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Article: "State of nature".(The Right)
- Article from:
- Canada and the World Backgrounder
- Article date:
- January 1, 2004
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Canada & the World. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Irish-born writer and politician Edmund Burke (1729-97) is said by many to be the prophet of the modern ideology of the right. In 1790, Burke wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France. It was a scathing criticism of "mob rule," and a call to return to the traditional structure of society. For Burke, society worked best when the ruling elites ruled and everybody else obeyed them.
Edmund Burke was drawing on the earlier ideas of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). In his famous book, Leviathan, Hobbes described humans in a "State of Nature" relentlessly pursuing survival at the expense of others. In Nature each has an unlimited right to ...