Edmund Burke (1729-1797) on Unintended Consequences
The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught à priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science; because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate; but that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation; and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning.
The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In states there are often some obscure and almost latent causes, things which appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity or adversity may most essentially depend.
The science of government being therefore so practical in itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, however sagacious and observing he may be, it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up again, without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.
(Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. L. G. Mitchell [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993], 61 [first published in 1790])
HT to KBJackson
2 comments:
Burke seems sound, and yet if the great founders (Moses, Theseus, Romulus, Cyrus -- Machiavelli's examples) knuckled under to his insistences, there never would have been Israel, the Greek system, Roma, Persian empire. Plato would never have arranged for Socratic reasoning to found a city in speech. Egypt began as an innovation. And your esteem'd Founders began a novus ordo seclorum. "Infinite caution" would have prevented all these foundings.
Burke's progressivist whig principles work'd a slow-motion version of the French Revolution, didn't they? ("The French Revolution and the Ancient Regime": the only thing amiss with the French Revolution is that it crash'd, ate its own, etc.)
We must agree with Burke, though, that intellectuals can't teach this science -- they don't understand this science, how could they teach it?
er
Another consideration is the insistences of the Gods. Perhaps what is most specious in Burke's admonitions is that the seculum is available as a free-space structure in which 'we' can do as we please if only we are sufficiently infinitely cautious and sagacious and judicious and circumspect etc.
I doubt ever the political class or whatever we ought to be call'd has the opportunity to build institutions with cautiousness. Ike had to give the go ahead for D-Day even though preparations weren't complete. If he would do only a strategy of infinite caution the Red Army would have dominated all of Europe (not that later he didn't obediently drag his heels across Europe at the directives of the priestesses in Washington, D.C., in order to give the Russians their fair share of Germany and all of eastern and central Europe).
The old modes and orders of Americanism and indeed the modes and orders of dialectical materialism could not prevail against racial genealogy. America had to innovate, as did the USSR -- "convirgin societies" (JKG) and all that.
On the other hand, the remarks you quote make possible great hopes vis-a-vis the post-Vietnam ruination of America and the West generally: »that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation; and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning.«
So let's keep on marching to Peoria!
er
Post a Comment