Though usually Edmund Burke is identified as the first to
articulate the principles of a modern conservative political
tradition, arguably he was preceded by a Scotsman who is better
known for espousing a brilliant concept of skepticism. As Laurence
Bongie notes, "David Hume was undoubtedly the
eighteenth-century British writer whose works were most widely known
and acclaimed on the Continent during the later Enlightenment
period. Hume's impact [in France] was of undeniable importance,
greater even for a time than the related influence of Burke,
although it represents a contribution to French
counter-revolutionary thought which, unlike that of Burke, has been
almost totally ignored by historians to this day." The bulk of
Bongie's work consists of the writings of French readers of Hume who
were confronted, first, by the ideology of human perfection and,
finally, by the actual terrors of the French Revolution. Offered in
French in the original edition of
David Hume published by Oxford University Press in
1965, these vitally important writings have been translated by the
author into English for the Liberty Fund second edition. In his
foreword, Donald Livingston observes that "If conservatism is
taken to be an intellectual critique of the first attempt at modern
total revolution, then the first such event was not the French but
the Puritan revolution, and the first systematic critique of this
sort of act was given by Hume."
Laurence L. Bongie is Professor Emeritus of French at the
University of British Columbia.
Donald Livingston is Professor of Philosophy at Emory University.
