Few thinkers have provoked such violently opposing reactions as Edmund Burke. A giant of eighteenth-century political and intellectual life, Burke has been praised as a prophet who spied the terror latent in revolutionary or democratic ideologies, and condemned as defender of social hierarchy and outmoded political institutions.

Ross Carroll tempers these judgments by situating Burkes arguments in relation to the political controversies of his day. Burkes writings must be understood as rhetorically brilliant exercises in political persuasion aimed less at defending abstract truths than at warning his contemporaries about the corrosive forces ideological, social, and political that threatened their society. Drawing on Burkes enormous corpus, Carroll presents a nuanced portrait of Burke as, above all, a diagnostician of political misrule, whether domestic, foreign, or imperial. Burkes lasting value, Carroll argues, derives less from the content of his specific positions than from the difficult questions he forces us to ask of ourselves.

This engaging and illuminating account of Burkes work is a vital reference for students and scholars of history, philosophy, and political thought.