附註:Includes bibliographical references (pages 175-182) and index.
Metaphysics and politics -- The problem of a Burkean metaphysics -- The case for Burke's metaphysics -- The philosophy of God and human nature -- The metaphysical elements of teleology and natural law -- Concluding reflections: metaphysical Nihilism and radical individualism.
摘要:In the period since the Second World War, a number of writers ... have drawn attention to the strong role played by a classical and medieval theory of natural law in Edmund Burke's political thought and have pointed to its foundation in a realist doctrine of metaphysics. But no one until now has undertaken a book-length study of the metaphysical suppositions of Burke's political philosophy. In the present book Joseph Pappin III supplies that need. He is at odds with many, if not most, writers on Burke among the statesman's latter-day British compatriots. Steeped in an empiricist tradition, they find it difficult to see in Burke's thought anything more than an elevated utilitarianism, embellished with theological and natural law trimmings, to be sure, but antirationalist and antimetaphysical in its substance. As Pappin points out, Burke was indeed vehemently opposed to the rationalism of his day, which derived a political ideology by logical deduction from abstract ideas. But to conclude from this that Burke rejected metaphysics is to misunderstand him badly. The question is not whether Burke's political philosophy rests on a metaphysic, but rather on what metaphysic it is based ... Pappin's main goal in this study is, as he says, "to determine that Burke's political philosophy is grounded in a realist metaphysic, one that is basically consonant with the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition." Perhaps more importantly, he uses the metaphysics as an explanatory key to what Burke actually wrote. It is a key that fits the lock better than any other that scholars have offered. The only proof of this statement, of course, is to read Burke in the light of Pappin's exegesis and to ask oneself if it does not reveal the unity, the coherence, and the meaning of Burke's words with greater clarity and depth than any competing interpretation.
