The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left

by Yuval Levin

Overview

An acclaimed portrait of Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the origins of modern conservatism and liberalism

In The Great Debate, Yuval Levin explores the roots of the left/right political divide in America by examining the views of the men who best represented each side at its origin: Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. Striving to forge a new political path in the tumultuous age of the American and French revolutions, these two ideological titans sparred over moral and philosophical questions about the nature of political life and the best approach to social change: radical and swift, or gradual and incremental. The division they articulated continues to shape our political life today.

Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the basis of our political order and Washington's acrimonious rifts today, The Great Debate offers a profound examination of what conservatism, progressivism, and the debate between them truly amount to.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465062980
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	12/02/2014
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	136,436
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Yuval Levin is director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute and the editor of National Affairs. A former member of the White House domestic policy staff under George W. Bush, he has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, among many other publications. His previous books include The Fractured Republic and The Great Debate. He lives in Maryland.

Table of Contents

One. Two Lives in the Arena
Two. Nature and History
Three. Justice and Order
Four. Choice and Obligation
Five. Reason and Prescription
Six. Revolution and Reform
Seven. Generations and the Living

Editorial Reviews

09/23/2013
Two seminal thinkers anticipate the modern split between progressives and conservatives in this insightful study of 18th-century political theory. National Affairs editor Levin presents a lucid analysis of the ideological confrontation between Paine—a firebrand of the American and French Revolutions who championed a program of radical change that sought to reconstitute government on the basis of reason, equality and democracy—and Burke, the Irish statesman and British parliamentarian who defended the enduring value of tradition and hierarchy. In their jousting—the two men were acquainted and sometimes aimed broadsides at one another—Levin finds and elucidates fundamental issues in political philosophy: individual rights versus social obligations; the extent to which scientific rationalism and expertise can comprehend and regulate society; revolution and reform as competing modes of political change. Appropriately, Levin spends less time on Paine, whose creed of individual rights and representative government feels very up-to-date, than he does explicating Burke, whose rationales for monarchy and social subordination can seem antiquated and mystical; he succeeds in establishing the continued relevance of Burke’s thought and prescient critique of revolutionary excesses. Levin’s Paine and Burke don’t line up perfectly along the Democrat/Republican divide, but he unearths the roots of latter-day convictions in their far-reaching argument. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

"Yuval Levin, whose sharp thinking was honed at the University of Chicago s Committee on Social Thought...is one of conservatism s most sophisticated and measured explicators."—George F. Will, Washington Post

"[The Great Debate's] architecture is clever and intellectually persuasive.... A thoughtful introduction to this famous paradigmatic opposition."—Washington Post

"In a Burkean manner, Mr. Levin enriches through wisdom rather than prescription. He gives us something more than a manual of past lessons—namely, the historical framework to achieve greater understanding."—Wall Street Journal

"In this lively and probing book, Levin, one of the most influential conservative writers in the United States, looks at the ideas of Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, towering figures in the late-eighteenth-century transatlantic Enlightenment...The Great Debate won't settle any of the political disputes roiling U.S. politics today, but those who read it carefully will find it easier to understand their opponents—and perhaps even to find some common ground."—Foreign Affairs

"Levin enters into another great debate that riles academia: between historians insisting upon the uniqueness and specificity of events, which defy abstractions and generalizations, and philosophers impatient with the ephemera and contingency of events, which do not rise to the level of truth and certainty. Here too he rises to the occasion, satisfying the scruples of historians and philosophers alike. From a debate raged about an event centuries ago, he deduces truths that illuminate some of our most vexing political and social problems today."—Gertrude Himmelfarb, Weekly Standard

"The Great Debate is a masterful and loving piece of work, the kind of solo performance that commands mute attention and makes even a crinkled cough-drop wrapper sound like an errant clang of the gong. It does more than announce Levin's arrival; it is, in itself, a refutation—this time with an inerrant clang—of the factitious notion that intellectual conservatism is a bygone thing."—Commentary

"[A] wonderful book."—Los Angeles Times

"The definitive intellectual history of an argument so powerful that it echoes to the present day."—National Review Online

From the Publisher

2013-10-20
A conservative journalist traces our current sharp political schism back to the writings of conservative Edmund Burke (1729–1797) and liberal Thomas Paine (1738–1809). Despite his conservative credentials, National Affairs founder and editor Levin (Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy, 2008) maintains a generally disinterested balance throughout--although at times it reads like an earnest term paper from a talented, assiduous student: standard comparison-contrast organization, lots of lengthy block quotations. He begins by noting how Burke and Paine first met (they dined together in 1788), their early amiable relations and their later fierce exchanges in print. Levin then provides a biographical sketch of each (adding more as the argument advances) before commencing to compare their philosophical and political positions. Paine, he shows, believed in man as a natural creature--and that governments should be more consistent with his nature and should rest on principles derived from reason. Burke, by contrast, argued that we must learn from the past, continue what works and gradually change what doesn't. These two basic approaches reoccur throughout the other topics Levin discusses: justice (the two men had very different notions of equality), obligation (Paine believed choice was more important), reason and prescription, revolution and reform, and our obligations to all generations, not just to the new, revolutionary one. Concluding, Levin chides both sides in today's acrimonious climate, pointing out weaknesses in their positions and emphases. The author has done a tremendous amount of research and seems to have read every major work by both figures, doing his best both to state their positions clearly (and fairly) and to note their relevance in today's America. He consigns to endnotes some of the subtleties and ambiguities of their positions. Some arresting reminders of our political past--would that Levin's prose featured some of the fire flaring from his principals' pens.

Kirkus Reviews