-
Essay / A comparison between Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Burke and Marx
Therefore, although his theory, full of terms such as "prejudice", may seem truly anti-minority to modern readers, it is actually much more tolerant of minorities. . The first thing we need to understand about Burke is that he is a conservative. Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau all begin their arguments by trying to return to certain first principles, or natural laws, of human beings, and begin to construct their arguments using these laws as axioms. Unlike all of them, Burke believes that politics, or "the science of building a Commonwealth, or of renovating it, or of reforming it," is learned through experience but not taught. a priori (Burke, 61). He argues that the experience required to build a government is far more than one could acquire in a lifetime. For Burke, it is very dangerous to overthrow a government that has existed for a long time and create a new one with new, untested theories. Therefore, the prejudices that Burke speaks of must be understood as traditions. They are not necessarily rational, or at least cannot be justified by a theory. However, Burke values and cherishes them, because he believes that they are the wisdom of our ancestors and that they contain more reason than each individual has..