Quotation
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“Society is a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”
Edmund Burke · Political philosophy · Enlightenment · 1790
What does it mean?
A society, on the usual reading, is not a deal among whoever happens to be in the room, because the dead and the unborn are partners in an inheritance of science, art, and virtue. That is why he thinks a generation may not smash institutions as if they were its private property. A rival reading uses the partnership as a veto on every reform, heavier than his own practice of defending some change and attacking a revolutionary break. The familiar sentence shortens a longer passage in the Reflections of 1790; The thought is his, and the shortening should be marked.
Did Edmund Burke really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. A shortened but faithful form of Burke's longer English sentence in Reflections on the Revolution in France. He calls society a partnership in all science, all art, and every virtue, across generations. The familiar line about the triumph of evil is not his. Because this entry shortens him, the badge stays a paraphrase of secure English.
Where it comes from
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
Approximate date: 1790.
How to use it
When a parish council in Wiltshire changes a practice that will outlast the meeting, name the people who are not in the room: those who built the arrangement, and those who will inherit the change. The sentence is a weight on present consent, not a spell that makes the current arrangement correct. He is asking for a longer partnership to be acknowledged; He is not asking the council to freeze.
A mindset reading
The line can be used to block every reform, and that use is a standing risk of the image. Burke was not against all change. He was against change that treated inheritance as nothing and the living as owners in fee simple of a civilisation; Read the partnership as a weight on judgement; Do not read it as a ban on thinking, or as the fake proverb about the triumph of evil, which is not his.
Understand the philosophy
The Reflections argue with the French Revolution and with English admirers of it. The key term is partnership, a relation across generations that he distinguishes from an ordinary contract for pepper or calico, temporary and dissolvable at will. Partnership across time becomes a root of modern conservatism, and it is also a claim liberals have had to answer rather than a mood. The longer English sentence is his own; This entry shortens it.
- society
- justice
- change
FAQ
What does it mean?
A society, on the usual reading, is not a deal among whoever happens to be in the room, because the dead and the unborn are partners in an inheritance of science, art, and virtue. That is why he thinks a generation may not smash institutions as if they were its private property. A rival reading uses the partnership as a veto on every reform, heavier than his own practice of defending some change and attacking a revolutionary break. The familiar sentence shortens a longer passage in the Reflections of 1790; The thought is his, and the shortening should be marked.
Did Edmund Burke really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. A shortened but faithful form of Burke's longer English sentence in Reflections on the Revolution in France. He calls society a partnership in all science, all art, and every virtue, across generations. The familiar line about the triumph of evil is not his. Because this entry shortens him, the badge stays a paraphrase of secure English.
Which work is it in?
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) Approximate date: 1790.