The most recent commentators on Edmund Burke have renewed the charge that his political thought lacks the consistency and coherency necessary to even claim the status of a political philosophy and that he is indeed a utilitarian.They mark him off as an ideologist, a rhetorician, and a deliberate propagandist.Even Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, his most profound statement of a political philosophy, is regarded by some as a work of mere persuasion, not philosophy.All this occurs in spite of the seminal work of Stanlis, Canavan, and Wilkins, who in the 1950s and '60s,...

The most recent commentators on Edmund Burke have renewed the charge that his political thought lacks the consistency and coherency necessary to even claim the status of a political philosophy and that he is indeed a utilitarian.They mark him off as an ideologist, a rhetorician, and a deliberate propagandist.Even Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, his most profound statement of a political philosophy, is regarded by some as a work of mere persuasion, not philosophy.All this occurs in spite of the seminal work of Stanlis, Canavan, and Wilkins, who in the 1950s and '60s,...