Vindication of Natural Society Hogeye Condensed Version
page 26
  • Burke has used history - consequentialism - to argue against the high-minded planning and social engineering of political elites and their court intellectuals. While the "Abetors of artificial Society" imagine ''planned order'', Burke averred that the emergent ("spontaneous") order of Natural Society is better.



  • "They have inlisted Reason to fight against itself..." Burke seems to be saying that reason is used by social planners to usurp the reason of individuals. Authority violates people's right to figure things out for themselves and make their own decisions. As Robert Wolff put it in "In Defense of Anarchism", moral autonomy and authority are in conflict: "Anarchism is the only political doctrine consistent with the virtue of autonomy."



  • Government court systems, being monopolies, are not very efficient at what they do. Decreed/legislated law is more capricious than common law or traditional law.
I have done with the Forms of Government. During the Course of my Enquiry you may have observed a very material Difference between my Manner of Reasoning and that which is in Use amongst the Abetors of artificial Society. They form their Plans upon what seems most eligible to their Imaginations, for the ordering of Mankind. I discover the Mistakes in those Plans, from the real known Consequences which have resulted from them.

They have inlisted Reason to fight against itself, and employ its whole Force to prove that it is an insufficient Guide to them in the Conduct of their Lives. But unhappily for us, in proportion as we have deviated from the plain Rule of our Nature, and turned our Reason against itself, in that Proportion have we increased the Follies and Miseries of Mankind. The more deeply we penetrate into the Labyrinth of Art, the further we find ourselves from those Ends for which we entered it. This has happened in almost every Species of Artificial Society, and in all Times.

We found, or we thought we found, an Inconvenience in having every Man the Judge of his own Cause. Therefore Judges were set up, at first with discretionary Powers. But it was soon found a miserable Slavery to have our Lives and Properties precarious, and hanging upon the arbitrary Determination of any one Man, or Set of Men. We flew to Laws as a Remedy for this Evil. By these we persuaded ourselves we might know with some Certainty upon what Ground we stood. But lo! Differences arose upon the Sense and Interpretation of these Laws. Thus we were brought back to our old Incertitude.

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