A translation of Joseph De Maistre's critique of Rousseau providing a historical forum for understanding the intellectual qualities of the counter-revolution from 1792 to 1797. Obviously, De Maistre's arguments were not successful, but they are valuable in terms of exploring Rousseau's ideologies, in particular his belief in the natural goodness of man and popular sovereignty. Although the two men are usually seen as polar opposites, De Maistre's critique reveals ambiguities that make him seem surprisingly more similar (...) than he would have admitted. Lebrun (history, U. of Manitoba) provides a qualitative introduction. Canadian card order number C95-900-929-9. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Although often neglected, this work is crucial for an understanding of Maistre's epistemology, which formed the philosophical basis for his critique of modern science as well as for his criticisms of other aspects of Enlightenment thought. Given Maistre's stature in the history of conservative thought, his critique of Bacon remains significant for what it tells us about Maistre's own thought, for what it reveals about attitudes toward science in his time, and for its relevance for issues that (...) remain under debate today. (shrink)

On the State of Nature and On the Sovereignty of the People are Maistre's most comprehensive treatment of Rousseau's ideas and his most sustained critique of the ideological foundations of the revolution. On the State of Nature, a detailed critique of Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality, focuses on Rousseau's belief in the natural goodness of man; On the Sovereignty of the People, a critique of Social Contract, explores Rousseau's theory of popular sovereignty. In Maistre's (...) eyes Rousseau encouraged the socially destructive individualism that lay at the heart of the French Revolution. However, the essays reveal some surprising ambiguities in the relationship between two seminal thinkers who are usually thought of as polar opposites, suggesting that Maistre's vision was more akin to Rousseau's than he would have admitted. Against Rousseau offers valuable insights into the evolution of Maistre's counter-revolutionary ideas during the crucial years of 1792-97 and illustrates his remarkable insights into society and politics. It is vital to any consideration of his thought or the counter-revolutionary movement in eighteenth-century France. (shrink)

Although often neglected, An Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon is crucial to understand the epistemological basis for Maistre's critique of modern science as well as his criticisms of other aspects of Enlightenment thought. Given Maistre's stature in the history of conservative thought, his critique of Bacon remains significant for what it tells us about Maistre's own thought, what it reveals about attitudes toward science in his time, and what it contributes to issues that are still debated (...) today. The work also showcases Maistre's polemical skills and his powerful prose style. Richard Lebrun's annotated translation includes Maistre's complete text, an extensive introduction that places the work in context and provides a critical exposition and assessment of Maistre's criticisms of Bacon, biographical notes on persons cited or mentioned by Maistre, and a bibliography. Differences between Maistre's manuscript and the printed text, first published fifteen years after the author's death, are noted, and Maistre's numerous citations have been identified, verified, and translated, making this the only authoritative and fully accurate edition of the work in either French or English. (shrink)

Written and set on the banks of the Neva, St Petersburg Dialogues is a startlingly relevant analysis of the human prospect at the end of the twentieth century. As the literary critic George Steiner has remarked, "the age of the Gulag and of Auschwitz, of famine and ubiquitous torture,... nuclear threat, the ecological laying waste of our planet, the leap of endemic, possibly pandemic, illness out of the very matrix of libertarian progress" is exactly what Maistre foretold. In the (...) Dialogues Maistre addressed a number of topics which are discussed briefly or not at all in his other works already available in English. These include an apologetic for traditional Christian beliefs about providence, reflections on the social role of the public executioner and the "divinity" of war, a critique of John Locke's sensationalist psychology, meditations on prayer and sacrifice, and a mini-course on "illuminism." The literary form is that of the "philosophical conversation" -- one that allowed Maistre to be deliberately provocative and to indulge his taste for paradox, a "methodical extravagance" that he judged particularly appropriate for the eighteenth-century salon. Translator and editor Richard Lebrun provides a full scholarly edition of this classic work, complete with an introduction, chronology, critical bibliography, and generous explanatory notes. The Dialogues will be of interest to scholars of literary history as well as the history of ideas. (shrink)

José Ignacio Moreno es uno de los fundadores de la independencia del Perú. En calidad de tal acompañó el proyecto del General rioplatense José de San Martín de transformar en 1822 la monarquía peruana en un reino independiente. Pero, a diferencia de la multitud de sus contemporáneos, la historiografía apenas lo presenta como un circunstante en la epopeya de la emancipación, de quien no se conserva ni un retrato. El motivo es la extraña adherencia de este personaje a las ideas (...) del ultramontanismo y su temprana cercanía con la obra del contrarrevolucionario francés Joseph de Maistre. Un discurso monárquico extremista en 1822 lo colocaría como el fundador involuntario del Perú como República. (shrink)

The 18th century figure, Joseph de Maistre, has long been regarded as characterising the Counter-Enlightenment, but his intellectual relationship to 18th-century philosophy remains unexplored. This is a comprehensive assessment of his response to the Enlightenment.

El presente artículo discute sobre la inclusión del contrarrevolucionario Joseph de Maistre en la problemática categoría de reaccionario político, pero sostiene que se trata de un conservador. Para llevar a cabo este objetivo, se hace un análisis de tipo teórico de acuerdo con las exigencias de la hermenéutica textual y considerando los aportes de la historia de las ideas y de la historia conceptual. Con esto en mente, en la primera parte de este trabajo se detectan los problemas (...) del uso del concepto de reacción para la teoría política y se demuestra su injustificada aplicación al pensamiento de De Maistre. En la segunda parte, se despliega el concepto de conservadurismo sustantivo para definir la corriente conservadora con vistas a, en la tercera parte, reconsiderar su obra a partir del marco conceptual presentado. Se concluye la conveniencia heurística de la categoría propuesta para la comprensión del autor saboyano. (shrink)

Long known solely as fascism s precursor, Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) re-emerges in this volume as a versatile thinker with a colossally diverse posterity whose continuing relevance in Europe is ensured by his theorization of the ...

Der in Chambéry geborene Joseph de Maistre ist, mit Louis-Ambroise de Bonald, einer der vehementesten Gegner der Französischen Revolution. Seine 1796 veröffentlichten Considérations sur la France schließen sich an Burkes Considerations on the Revolution in France an, übertreffen diese aber noch an Vehemenz, bedingt vor allem durch de Maistres ultramontane Einstellungen. In seinem posthum veröffentlichten De la souveraineté populaire setzt sich de Maistre polemisch mit Rousseaus Thesen auseinander, in denen er den Keim der Revolution sieht.

Der in Chambéry geborene Joseph de Maistre ist, mit Louis-Ambroise de Bonald, einer der vehementesten Gegner der Französischen Revolution. Seine 1796 veröffentlichten Considérations sur la France schließen sich an Burkes Considerations on the Revolution in France an, übertreffen diese aber noch an Vehemenz, bedingt vor allem durch de Maistres ultramontane Einstellungen. In seinem posthum veröffentlichten De la souveraineté populaire setzt sich de Maistre polemisch mit Rousseaus Thesen auseinander, in denen er den Keim der Revolution sieht.

Joseph de Maistre is usually portrayed as Edmund Burke’s French counterpart, as they both wrote important treatises against the French Revolution. Although Maistre did share many of Burke’s conservative political views, he was much more than a political thinker. He was above all a religious thinker who interpreted political events through the prism of a particular retributionist theology. According to this theology, God punishes evil deeds, not only in the afterlife, but also in this terrestrial life; and (...) sometimes, he may even use human tyrants as instruments of his wrath. This interpretation especially evident in Maistre’s Considerations sur la France, an early work in his philosophical career. In that book, Maistre interprets the French Revolution as divine punishment, and in that regard, his views bear some similarities to the Deuteronomist historian in the Hebrew Bible, who interpreted the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian Exile, as divine punishment in retribution of Israel’s sins. (shrink)

Long known solely as fascism’s precursor, Joseph de Maistre re-emerges in this volume as a versatile thinker with a colossally diverse posterity whose continuing relevance in Europe is ensured by his theorization of the encounter between tradition and modernity.

The essay analyses the development of Joseph de Maistre’s ideas on war and peace. Commonly seen as advocating militarism and bloodshed, Maistre’s insights and propositions on the nature of war are in fact highly modern and original. As a witness to the European upheaval of 1792-1815, Maistre emphasizes the indeterminacy and unpredictability of modern war, and its irreducibility to a science or a doctrine. In order to regulate and restrain warfare, Maistre argues, it is necessary (...) to cultivate public opinion, an elusive and difficult process which can only be sustained by informal cultural institutions. The essay also examines the legacy of Maistre’s ideas on war and peace in political thought. (shrink)

Maistre’s Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg is modeled on Plato’s Laws. Plato and Maistre both demand the political control of natural inquiry, and implement these controls through theodictic conversation. Maistre, following the lead of Plato’s legislator, publishes an exemplary conversation about providence between a young man tempted by an atheistic Enlightenment and two older, wiser, and more learned men of affairs. Maistre defends providentialism from materialist interpretations of natural science even as Plato defended it from ancient materialism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Joseph de Maistre’s Civilization and its DiscontentsGraeme GarrardIn his study of Sigmund Freud’s social and political thought Paul Roazen claims that Freud was the first to depict the human psyche as torn between two fundamentally antithetical tendencies:The notion of a human nature in conflict with itself, disrupted by the opposition of social and asocial inclinations, the view that the social self develops from an asocial nucleus but (...) that the social trends are also dynamic and emotional in nature, and finally the conception that reason’s control can be extended by a detailed knowledge of the repressed asocial tendencies—all this was not known before Freud. 1Although Freud is undoubtedly the most famous modern exponent of this conception of human nature at war with itself, he was by no means its first, let alone only, proponent. Kant, for example, wrote of the “unsocial sociability of men” over a century earlier. 2 An even more unlikely precursor of this basic assumption of Freudian social psychology is the Catholic reactionary Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821). The social theory elaborated by this arch-paladin of throne and altar—who was, quite literally, plus royalist que le roi, plus catholique que le Pape—is strikingly similar to that expressed by Freud in his famous essay Civilization and Its Discontents (1929). 3 [End Page 429]Both conceived of the individual as “a being both social and evil,” 4 perpetually struggling to prevent the innate aggressiveness of the species from plunging society into a Hobbesian war of all against all. That is why Freud insisted that it “has to use its utmost efforts in order to set limits to man’s aggressive instincts,” 5 a view advanced over a century earlier by Maistre. Events in Europe after 1789 led many conservatives such as Maistre, as events after 1914 would lead Freud, to reject the common Enlightenment view of human beings as naturally sociable and of social life as a reflection of the spontaneous harmony of a natural world governed by laws established by God and discoverable by reason. In Maistre’s view, social and political life are better understood as the artificial and fundamentally precarious imposition of order on the violent flux of nature. Anticipating Freud, he asserts that individuals, if left to their own devices in society, would soon be plunged into a state of social warfare identical to that which Hobbes had attributed to the state of nature. His particular brand of extreme conservative thought derives its social and political authoritarianism from these deeply pessimistic social assumptions, which leave him with more in common (on this subject) with Freud than with either the Enlightenment or fellow conservatives such as Edmund Burke.Homo Homini LupusThe pessimistic, even tragic, argument of Civilization and Its Discontents is that human beings are driven by extremely powerful instincts, the full satisfaction of which is incompatible with social life. According to Freud, the “cultural frustration” that ensues from this incompatibility “dominates the large field of social relationships between human beings. As we already know, it is the cause of the hostility against which all civilizations has to struggle.” 6 Unhappiness, understood as the non-satisfaction of these basic libidinal urges, is therefore a necessary part of human association. “One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be ‘happy,’” Freud writes pessimistically, “is not included in the plan of ‘Creation.’” 7Freud also argues that, in addition to these basically erotic instincts, there is a “constitutional inclination in human beings to be aggressive towards one another,” 8 which “constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization.” 9 [End Page 430] This ineliminable tendency accounts for Freud’s Hobbesian view of the precariousness of civilization: 10[M]en are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbour is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to... (shrink)

Il saggio si propone di spiegare una ironia del destino dell’opera di Joseph de Maistre: l’interesse di Isaiah Berlin e ricostruisce questo interesse rispetto alle sue occasioni e alle sue ragioni. Rispetto alle occasioni, intende rintracciare nella sfilacciata opera di saggista di Berlin la presenza di Maistre e ricostruirne l’interpretazione complessiva; rispetto alle sue ragioni mette invece a fuoco l’interesse nei confronti del rapporto tra contro-illuminismo e totalitarismo. Infatti, è questo nesso che rende chiaro il ruolo di (...) profeta ultramoderno che viene paradossalmente affidato al controrivoluzionario dagli interpreti novecenteschi. L’antropologia e la visione della storia del conte de Maistre illuminano il fenomeno del totalitarismo: Carl Schmitt lo invoca e ne incorpora la dottrina nella sua definizione della sovranità e Isaiah Berlin lo convoca per spiegare la passione umana per l’auto-sacrificio su cui (non solo) i totalitarismi si reggono. Eppure, la storia dell’ultimo secolo impedisce agli interpreti novecenteschi di comprendere fino in fondo la teologia politica di Maistre, di cui non rendono abbastanza conto le categorie di decisionismo (Schmitt) e irrazionalismo (Berlin). (shrink)

Le "scandale" Joseph de Maistre est celui d'un auteur associé à l'extrême droite catholique, qui, au début du XIXe siècle, exige de restaurer la souveraineté de Dieu, du Pape et du Roi, fustige la Réforme, les Lumières, la Révolution, justifie les guerres, le bourreau, l'Inquisition... Mais comment se fait-il que ce même auteur soit également le premier à dénoncer l'esclavage, la persécution de l'étranger, à prendre le parti des femmes? Le réexamen du "procès" Joseph de Maistre, (...) à la lumière du "scandale" René Girard, donne une leçon très simple : qu'on y regarde à deux fois, avant de lui tirer dessus! (shrink)

This essay remarks upon a seeming paradox in the philosophical anthropology of Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821). He presents a traditional Platonic asymmetry of reason and the passions. This is put to the service of an Origenistic-universalistic theology that revolves around questions of guilt, punishment and redemption and a theory of sacrifice. Maistre is far from being the irrationalist that many political theorists observe, even if he presents an antagonistic relationship between reason and passions, the rational self and (...) its desires. The apparently grim and sanguinary Platonism of the Savoyard Count can be neatly compared with Kant and contrasted with Hume’s sanguine, if not breezy, view of reason as a slave to the passions. (shrink)

Resumen en español. En esta tesis indagamos en el pensamiento de tres autores contrarrevolucionarios europeos de la primera mitad del siglo XIX (1789-1848): Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) y Juan Donoso Cortés (1809-1853). A partir de un estudio de sus obras principales, destacamos las limitaciones de las caracterizaciones contemporáneas sobre el pensamiento conservador y proponemos una clasificación alternativa ajustada a los orígenes políticos de dicha corriente: la distinción entre un conservadorismo como sustantivo y un conservadorismo como (...) adjetivo. Delineada esta distinción, que funciona como hipótesis de trabajo, demostramos su capacidad heurística para conceptualizar el conservadorismo de los autores escogidos. Concluimos destacando las ventajas del punto de vista propuesto para definir a esta corriente de la teoría política y su capacidad de extenderse a otros autores, períodos y corrientes. (shrink)

Le comte Joseph de Maistre fut un ennemi radical des Lumières.

El problema de la teodicea ha sido una de las grandes preocupaciones del pensamiento religioso en Occidente: si Dios es absolutamente bueno y omnipotente, ¿cómo puede existir el mal en el mundo?, y ¿por qué sufren los virtuosos y gozan los impíos? En la Antigüedad, el Libro de Job intentó ofrecer una respuesta que perduró hasta tiempos modernos. En el siglo XVII, Leibniz ofreció una respuesta mucho más racionalizada, propia de los tiempos modernos. Joseph de Maistre, un contrarrevolucionario (...) del siglo XIX, hizo de la teodicea uno de sus temas centrales. El siguiente artículo es un estudio de la forma en que De Maistre aborda este tema. (shrink)

Joseph de Maistre's reputation as a writer is legendary. His style, unique and alive, moulded the French language anew. It sabotaged his attempts at anonymous publication and earned him, through the centuries, the praises of enemies and admirers. Yet the relationship between Maistre's thought and writing remains ill-known. This collection is the first to examine how Maistre's ideas - including his denunciation of the written word - intersected with his writing practices and personas. The essays disclose (...) an author formed by duty and affectionate relationships, by the conventions of public combat, by an intense sense of history, and by the imperatives of Revolution."--Series page. (shrink)