Edmund Burke and Tom Paine: political philosophy comparison

Edmund Burke & Tom Paine

The concept of the social contract is one that has fascinated philosophers for years. It is also a concept that many businesses today are adopting in order to helps employees and managers function together in an optimally beneficial way. The exact elements of the social contract however tend to differ according to the specific ideology held by a society or group of people during a specific time, or indeed according to the individual ideology of each person. This can be seen clearly in the widely different views on the concept held by Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine.

According to Burke, both history and the future play a very important role in how human beings are required to conduct their lives. The lessons from the past, according to the philosopher, are then to serve as a guideline for the present to ensure sustainability for future generations. Based upon this philosophy, Burke's ideal is that the social contract refers to the "agreement," or contract, between the people living the present, those who have died, and those yet to be born.

Burke's view of society was of a large organic being, of which each human being is a part, like a cell in a body. Society itself is then seen as a self-perpetuating, living being. If the cells in the body do not ensure this perpetuation, society will come to an end. Instead, human beings are to accept that they live temporarily as part of an eternal society. For this reason, it is vitally important that the currently living are to respect the traditions and wisdom of their ancestors. This wisdom is a better basis for action than abstract, disconnected reasoning.

In his ideal of the social contract, Burke rebelled against the human tendency towards rapid and dynamic change. Such a paradigm disregards the past in order to create something entirely new that is based upon current needs rather than past wisdom or future sustainability. Hence it disrespects what Burke sees as the vital link between the human past, present and future. It voids the social contract. According to Burke, the system of destruction and rebuilding disrespects the past and its institutions, and is likely to end in societal chaos (Andrew Webster). Burke therefore advocates an adherence to the past, because the past is the roots upon which the future of society is to be built.

The biggest contrast between Thomas Paine and Edward Burke in their views on the social contract is that Paine rejects the religious adherence to history that Burke advocates. Instead, Paine suggests that each society during each time period has a right to discard what no longer applies to them, and to create new paradigms, laws and institutions. His basis for this was the equality of all human beings in the eyes of God.

Paine's social contract is then based upon the current needs of society and the protection of individual right, rather than on the collective view of society. Like Burke, Paine also saw the contract as an agreement among various human beings. Paine's view is however much narrower than that of Burke: instead of over millennia of development, the social contract refers to the agreement among all members of society in order to establish a legitimate government (Steven Kreis). This contract ensures that all people retain their natural rights under the government, although the individual right to use force is prohibited. In this way, political rights and sovereignty lay with the people rather than the government. A government that is not chosen in this way is not legitimate according to the social contract.