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Richard Price and Edmund Burke: The Duty to Participate in Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

D. O. Thomas
D. O. Thomas
Affiliation:
Coleg Harlech
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Extract

Richard Price argued for democratic institutions on the ground that each individual has a moral responsibility for the good government of his community. This assumption that political responsibilities are moral responsibilities was in turn derived from the belief that each individual has a continuous duty to create in his own personality and in his relations with his fellow men the conditions of the virtuous life. Popular political responsibility was thus defended by the extension of a rigorous moral athleticism into the sphere of social arrangements. The dominating feature of this demand for comprehensive reform and reconstruction is the attempt to construe the moral life as a process in which the individual struggles to recreate himself in the light of his most mature conceptions. These conceptions, Price maintained, are determined rationally, and that they are so is presented in two different ways. Either as in the case of the principles of moral judgment they are held to be the objects of a rational intuition; or as in the defence of democratic institutions they are derived from an abstract construction of the demands of moral personality.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 34 , Issue 131 , October 1959 , pp. 308 - 322
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1959

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References

page 308 note 1 Published in London, 1790, and contained in Vol. X of the Works of Richard Price, a collection of his writings in ten volumes which was made by his nephew, William Morgan, and published in London, 1815–16

page 309 note 1 Discourse on the Love of Our Country, p. 54.

page 309 note 2 Unfortunately, Price never expounded his political philosophy in great detail nor did he devote to it the thorough exposition which he gave to his ethical position in the Review of the Principal Questions in Morals, 1758 (Vide: Raphael's, D. D. edition, Oxford, 1948). His main contributions, in addition to the Discourse on the Love of Our Country, to the discussion of political problems are to be found in the following writings. Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America, 1776 (Works, Vol. VII), Additional Observations on the Nature and Value of Civil Liberty, 1777 (Works, Vol. VII). Both these pamphlets were reprinted together with a General Introduction and Supplement in 1778. Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, and the means of making it a benefit to the World, 1784 (Works, Vol. VIII). The Evidence for a future period of Improvement in the State of Mankind, 1787 (Works, Vol. VIII). Sermons (Works, Vols. IX & X)Google Scholar

page 310 note 1 Op. cit., p. 3.

page 310 note 2 Ibid.

page 310 note 3 Review, p. 181.

page 311 note 1 Review, p. 119.

page 311 note 2 Sermon No. XI, Works, Vol. X, p. 208.

page 312 note 1 Review, p. 227.

page 312 note 2 Review, p. 224.

page 314 note 1 Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, pp. 6, 7.

page 314 note 2 Ibid., p. 87.

page 315 note 1 Works (Bohn edition), Vol. II, p. 366.

page 315 note 2 Works, Vol. II, p. 294.

page 316 note 1 Works, Vol. II, p. 365.

page 316 note 2 Works, Vol. III, p. 78.

page 316 note 3 Review, ch. vii.

page 319 note 1 Evidence for a Future Period of Improvement, p. 29.

page 319 note 2 Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, p. 17.

page 320 note 1 Works, Vol. VI, p. 135.

page 320 note 2 Works, Vol. III, pp. 112, 113.