The Burkean View of Politics

In the opening scene of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, the people of ancient Thebes are seen in deep trouble. They are bereft of luck, beset by plagues, drifting from disaster to disaster. Knowing that man’s existence is kept on an even keel by divine laws of being, they have their king inquire of God how and why the divine moral order has been disturbed. Our modern world, like that of Thebes, also is out of joint. Laws and social bonds are dissolving, men are stalked by insecurity, filled with deep anxieties, tossed around by demonic forces they cannot fathom.

In one respect, however, we are far worse off than the people of Thebes. We have become ignorant to the point of not even seeking knowledge about the root of our troubles at the divine source of order. Those few who would speak to us of a necessary attunement between human existence and the order of being cannot get their meaning across at all. If you ever witnessed the utter incomprehension with which modern-bred undergraduates first react to Burke, you would realize the extent of the modern commitment to the view that man and his pragmatic ends are both measure and master of the social order.

GN

About the Author

Gerhart Niemeyer

Featured Tags

In the opening scene of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, the people of ancient Thebes are seen in deep trouble. They are bereft of luck, beset by plagues, drifting from disaster to disaster. Knowing that man’s existence is kept on an even keel by divine laws of being, they have their king inquire of God how and why the divine moral order has been disturbed. Our modern world, like that of Thebes, also is out of joint. Laws and social bonds are dissolving, men are stalked by insecurity, filled with deep anxieties, tossed around by demonic forces they cannot fathom.

In one respect, however, we are far worse off than the people of Thebes. We have become ignorant to the point of not even seeking knowledge about the root of our troubles at the divine source of order. Those few who would speak to us of a necessary attunement between human existence and the order of being cannot get their meaning across at all. If you ever witnessed the utter incomprehension with which modern-bred undergraduates first react to Burke, you would realize the extent of the modern commitment to the view that man and his pragmatic ends are both measure and master of the social order.