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6 Burke and the Good It h a s b e e n s h o w n h o w Burke’s political and philosophical thought offers us a model for approaching political, social, and ethical questions centered around the concept of the moral imagination. For Burke, good politics is politics that takes into account how people perceive the world, how they reason, and how they make moral decisions. Political action should be undertaken with consideration of how it may interact with, and shape, the imaginative framework that underlies cognition. Sensitivity to issues of the moral imagination, however, cannot be all that is necessary for good politics; certainly some sort of normative standards must exist that inform political thought. Are there in fact such standards for Burke, and are they “universal”? An effective response to this question is bound up with an understanding of Burke’s moral-imaginative approach. The answer to the problem of the relationship of this outlook to universal norms has been hinted at throughout this study, but will be addressed more directly here. The question of the good is of course central to all moral/ethical thought, as well as to politics, society, and, indeed, virtually all of human existence. We are always trying to determine the right thing to do. In this late-modern or postmodern era especially, the search for the good gets bound up in fundamental questions about the source of morality or of values. One finds, for example, traditional advocates of foundationalist or natural law–based approaches to morality who argue that right and wrong are dictated by God or by a fixed, clearly definable human nature. Others reject such assertions. Burke and the Good 155 In popular discourse one sometimes hears of “moral relativism” versus “moral absolutism.” Such terms are highly problematic, so much so that they are not very useful at a philosophic level, but they point to the fact that, even in the popular mind, there is a sense of fundamentally different approaches to morality, and of a sharp divide between them. This is often evoked, either explicitly or implicitly, in contemporary political discourse and debate. Indeed, one can argue that a fundamental characteristic of the contemporary world is a crisis of sorts over the source of values. The question of the good is not only central to contemporary society, but has tended to loom large over many studies of Burke, and animates some of the interest in him. Burke has, in fact, a rather unique and very important approach to the problem of the good, and in uncovering it we illuminate the broader problem in its many manifestations in politics, society, and life. The question of what is normative for Burke has been both a central one in Burke scholarship and a point of much controversy and confusion. This study has already made reference to the “natural law school” of Burke scholarship. This approach to Burke, which became dominant in the 1960s, arosepartlyasareactionagainstotherinterpretationsofBurkethatdeniedor downplayed any belief by Burke in universal standards. Joseph Pappin refers to such approaches as “utilitarian” interpretations of Burke.1 This is as good a label as any, although it should be noted that relatively few treatments, such as the classic nineteenth-century study by John Morley,2 seriously attempt to portray Burke as a true Benthamite in anything like a full sense; more often the “utilitarian” characterizations are more general and vague. Many early to mid-twentieth-century political-philosophical studies of Burke see in him a somewhat confused patchwork of frames of reference. For example, a 1925 work by C. E. Vaughan makes much of Burke’s occasional emphasis on “expediency,” but also notes Burke’s historicist tendencies and his frequent appeal to traditional “moral law.”3 Vaughan sees Burke as a proto-progressive. He finds many inconsistencies in Burke’s thought, and Vaughan explains these as arising from the fact that Burke lacked the tools necessary to develop a clear understanding of his own position or to maintain philosophical consistency. This sense that Burke somehow does not quite “get it” pervades much of the twentieth-century literature on him, from detractors and admirers alike. Like Vaughan, Harold Laski sees a multifaceted Burke. He states that “Burke was a utilitarian who was convinced that what was old was valuable by the mere fact of its arrival at maturity.” While Laski repeatedly faults Burke for his conservatism, he praises Burke highly as well, largely for his [3.129.247.196] Project MUSE (2024...

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