Joseph Hamburger, Paul Kress, Lewis Lipsitz, and Harvey Mansfield discuss the interplay in Edmund Burke’s views among notions of prescription, religion, and politics. Though he believed religion and politics should be inseparable, Burke was a supporter of religious tolerance in England, Ireland, and abroad. Burke’s view of choices, rights, privileges, duties, good, and evil in a complex world are described. The speakers discuss Burke’s rejection of the French Revolution although he endorsed the American Revolution; he believed that Americans had justifiable grievances and disliked “imprudent” British policies in America. He disliked the British policies for the same reason he did not support the French Revolution: it was too heavily based in abstract political theory and “salutary neglect.” The speakers discuss how Burke’s stance on those revolutions has heavily influenced modern “Burkeanism” and conservatism.
In the second segment [22:00], Warren Reich comments on professional ethics through a review of David Mamet’s The Verdict, a film about fundamental ethics in the three most powerful professions in our society: medicine, the church, and the law.
At the time of this interview, Hamburger was professor of political science at Yale University. Kress was professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lipsitz was professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mansfield, a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (1981-83), was professor of government at Harvard University.
Reich, a Fellow at the Center (1982-83), was professor of bioethics at Georgetown University.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.
