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| Author | Edmund Burke |
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| Language | English |
| Subject | Philosophical anarchism |
| Genre | Political satire |
| Publisher | M. Cooper |
Publication date | 1756 |
| Publication place | Great Britain |
| ISBN | 0-86597-009-2 |
| OCLC | 1102756444 |
| Followed by | On the Sublime and Beautiful |
| Text | A Vindication of Natural Society at Wikisource |
| This article is part of a series on |
| Conservatism in the United Kingdom |
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A Vindication of Natural Society: or, a View of the Miseries and Evils arising to Mankind from every Species of Artificial Society is a work by Edmund Burke published in 1756. It is a satire of Lord Bolingbroke's deism. Burke confronted Bolingbroke not in the sphere of religion but civil society and government, arguing that his arguments against revealed religion could apply to all institutions. So close to Bolingbroke's style was the work, that Burke's ironic intention was missed by some readers, leading Burke in his preface to the second edition (1757) to make plain that it was a satire. Nonetheless, this work was considered by William Godwin to be the first literary expression of philosophical anarchism.[1]
- ^ Godwin attributed the first anarchist writing to Edmund Burke's A Vindication of Natural Society. "Most of the above arguments may be found much more at large in Burke's Vindication of Natural Society; a treatise in which the evils of the existing political institutions are displayed with incomparable force of reasoning and lustre of eloquence…" – footnote, Ch. 2 Political Justice by William Godwin.