Religion and Radicalism
English Political Theory in the Age of Revolution
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6351738 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Isaac Kramnick (Cornell University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1977 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 505-534 |
| Publication date | 1977-11-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Political Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0090-5917 • E-ISSN: 1552-7476 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/009059177700500406 |
| OpenAlex | W2028715574 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
L N HIS REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE, Burke lamented the great transformation which he sensed taking place in European civilization. age of chivalry is gone, he wrote, of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded. The glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.' Throughout most of his career, even in the Reflections, Burke was convinced that England was the principal evidence of this most unfortunate transition. He singled out one group as the major modernizing agent in his Englandthe sectarian protestant dissenters. He was right. While many strands of English life contributed to the modernity that undermined the ancien regime, even parts of the aristocracy itself, for example, the cutting edge of change came from these dissenters. They were the boldest voices attacking the traditional order; they were the secular prophets, the vanguard, of a new social order. These talented and industrious protestant dissenters played the decisive role in transforming England into the first bourgeois civilization. This paper is an effort to reconstruct the ideology of this radical community. It looks at its notions of government, of society, and of the virtuous man. One finds here the articulation of inherited ideas of Lockean liberalism with a progressive and revolutionary fervor that sought to topple all aspects of the aristocratic world-of Burke's beloved age of chivalry. The major force behind this radicalization of Lockean liberalism was its capture in the early stages of the industrial revolution by these protestant dissenters, the embodiment of the entrepreneurial spirit. The spirit of 1776 was the spirit of bourgeois radicalism
Bourgeoisie · Calvinism · Civilization · Ideology · Liberalism · Millenarianism · Political radicalism · Political science · Politics · Protestantism · Social order · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Religious Studies
The Apocalyptic Politics of Richard Price and Joseph Priestley
Tilting at Windmills? Truth and Illusion in ‘The Political Constitution’
Chivalry, Commerce, and Generosity
Hannah and her sister
The Burke-Smith Problem and Late Eighteenth-Century Political and Economic Thought
The Poor Have a Claim Founded in the Law of Nature
Rethinking Thomas Paine and the Origins of the Basic Income Proposal
| Citations per year | 0.16 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1983 - 2023 (41) |
| Highly cited | No |