Burke's Commitment to Social Freedom

Edmund Burke is often considered the father of modern conservatism, the man who blended classical liberal politics—and its emphasis on the rule of law and parliamentary procedure—with conservative moral values and virtues that considered religion and individual duty to be a necessary part of socio-political life. Burke is remembered for his writings on the sublime and beautiful and especially his criticism of the French Revolution. While an energetic and active writer and statesman, his final decade of writing turned out to be his most fruitful. While an influence over the young Romantics in aesthetics, most people remember Burke for his political treatise Reflections on the Revolution in France and his defense of what Russell Kirk would call “ordered liberty” or what Burke himself called “social freedom.”