Joseph de Maistre

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(b Bowral, NSW, 27 March 1894; d London, 1 March 1968). Australian painter and designer. From 1913 to c. 1915 he studied art with Dattilo Rubbo (1870-1955) and music in Sydney. In 1919 he devised a colour-music theory that allied the colours of the spectrum to musical scales and, with fellow artist Roland Wakelin, held an exhibition of eleven paintings and five room designs based on this theory. The paintings, such as Boat Sheds, Berry's Bay (1919; priv. col., see Johnson, 1988, p. 33), are characterized by simplified forms, large areas of flat paint and heightened, non-representational colour. De Maistre was influenced by international art, but these works are a unique Australian hybrid of Post-Impressionism. Further experiments in 1919 led de Maistre to produce Australia's first abstract paintings: only one documented example is known

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The French political philosopher Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) is considered perhaps the leading contemporary philosophical opponent of the Enlightenment on the European continent.

Joseph de Maistre was born on April 1, 1753, at Chambéry in Savoy, which is now part of France but was then part of the kingdom of Sardinia. His family had for generations been among the leading families of this state, where they served as virtual hereditary magistrates. When the relatively progressive Savoy was invaded by Napoleon's troops, Maistre left his property and family and took refuge in Switzerland and Italy. Although he could have returned to regain his ancestral estates, out of loyalty to his sovereign he endured many lonely and impecunious years, from 1803 until 1817, as ambassador to the Russian court at St. Petersburg.

While in this virtual exile in Russia, awaiting the defeat of Napoleon, Maistre wrote at least 13 volumes of collected works, including letters and diplomatic correspondence, most of which was designed to refute the principles and programs of the philosophical Enlightenment and its concrete historical expression, the French Revolution. He died in Savoy on Feb. 26, 1821.

Maistre's first major work was Considerations on France (1796), in which he perceptively argues that paper constitutions never have and never will establish rights for a people. Disputing in particular the theories of J. J. Rousseau, he maintains that no people can ever give itself a body of rights through the fiat of a social contract. If the rights do not exist in the political tradition of a people, then that written document either will not be followed, or it will be interpreted in such a way that the rights become meaningless. Thus, in examining the political practices of two nations, each with virtually the same bill of rights, it is often found that in the one they are effective guarantees, but in the other they are not. The reason why rights are meaningful in the one nation, then, cannot be the written document which supposedly guarantees them; it can only be the tradition of liberty in that nation, with the written constitution being at most the visible manifestation of these deeply felt ideas. In no sense can the written constitution produce rights where they had not existed in the historical habits of the people. History in turn is determined by divine providence, and thus it alone makes a government truly legitimate. The most influential agent on the world scene is the Church, which civilizes men to their social duties.

Most of Maistre's views are succinctly stated in The Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions, written in 1808-1809 before his much longer major works On the Pope (1819) and Soirées de St. Petersbourg (1821). In this essay may be found his critical analysis of the French Revolution, his providential view of history, and his justification of ultramontanism (the theocratic view that the pope and/or Church was meant to be not only the spiritual but the indirect temporal ruler of the world).

The true constitution of any nation, Maistre contended, was unwritten and the product of a slow organic growth, not the arbitrary consent or will of a moment. There was, in his opinion, no absolutely best form of government, but each nation has a spirit or soul of its own for which a specific form of government is best. In most cases it would be monarchy, since that form had the longest history and was the most common. For France, for example, he advocated a restoration of the monarchy which would be restrained by newly instituted councils named by electors appointed by the king. If such checks on the power of the king proved inadequate, it would be necessary to submit a question to the authority of the pope, whom he believed to be divinely instituted as the ultimate judge for human affairs. It is this aspect of his thought which has led some commentators to characterize him as an ultramontanist, or theocrat. He believed also that because of original sin man was inclined to be selfish; furthermore, all human institutions are the work of God operating through secondary causes, such as the character of a people, and natural, moral, and physical laws. He attacked his opponents for being dogmatic and abstract and for deducing propositions from an arbitrarily and artificially developed ideology. In his own methods he relied on history, experience, and comparative analyses.

Further Reading

A comprehensive edition of Maistre's writings is his Works, translated and edited by Jack Lively (1965). Richard Allen Lebrun, Throne and Altar: The Political and Religious Thought of Joseph de Maistre (1965), is recommended. Elio Gianturco, Joseph de Maistre and Giambattista Vico (1937), includes an extensive bibliography.

Additional Sources

Lebrun, Richard, Joseph de Maistre: an intellectual militant, Kingston, Ont.: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988.

(1753-1821) Political philosopher, born in Savoy. Although a Catholic, he was for fifteen years a Freemason, and briefly supported the French Revolution. But in 1793 the French invasion forced him into exile first in Switzerland, then in Russia as ambassador for the king of Savoy where he remained without his family until 1817. All Maistre's writings derived from his hatred of the Revolution, but instead of a critique of particular events, he started from the form of thought that for him explained them, summarized in the notion of pride. This was a denial of the knowledge of final causes that had existed before the Fall of Adam and Eve, and which was afterwards available only in an instinctive form in the traditions of different societies, or in an individual form, in the consciences of the virtuous. The thinkers who had inspired the revolutionaries believed that they could do better by applying abstract reason, something which the history of the Revolution showed to be ridiculous. After the defeat of Napoleon, Maistre returned to Turin, and established contact with pro-royalist circles in France. He rapidly became dissatisfied with the Restoration, and with the post-revolutionary settlement. In 1819, he published Du pape in which he proposed the Church as the only possible sovereign, but this seems to have been more a matter of disappointment with the situation in Europe than something derived from his social philosophy.

— Carl Slevin

Maistre, Joseph de (1755-1821). The most influential theorist of the Counter-Revolution. Fleeing his native Savoy in 1792 when the armies of Revolutionary France invaded, he pursued a diplomatic career, spending many years in Russia. His thought was closely attuned to the spirit of his violent times. In his writing, the Revolution became at once a satanic, destructive event and a collective act of expiation, a blood sacrifice, presaging national regeneration. Disdaining the idea of individual freedom and roundly condemning what he considered the unholy negations of the Enlightenment, Maistre disinterred a chilling Ultramontanism which he incorporated into a cosmic theodicy. A great stylist, he penned memorable pages on the necessity of suffering and war, and on the centrality of the public executioner, whom he viewed as the cornerstone of a stable hierarchical society. Maistre is at his best in his polemical Considérations sur la France (1797). His belief in papal infallibility is articulated in Du pape (1819). His extended reflections on language, history, and Providence constitute his highly influential Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg (1821). Maistre's Catholic royalism, with its rejection of the notion of individual rights, was to haunt those who in 19th-c. France worked to achieve an accommodation between Christianity and modernity. His thought is an essential component of the authoritarian tradition of the French Right; it also exercised a considerable influence on Baudelaire.

— Ceri Crossley

De Maistre, Joseph Marie (1753-1821) Savoyard conservative and opponent of the Enlightenment; the inspiration for countless French monarchists and Catholics. De Maistre came from an aristocratic background, was educated by Jesuits, and trained as a lawyer. He regarded the French revolution as a divine punishment for France's hospitality to the Enlightenment, and advocated a return to an absolute monarchy, sanctified by the infallible Pope, the guarantor of morality and stability in Europe. Books included Du pape (1821), trs. as On the Pope (1850) and Essai sur le principe générateur des constitutions politiques (1814) trs. as Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions (1847). The somewhat disorganized Les Soirées de St Petersbourg (1821) trs. as St. Petersburg Dialogues (1993), contains a withering attack on Locke, and a panegyric on the role of the executioner in society.

Quotes:

"Man is insatiable for power; he is infantile in his desires and, always discontented with what he has, loves only what he has not. People complain of the despotism of princes; they ought to complain of the despotism of man."

"We are tainted by modern philosophy which has taught us that all is good, whereas evil has polluted everything and in a very real sense all is evil, since nothing is in its proper place."

"If there was no moral evil upon earth, there would be no physical evil."

"In the works of man, everything is as poor as its author; vision is confined, means are limited, scope is restricted, movements are labored, and results are humdrum."

"We are all bound to the throne of the Supreme Being by a flexible chain which restrains without enslaving us. The most wonderful aspect of the universal scheme of things is the action of free beings under divine guidance."

"It can even come about that a created will cancels out, not perhaps the exertion, but the result of divine action; for in this sense, God himself has told us that God wishes things which do not happen because man does not wish them! Thus the rights of men are immense, and his greatest misfortune is to be unaware of them."

See more famous quotes by Joseph De Maistre

Joseph de Maistre

Western philosophy 18th-century philosophy
Portrait of de Maistre by von Vogelstein, c. 1810
Full name	Joseph de Maistre
Born	1 April 1753(1753-04-01)
Died	26 February 1821 (aged 67)
School/tradition	Conservatism, Counter-Enlightenment
Influenced by Plato, Plutarch, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, Edmund Burke
Influenced Charles Baudelaire, Juan Donoso Cortés, Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly, Julius Evola, Carl Schmitt, George Fitzhugh, Francisco Franco, Pat Buchanan

Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre (1 April 1753 – 26 February 1821) was a French-speaking Savoyard lawyer, diplomat, writer, and philosopher. He was the most influential spokesmen for hierarchical authoritarianism in the period immediately following the French Revolution of 1789. Despite his close personal and intellectual ties to France, Maistre remained throughout his life a subject of the King of Sardinia, whom he served as member of the Savoy Senate (1787–1792), ambassador to Russia (1803–1817), and minister of state to the court in Turin (1817–1821).

Maistre argued for the restoration of hereditary monarchy, which he regarded as a divinely sanctioned institution, and for the indirect authority of the Pope over temporal matters. According to Maistre, only governments founded upon a Christian constitution, implicit in the customs and institutions of all European societies but especially in Catholic European monarchies, could avoid the disorder and bloodshed that followed the implementation of rationalist political programs, such as the 1789 revolution. Maistre was an enthusiastic proponent of the principle of hierarchical authority, which the Revolution sought to destroy; he extolled the monarchy, he exalted the privileges of the papacy, and he glorified God's providence.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Political and moral philosophy 3 Influence and repute 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 Work in English translation 8 External links

Biography

Maistre was born in 1753 at Chambéry, in the Duchy of Savoy, which belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia.^[1] His family was of French origin and had settled in Savoy a century earlier, attaining an aristocratic rank.^[2] His father had served as president of the Savoy Senate and his younger brother, Xavier de Maistre, become a military officer and a popular writer of fiction.^[2][3]

Joseph was probably educated by the Jesuits.^[2] After the Revolution, he became an ardent defender of their Order, increasingly associating the spirit of the Revolution with the spirit of the Jesuits' traditional enemies, the Jansenists. After completing his training in the law at the University of Turin in 1774, he followed in his father's footsteps by becoming a Senator in 1787.

An 1856 map of the Kingdom of Sardinia, with the Duchy of Savoy in yellow on top left. Maistre was born in the Duchy in 1753.

Maistre, a member of the progressive Scottish Rite Masonic lodge at Chambéry from 1774 to 1790, was initially sympathetic to reform movements in France and supported the efforts of the magistrates in the Parlements to force King Louis XVI to call the States-General. As a landowner in France, Maistre was eligible to join that body, and there is some evidence that he contemplated that possibility.^[4] He was alarmed, however, by the decision of the States-General to join the three orders of clergy, aristocracy, and commoners into the single legislative body that became the National Constituent Assembly, and he turned against the course of events in France after the revolutionary legislation of 4 August 1789 was passed (see August Decrees).

Maistre fled Savoy after a French revolutionary army invaded the region in 1792. He briefly returned to Chambéry the following year, but decided that he could not support the French-controlled regime and departed for Switzerland, where he visited the salon of Germaine de Staël and discussed politics and theology with her. Maistre then began his career as a counter-revolutionary writer with works such as Lettres d'un royaliste savoisien ("Letters from a Savoyard Royalist", 1793), Discours à Mme. la marquise Costa de Beauregard, sur la vie et la mort de son fils ("Discourse to the Marchioness Costa de Beauregard, on the Life and Death of her Son", 1794) and Cinq paradoxes à la Marquise de Nav... ("Five Paradoxes for the Marchioness of Nav...", 1795).^[1]

In 1803 Maistre was appointed the King of Sardinia's diplomatic envoy to the court of Russia's Tsar, Alexander I in Saint Petersburg. From 1817 until his death, he served in Turin as a magistrate and minister of state for the Kingdom of Sardinia.

Political and moral philosophy

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In Considerations sur la France ("Considerations on France," 1796), Maistre maintained that France had a divine mission as the principal instrument of good and of evil on earth. He considered the Revolution of 1789 a Providential occurrence: the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the whole of the old French society, instead of using the influence of French civilization to benefit mankind, had promoted the destructive atheistic doctrines of the eighteenth-century philosophers. The crimes of the Reign of Terror were the apotheosis and logical consequence of the destructive spirit of the eighteenth century, and the divinely decreed punishment for it.

His short 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), Maistre argues that constitutions are not artificial products but come from God, who slowly brings them to maturity. After the appearance in 1816 of his French translation of Plutarch's treatise On the Delay of Divine Justice in the Punishment of the Guilty, in 1819 Maistre published his masterpiece Du Pape ("On the Pope").

Besides a voluminous correspondence, Maistre left two posthumous works. One of these, L'examen de la philosophie de Bacon, ("An Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon," 1836), develops a spiritualist epistemology out of a critique of Francis Bacon, whom Maistre considers a fountainhead of the Enlightenment in its most destructive form. The Soirées de St. Pétersbourg ("The Saint Petersburg Dialogues", 1821) is a theodicy in the form of a Platonic dialogue, in which Maistre proposes his own solution to the age-old problem of the existence of evil. He argues that evil throws light upon the designs of God. The shedding of blood, the expiation of the sins of the guilty by the innocent, is for Maistre a law as mysterious as it is indubitable, the principle that propels humanity in its return to God, supplying an explanation for the existence and the perpetuity of war.

Influence and repute

Maistre can be counted, with the Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke, as one of the fathers of European conservatism. Since the 19th century, however, his providential, authoritarian, "throne and altar" conception of conservatism has declined in comparison with the more pragmatic conservatism of Burke. His stylistic and rhetorical brilliance, on the other hand, have made him enduringly popular as a writer and controversialist. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910 describes Maistre's 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."^[2] Alphonse de Lamartine, though a political enemy, could not but admire the splendour of Maistre's prose:

That brief, nervous, lucid style, stripped of phrases, robust of limb, did not at all recall the softness of the eighteenth century, nor the declamations of the latest French books: it was born and steeped in the breath of the Alps; it was virgin, it was young, it was harsh and savage; it had no human respect, it felt its solitude; it improvised depth and form all at once… That man was new among the enfants du siècle.

—Alphonse de Lamartine, Souvenirs et portraits^[5]

Portrait by Swiss painter Félix Vallotton, from La Revue blanche, 1er semestre, 1895.

Émile Faguet described Maistre as "a fierce absolutist, a furious theocrat, an intransigent legitimist, apostle of a monstrous trinity composed of Pope, King and Hangman, always and everywhere the champion of the hardest, narrowest and most inflexible dogmatism, a dark figure out of the Middle Ages, part learned doctor, part inquisitor, part executioner".^[6]

Isaiah Berlin in his Freedom and Its Betrayal views his writings as "the last despairing effort of feudalism...to resist the march of progress". In his lecture Two Enemies of the Enlightenment he describes him as an angry man. However in his essay The Hedgehog and the Fox Berlin acknowledges his influence upon Tolstoy's philosophy of history in his novel War and Peace. In the long essay, "Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism", Berlin accounts de Maistre the earliest precursor of the Fascist 'vision of the universe'.

Maistre's critique of the Enlightenment, especially its rationalism, made him an attractive countercultural figure. For example, the Decadent poet Charles Baudelaire declared himself a disciple of the Savoyard counter-revolutionary.^[7] More recently, Pat Buchanan has described Maistre as a "great conservative". ^[8]

See also

• Latin Conservatism

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Berlin, Isaiah (25–8 October, 1965). "The Second Onslaught: Joseph de Maistre and Open Obscurantism" (PDF). Two Enemies of the Enlightenment. Wolfson College, Oxford. http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/lists/nachlass/maistre.pdf. Retrieved 2008-12-11. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d} "Joseph-Marie, Comte de Maistre". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. 
3. ^ "Xavier de Maistre". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. 
4. ^ Lebrun, Richard. "A Brief Biography of Joseph de Maistre". University of Manitoba. http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/history/links/maistre/maistrebio.html. Retrieved 2008-12-11. 
5. ^ de Lamartine, Alphonse (1874). "I". Souvenirs et portraits (3rd ed.). Paris. p. 188-9. 
6. ^ Émile Faguet, Politiques et moralistes du dix-neuvieme siecle, 1st series, Paris 1899. Cited in: de Maistre, Joseph (1994). "Introduction". Considerations on France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. xi. ISBN 0521466288. 
7. ^ Lombard 1976, p. 123
8. ^ Pat Buchanan, State of Emergency, 2006

References

• Buchanan, Patrick (2007). State of Emergency. New York: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 0312374364. 
• Ghervas, Stella (2008). Réinventer la tradition: Alexandre Stourdza et l'Europe de la Sainte-Alliance. Paris: Honoré Champion. ISBN 2745316699. 
• Lebrun, Richard A. (1988). Joseph de Maistre: An Intellectual Militant. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 0773506454. 
• Lombard, Charles (1976). Joseph De Maistre. Boston: Twayne. ISBN 0805762477. 
• This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.

Work in English translation

• Memoir on the Union of Savoy and Switzerland (1795).
• Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions (1809, English translation 1847).
• The Pope: Considered in His Relations with the Church, Temporal Sovereignties, Separated Churches and the Cause of Civilization (1817, English translation 1850).
• Letters to a Russian Gentleman on the Spanish Inquisition (1822, English translation 1851)
• Blum, Christopher Olaf (editor and translator), 2004. Critics of the Enlightenment. Wilmington, Delaware : ISI Books.
  • 1798, "Reflections on Protestantism in its Relations to Sovereignty". 133-56.
  • 1819, "On the Pope". 157-96.
• Lively, Jack, 1965. The Works of Joseph de Maistre. Macmillan.

External links

• The Joseph de Maistre Homepage at the University of Manitoba
• Works of Joseph de Maistre in English Translation

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