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Revision as of 19:59, 27 April 2004 by Formeruser-81 (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Joseph de Maistre (1753- February 26, 1821), was, in the period following the French Revolution, of the most influential spokesmen for a counterrevolutionary and authoritarian conservatism. The Frenchman de Maistre can be counted with Edmund Burke as one of the originators of the ideology of conservatism that took hold during The Conservative Order in Europe after the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte. De Maistre espoused the restoration of hereditary monarchy, which he regarded as a divinely sanctioned institution. Only absolute monarchy could guarantee "order in society" and avoid the chaos generated by movements like the then-recent French Revolution.
De Maistre was born at Chambéry, in Savoy. His family had settled in Savoy a century earlier, and had attained a high position. He was a pupil of the Jesuits, who, like his parents, inspired him with an intense love of the Roman Catholic religion and detestation of the eighteenth-century philosophical rationalism.
After the outbreak of the French Revolution, he began to write on current events, e.g. Discours à M. le Marquis Costa de Beauregard sur la vie et la mort de ton fils (Discourse to the Marquis Costa de Beauregard on the Life and Death of his Son, 1795) and Cinq paradoxes a la Marquise de Nav... (Five Paradoxes for the Marquise de Nav..., 1795). In Considerations sur la France (Considerations on France, 1796), he maintains the thesis that France has a mission from God: France is the principal instrument of good and of evil on earth. Maistre looks on the Revolution as a providential occurrence: the monarchy, the aristocracy, the whole of the old French society, instead of turning the powerful influence of French civilization to benefit mankind, had used it to foster the doctrines of the eighteenth-century philosophers. The crimes of the Reign of Terror were the punishment thus merited.
His little book Essai sur le principe générateur des constitutions politiques et des autres institutions humaines (Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions and other Human Institutions, 1809) , centers on the idea is that constitutions are not the artificial products of study but come in due time and under suitable circumstances from God, who slowly brings them to maturity. After the appearance in 1816 of the treatise Sur les délais de la justice divine dans la punition des coupables (On the Delay of Divine Justice in the Punishment of the Guilty), translated from Plutarch, de Maistre published in 1819 his masterpiece Du Pape (The Pope). The work is divided into four parts. In the first he argues that, in the Church, the pope is sovereign, and that it is an essential characteristic of all sovereign power that that its decisions should be subject to no appeal. Consequently, the pope is infallible in his teaching, since it is by his teaching that he exercises his sovereignty. In the remaining divisions the author examines the relations of the pope and the temporal powers, civilization and the welfare of nations, and the schismatical Churches. He establishes that nations require to be guaranteed against abuses of power by a sovereignty superior to all others. Now, this sovereignty can be none but the papacy, which, even in the Middle Ages had already saved European civilization from the barbarians. As to the schismatical Churches, the writer thinks that they will inevitably fall into philosophic indifference. For "no religion can resist science, except one."
Besides a voluminous correspondence, de Maistre left two posthumous works. One of these, L'examen de la Philosophie de Bacon, (An Examination of the Philosophy of Francis Bacon, 1836), is an attack on John Locke and Condillac, and in general on the French philosophers of the eighteenth century; de Maistre considers Bacon as the father of their system. The Soirées de St. Pétersbourg (The St. Petersburg Dialogues, 1821) is a reply in the form of a dialogue to the objection against Providence drawn from the existence of evil in the world. For de Maistre, the existence of evil, far from obscuring the designs of God, throws a new light on them; for the moral world and the physical world are inter-related. Physical evil exists only because there has been, and there is, moral evil. So humanity which has always believed in the necessity of this expiation, has had recourse not only to prayer, but to sacrifice, that is, the shedding of blood, the merits of the innocent being applied to the guilty, a law as mysterious as it is indubitable, and which (in the opinion of the author) explains the existence and the perpetuity of war.
An enthusiastic believer in the principle of authority, which the Revolution tried to destroy, Maistre defends it everywhere: in the State by extolling the monarchy, in the Church by exalting the privileges of the papacy; in the world by glorifying the rights and the conduct of God. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910 describes his style as "strong, lively, picturesque," and adds, "animation and good humour temper his dogmatic tone. He possesses a wonderful facility in exposition, precision of doctrine, breadth of learning, and dialectical power."
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This article incorporates text from the public domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910. Please update as needed.