A Vindication of Natural Society

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was an Anglo-Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher who, after relocating to Great Britain, served for many years in the British House of Commons as a member of the Whig party. He is mainly remembered for his support of the American colonies in the dispute with King George III and Britain that led to the American Revolution and for his strong opposition to the French Revolution. Burke worked on aesthetics and founded the Annual Register, a political review. He is widely regarded as the philosophical founder of Anglo-American conservatism. Burke’s first published work, A Vindication of Natural Society, appeared in 1756. In 1757, he published a treatise on aesthetics, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. His other works include: Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791).