“Society is indeed a contract... It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.”Edmund Burke · Reflecții asupra Revoluției din Franța · 1790 · paragraful despre natura contractului social
Each generation inherits a cultural capital it did not create and owes it to those to come.
Burke rejects the idea that society is merely a contract among the living for mutual advantage. The partnership includes science, art, morals, and institutions inherited from the dead and owed to the unborn. The mechanism is continuity: each generation receives a cultural capital it did not create. Language is a clear example: nobody invents it, yet everyone uses and passes it on.
If society is a partnership across generations, then today's decisions do not belong only to the living. We are like tenants who find a furnished house and must leave it better for those who come after. This changes how we judge a reform: not just who wins now, but what our children inherit. A budget that sells public forest for quick money looks profitable, yet drains the capital we received. The question becomes: what right do we have to consume what we did not create?
Why it matters It helps argue why institutions, traditions, and common goods deserve care, not just markets and immediate profit.