(ばーく Burke, Edmund)
Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates, but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.
---Edmund Burke, in his speech to the electors of Bristol in 1774.
In the parliamentary election of 1774 Burke was both elected a member for Bristol and nominated by Lord Rockingham to the borough of Malton. He chose to represent Bristol, after enunciating the principle that a parliamentary representative should not subordinate his judgement to the opinions of his constituents. I think that this is an excellent principle, so far as it relates to such questions as capital or corporal punishment, or the toleration of homosexuality, or abortion.
---A.J. Ayer
The danger here, however, is that of saddling Burke with Hegel. For all his reverence for ancient institutions, Burke did not equate the real with the rational; he did not believe that whatever is is right.
---A.J. Ayer
英国の思想家、政治家(1729-1797)。ダブリン生まれで、 生涯野党のウィグ党に属していた。
主著は『フランス革命に関する省察』(Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790)。
上の引用は以下の著作から。