecked power laid the groundwork for his later attacks on abuses of government in India, Ireland, and France. Bromwich allows us to see the youthful skeptic, wary of a social contract based on \"nature\"; the theorist of love and fear in relation to \"the sublime and beautiful\"; the advocate of civil liberty, even in the face of civil disorder; the architect of economic reform; and the agitator for peace with America. However multiple and various Burke's campaigns, a single-mindedness of commitment always drove him.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBurke is commonly seen as the father of modern conservatism. Bromwich reveals the matter to be far more subtle and interesting. Burke was a defender of the rights of disfranchised minorities and an opponent of militarism. His politics diverge from those of any modern party, but all parties would be wiser for acquaintance with his writing and thoughts.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e:\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePreface -- Introduction -- I. Early Ambition and the Theory of Society -- II. The Sublime and Beautiful -- III. The Wilkes Crisis and Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents -- IV. The American War -- V. The Loss of the Empire in the West -- VI. Democracy, Representation, and the Gordon Riots -- VII. In Defense of Politics -- Conclusion -- Appendix: Speech at Bristol on Declining the Poll -- Notes -- Chronology -- Index.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eThe Burke David Bromwich presents in his new book \u003ci\u003eThe Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke\u003c\/i\u003e is certainly a formidable figure, but one who resists recruitment for twenty-first-century causes. It is his elusiveness that makes him a live presence; he was a traditionalist and a progressive, an enlightened critic of Enlightenment run amok, a secular thinker who insisted on the indispensability of religious faith. He thought it pointless to insist on rights whose enforcement would bring disaster, as when British governments asserted their right to tax the colonies and brought on a revolutionary war; and yet he had no doubt about the reality of rights. Burke was an eighteenth-century Whig, not a twenty-first-century liberal or conservative, but both of the latter can engage with him with advantage. David Bromwich has been thinking about him for more than a quarter of a century, and by now has an unrivaled sensitivity to the workings of his mind; like Burke, Bromwich is a formidable critic, ranging over politics, literature, higher education, and much else, and on every page of \u003ci\u003eEdmund Burke\u003c\/i\u003e, one can feel him responding to Burke across the whole range of Burke's interests as if he was in the room with him... [Bromwich's] focus on the first three decades of Burke's life as a thinker, writer, and political actor yields riches... We shall have to wait for the second volume of this engrossing account to see how David Bromwich handles the Burke who responded so differently to the second great revolution of the late eighteenth century. His penetrating first volume makes us impatient to see what he will say.--\u003cstrong\u003eAlan Ryan \"New York Review of Books\" (3\/5\/2015 12:00:00 AM)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[Bromwich] gives us a figure who may be unknown to readers familiar with Burke only from 'Reflections on the Revolution in France' or his reputation as modern conservatism's founding father. Bromwich's Burke is one for whom 'ordinary feelings such as trust, though they have a Christian correlative, themselves supply a sufficient groundwork of moral conduct.' Burke is moved more by a universal sympathy for human struggle than by religion or patriotism... Though his attention throughout is on Burke's moral psychology, Bromwich also highlights the literary character of his thought, including his debts to Milton and Shakespeare... In Burke's politics there was room alike for elite rule and street demonstrations of the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street variety. This balance of familiar and strange, Burke's enlightened humanity and his intricate understanding of power, make him well deserving of the extensive treatment he has lately received--and especially of the justice David Bromwich has rendered him in showing Edmund Burke in the most unexpected of lights.--\u003cstrong\u003eDaniel McCarthy \"New York Times Book Review\" (8\/22\/2014 12:00:00 AM)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is David Bromwich's aim in \u003ci\u003eThe Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke\u003c\/i\u003e that people should know a good deal more about what Burke actually said and wrote... Bromwich's patient and subtle exposition is a continuing delight. After reading this first volume, several major misreadings of Burke and a more general ignorance of his arguments and actions will not be possible, or at any rate won't be legitimate... \u003ci\u003eThe Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke\u003c\/i\u003e is both indispensable and unputdownable, and with its companion volume will surely form a lasting landmark.--\u003cstrong\u003eFerdinand Mount \"London Review of Books\" (8\/21\/2014 12:00:00 AM)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke: From the Sublime and Beautiful to American Independence\u003c\/i\u003e, a searching and profoundly meditated account of the earlier part of Burke's career, David Bromwich is not much interested in finding a [political] label: he does something much more valuable, which is to evoke with tremendous accomplishment the complexities of Burke that are always bound to resist any such attempt... The concluding volume of his outstanding intellectual Life of his subject will be eagerly awaited by many.--\u003cstrong\u003eSeamus Perry \"Times Literary Supplement\" (10\/24\/2014 12:00:00 AM)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[A] recent biographer of Burke calls him the father of conservatism. So a reappraisal of his early works is welcome. David Bromwich, a professor at Yale University, has written a history of Burke's thought until American independence; a more liberal Burke emerges from this book... Burke continued to fight for liberty later on in life. He backed Americans in their campaign for freedom from British taxation. He supported Catholic freedoms and freer trade with Ireland, in spite of his constituents' ire. He wanted more liberal laws on the punishment of debtors. He even pushed to curb the slave trade in 1780, a quarter of a century before it was abolished.-- \u003cstrong\u003e\"The Economist\" (7\/5\/2014 12:00:00 AM)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMagnificent, beautifully written...[and] the most notable addition to a recent crop of books about Burke... [This] is an intellectual biography of the best kind. Bromwich seeks to convey 'what it meant to think like Edmund Burke' and to demonstrate the coherence and relevance of Burke's moral and political vision. With a remarkable level of detail and sensitivity, Bromwich makes a virtue out of what others lament as problematic: the relationship between Burke's political activity and his written works. Bromwich is convinced that people today can still learn from Burke, not as political partisans but as 'thoughtful readers.' In Bromwich's hands, Burke offers better lessons about how to think than about what to think... It offers a revealing portrait of Burke's mind.--\u003cstrong\u003eIain Hampsher-Monk \"Foreign Affairs\" (1\/1\/2015 12:00:00 AM)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDavid Bromwich\u003c\/strong\u003e is Sterling Professor of English at Yale University.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher: Belknap Press\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePub Date: 2014-06-05\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eISBN: 9780674729704\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePages: 512\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBinding: Hardcover\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ingram","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45576321335482,"sku":"9780674729704","price":44.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0444\/2213\/5968\/files\/imageloader_20dbb4d8-128b-41c6-a8bc-1bd50c457052.jpg?v=1770782863","url":"https:\/\/naturenurture.shop\/products\/intellectual-life-of-edmund-burke-from-the-sublime-and-beautiful-to-american-independence","provider":"nature+nurture","version":"1.0","type":"link"}