The great primaeval contract of eternal society : Edmund Burke’s views on the social contract

Abstract

At first glance, the attempt to find common ground between Edmund Burke and Kristijonas Donelaitis is gratuitous and doomed to fail: biographically, nothing connects them, and they cannot even have heard of each other. Yet what they at least have in common is a deep-seated interest in the notions of time and duration: for the Lithuanian poet, the ever-recurring seasons provide human life with substance and pattern; for the Irish philosopher, they are of the essence of what nations are all about. As a critic of contractual theories, Burke argues that society is eternal, and proceeds from a primaval contract that was always there. He is particularly critical of the view that the earth belongs exclusively to the living, a view that has come to be associated with Thomas Jefferson: for Burke, if such were really the case, men would be no better than “the flies of a summer.” This image immediately conjures up a vision of the summer months, and makes us realize that Burke and Donelaitis are in fact kindred spirits: they share a common Protestant faith, a concern for the downtrodden peasantry, a view of the social contract as primaval, and the belief that men belong to deeply rooted, historical communities that make them truly human.