Quotation
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“Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue.”
Edmund Burke · Political philosophy · Enlightenment · 1790
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as a defence of inherited moral habit: prejudice, in his revaluation, is not mere ignorance but a ready disposition that applies wisdom when there is no time to rebuild it from scratch. He thinks naked reason in an emergency is a weak guide for most people. A rival reading hears a licence for bigotry, and the modern word prejudice makes that reading almost automatic. In the Reflections the target is the revolutionary claim to rebuild society from abstract rights; The sentence is his English.
Did Edmund Burke really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. Burke's own English in Reflections on the Revolution in France. He is defending prejudice as a store of judgement that acts when reflection has no time, not as a slur. The wording is secure. The fake line about the triumph of evil is not his and is not added here.
Where it comes from
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
Approximate date: 1790.
How to use it
A nurse on a night shift in Liverpool follows a procedure without re-deriving it from first principles while a patient deteriorates, and Burke would call the trained habit a prejudice in his laudatory sense. The same word covers a refusal to treat a patient fairly because of a surname. His sentence does not distinguish those cases for a hospital policy; It assumes the prejudice in question is a deposit of wisdom and virtue; That assumption is exactly what has to be argued, not chanted.
A mindset reading
He is trying to steal a term of abuse and make it a term of praise, which only works if the content of the habit is wise. Quoting him as if every old attitude had thereby been justified drops the condition he states, a course of wisdom and virtue. Critics think the Reflections still shelters too much by this route; The criticism can be made without pretending he meant racial animus by a word he is using in a moral-psychological sense.
Understand the philosophy
The key term is prejudice, which he says renders a person's virtue their habit rather than a series of unconnected acts, and which is ready when the emergency gives no time for a theory. The Reflections of 1790 argue with the French Revolution and its English admirers. The English is his. This defence of prejudice is one of the roots of a conservative epistemology; It is not the proverb, often mis-pinned on him, about the triumph of evil.
- society
- virtue
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as a defence of inherited moral habit: prejudice, in his revaluation, is not mere ignorance but a ready disposition that applies wisdom when there is no time to rebuild it from scratch. He thinks naked reason in an emergency is a weak guide for most people. A rival reading hears a licence for bigotry, and the modern word prejudice makes that reading almost automatic. In the Reflections the target is the revolutionary claim to rebuild society from abstract rights; The sentence is his English.
Did Edmund Burke really say this?
Well attested. Burke's own English in Reflections on the Revolution in France. He is defending prejudice as a store of judgement that acts when reflection has no time, not as a slur. The wording is secure. The fake line about the triumph of evil is not his and is not added here.
Which work is it in?
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) Approximate date: 1790.