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Edmund Burke's Criticisms Of Hobbes Social Contract

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Burke’s Criticisms of Hobbes’ Social Contract Edmund Burke, after a visit to France in 1773, wrote a pamphlet titled Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) to express his disdain for the events and methods of the French Revolution. Where other political writers of the Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment Eras propose theories of politics and government, Burke does not promote a theory, a set of premises, a call to action, or even a succinct conclusion. He rather details his disposition of contractual government and politic science. He believes that the human condition, the traditions, experiences, and knowledge acquired by humans, is far to complex to be described by science and therefore avoids he commonly held views of political science from the Enlightenment Era. However, Thomas Hobbes, as he writes in Leviathan (1651) believed that all political phenomenons could be reported systematically as he equated all humans to machines, predictable by consistently acting in their self interest. [PG 3] Burke’s criticism that can be applied to Hobbes lies on three fronts; that the understanding human condition cannot be derived through logic; that consent, explicit or tacit, does not exist after the first social contract; and that a rebellion is neither possible nor effective when in a social contract. Thomas Hobbes’ prefaces his discussion of the social contract by giving credence to what he understood as science. Hobbes’ approach hinges on this understanding. “[R]eason

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