This slide wil give you a basic idea on book review of A vindication of Natural Society by Edmund Burke

1. A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY
P R E S E N T E D B Y :
C H A N A K YA K E N E
U G 2 0 - 4 7

2. "WHERE MYSTERY BEGINS,
RELIGION ENDS"
• Bolingbroke, an important political writer of the early eighteenth century, attacked
revealed religion frequently and with vigor, proposing Deism in its place. When he died
about the middle of the century, he left some posthumous writings in the same vein,
which were published with great acclaim, especially for their inimitable style. Burke,
who held great reverence for religious tradition, responded with this heavily ironic tract
in which he imitated perfectly the style of Bolingbroke and showed that the same
arguments that had been turned against revealed religion might just as easily be
applied to civilized, or political, society.

3. ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Edmund Burke recommended quickly that society as such
offered a clarification to common detects, and that it included
pieces of intelligibility and improvement the equivalent. Burke
by then continued showing that self-protection and its
cognates proposed the confounded thought about the
marvellous, and not least the chance of a God being who was
both dynamic and repulsive. Greatness, then again, contained
a completely unforeseen strategy of fundamental musings,
which started in please. Splendid and great consequently
sprang from all around different commencements.

4. ABOUT THE BOOK:
• Edmund Burke’s first important publication, A VINDICATION
OF NATURAL SOCIETY, subtitled A VIEW OF THE MISERIES
AND EVILS ARISING TO MANKIND FROM EVERY SPECIES OF
CIVIL SOCIETY, IN A LETTER TO LORD-——, BY A LATE NOBLE
WRITER, satirically attacked the views of Lord Bolingbroke (the
late Noble Writer), whose philosophical works had been
published posthumously in 1754
• By adopting Bolingbroke’s manner, Burke hoped to give a
tone of irony and satire to his own opinions on society.
• So well did he succeed in imitating his model’s polished style,
however, that A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY was
generally received as Bolingbroke’s own, even by such critics
as Chesterfield and Warburton.

5. INTRODUCTION:
• In the time of mid eighteenth century, like 1750s, numerous methods of reasoning for
building up and proceeding with some sort of beliefs for kind of government and
administrations was a pattern by many noble philosophers. Where Edmund Burke was
forthcoming with censuring their arrangement and set up hypothesis where he was
unable to consider how such a Writers proposed to compass the Designs they profess
to have in see, by the Instruments which they utilize. Burke’s central point was to show
that Bolingbroke’s arguments in favor of natural against revealed religion were equally
applicable in favor of natural as against artificial society.

6. • The principles were, in essence, an exploration of the concept of
“nature,” or “natural law.” Burke conceives the emotional and
spiritual life of man as a harmony within the larger order of the
universe. Natural impulse, that is, contains within itself self-
restraint and self-criticism; the moral and spiritual life is continuous
with it, generated from it and essentially sympathetic to it. It
follows that society and state make possible the full realization of
human potentiality, embody a common good, and represent a
tacit or explicit agreement on norms and ends. The political
community acts ideally as a unity.This interpretation of nature and
the natural order implies deep respect for the historical process
and the usages and social achievements built up over time.

7. BACKGROUND OF THE
BOOK
• Two years before A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY appeared, Rousseau had
in fact developed the thesis that a simple society close to nature was morally superior
to the refined society of Europe. Burke understood the revolutionary nature of this
doctrine and its threat to the established order, and he consistently maintained that
any society was preferable to the hypothetical “state of nature.” To prove that he
understood the implications of his opponents’ arguments better than they themselves
did, he assumed their position with massive irony: “In vain you tell me that artificial
government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse. The thing! the thing itself is
the abuse!” His irony is so cleverly disguised that J.B. Bury commented, “a vindication
of natural society worked out in detail a historical picture of the evils of civilization
which is far more telling than Rousseau’s generalities.”

8. • Burke begins the book by distinguishing between a natural society and the
political society which came into being when man, observing the advantages
of the family union, assumed that larger unions would be beneficial as well.
Because the society so created was artificial, man was forced to invent laws.
• By stating the case so baldly, Burke hoped to ridicule Bolingbroke’s
straightforward rationalism. He puts a major part of the blame for social
corruption on religious institutions in a covert attempt to identify
Bolingbroke’s deism with an attack on the social order: “Civil government
borrows a strength from ecclesiastical; and artificial laws receive a sanction
from artificial revelations. The ideas of religion and government are closely
connected; and whilst we receive government as a thing necessary . . . we
shall in spite of us draw in . . . an artificial religion of some kind or other.”
• Although Burke’s Noble Writer disavows any attack on English society, the
sweeping nature of his generalizations obviously implicates him.

9. • . . . In a state of nature, it is true that a man of superior force may beat or rob
me; but then it is true, that I am at full liberty to defend myself, or make
reprisal by surprise or by cunning, or by any other way in which I may be
superior to him. But in political society, a rich man may rob me in another
way. I cannot defend myself; for money is the only weapon with which we
are allowed to fight. And if I attempt to avenge myself the whole force of that
society is ready to complete my ruin.
A good parson once said, that where mystery begins, religion ends. Cannot I
say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins, justice ends?
It is hard to say, whether the doctors of law or divinity have made the greatest
advances in the lucrative business of mystery.

10. • The state, the Noble Writer goes on, can be viewed in two different lights, in
its external relationship to other states, and in its internal relationship to the
governed. He finds that a description of the honorable conduct between
nations would not fill ten pages, but their record of war and treachery is
beyond human accounting.
• With deliberately exaggerated concern in proving his point, Burke devotes
about one-sixth of his essay to the history of war. He caps his summary with
the estimate that the number of men slaughtered in battle was seventy times
the five hundred million then inhabiting the earth.
• The Noble Writer concludes that “. . . political society is justly chargeable with
much the greatest part of this destruction of the species.” In this passage
Burke’s irony attains a subtle level of complexity. Thoughtful men could
hardly deny the general truth that Burke seemingly offered to his opposition.
Burke’s irony is perhaps intended to...

11. CONCLUSION:
• The Vindication was written in impersonation of the style of the actually dead Bolingbroke, and have
accepted this as confirmation of its satiric bent. Notwithstanding, these equivalent biographers of Burke
concede that, in his later compositions, he kept on writing in a comparative style, indeed, amazing that
young Burke should endeavour to copy the style of the man all around recognized as the best
cosmetologist and orator of his day, Burke's intricate undertakings to protect his character from
everyone, to give the inclination that this was; a posthumous work of Bolingbroke's, indicate a substitute
clarification. This is his acknowledgment that the sort of perspectives conveyed in the Vindication would
be pointedly scrutinized and condemned.
• This work was the fundamental enunciation of disorder, maybe the most "extremist," the least "
traditionalist " of proclamations of confidence. The whole tone of the Vindication, without a doubt, is
that of a man who fears the individual consequences of distributing his, sees, who even endeavours to
hold them down, yet is incited onwards by the force of his conviction that another and incredible truth
has been found.