This collection of essays shifts the focus of scholarly debate away from the themes that have traditionally dominated the study of Edmund Burke. In the past, largely ideology-based or highly textual studies have tended to paint Burke as a “prophet” or “precursor” of movements as diverse as conservatism, political pragmatism, and romanticism. In contrast, these essays address prominent issues in contemporary society—multiculturalism, the impact of postmodern and relativist methodologies, the boundaries of state-church relationships, and religious tolerance in modern societies—by emphasizing Burke’s earlier career and writings and focusing on his position on historiography, moral philosophy, jurisprudence, aesthetics, and philosophical skepticism.

The essays in this collection, written by some of today’s most renowned Burke scholars, will radically challenge our deeply rooted assumptions about Burke, his thought, and his place in the history of Western political philosophy.

Ian Crowe is a Senior Fellow of the Russell Kirk Center and director of the Edmund Burke Society of America. He is currently an associate professor of History at Brewton-Parker College, Mount Vernon, Georgia, and book review editor of the journal Studies in Burke and His Time.

Ian’s research interest is the career and writings of the eighteenth-century Irish politician and thinker Edmund Burke, regarded by many as the father of modern intellectual conservatism, and a figure whose thought was central to the writings of Russell Kirk. He also writes and lectures on the wider history of the development of British and American conservative thought since the French Revolution. His publications include An Imaginative Whig: Reassessing the Life and Thought of Edmund Burke (2005), The Enduring Edmund Burke (1997), Unwelcome Truths (1997), “The Hereditary Peerage: a Voice in and for Rural Britain” in Another Country, and a number of articles and reviews in Modern Age, The Civil War Book Review, The University Bookman, and Conference and Common Room.

Ian's monograph study of Edmund Burke’s “pre-political” writings, Patriotism and Public Spirit: Edmund Burke and the Role of the Critic in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain, is scheduled for publication by Stanford University Press in August 2012. See details at Amazon or the publisher. He is also compiling and editing an anthology of some of Burke’s less familiar works. Provisionally entitled “Edmund Burke and the Politics of Common Sense,” this project is designed to increase awareness of the breadth and diversity of Burke’s thought among students and the wider public.

Ian is concerned to make Burke’s historical and intellectual influence on conservative thought in Europe and the United States recognizable to young scholars, and it was this interest that first brought him to the Russell Kirk Center. His efforts to move Burke studies on from the ideologically driven debates of the Cold War period are also a tribute to the spirit of scholarship in which Russell Kirk, Peter Stanlis, and Francis Canavan invigorated Burke studies and ensured that Burke’s thought would remain vital and accessible to future generations.

Ian studied Modern History at the University of Oxford and earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before moving to Chapel Hill, he and his wife were resident in Mecosta, where he served as program director for the Kirk Center from 2000 to 2002.