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The Works of Joseph de Maistre
EXTRA RARE,VINTAGE,VERY GOOD CONDITION
303 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
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About the author
Joseph de Maistre
488 books198 followersA Savoyard lawyer, diplomat, writer, and philosopher. He was the most influential spokesmen for hierarchical political systems 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 loyal 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.
Xavier de Maistre was his younger brother.
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.
Xavier de Maistre was his younger brother.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 22, 2024
The one-star review is mainly for de Maistre's ideas, especially the victim-blaming theodicy of the St. Petersburg Dialogues - a striking combination of Platonic and Christian morality, bringing out the worst in both. In short: all good, and no evil, flows from god (Plato), but all evil comes from the disobedience of one man, Adam, with this guilt and degeneration inherited and reproduced by all his ancestors (Christianity). de Maistre tries to find a foreshadowing of this Christian doctrine of Original Sin in Plato's Phaedrus, where Plato seeks to know himself, "whether I am a monster more complicated and more furious than Typhon or a gentler and simpler creature, to whom a divine and quiet lot is given by nature." Although this duality recurs in Christianity, there's a lot more to Original Sin than that! de Maistre, always seeking to show that mankind has always believed all the dogmas of Christianity (as innate ideas, contra Locke's blank slate), looks for the rest of original sin in terms of pre-Christian beliefs in animal and human sacrifice.
Here's the outcome of this fusion. If the Christian neo-Platonist pseudo-Dionysius in the 5th century could say that the apparent suffering of the oppressed was merely because they didn't deserve to be less oppressed, due to the material attachments evident in their very claim to oppression, de Maistre goes further: all suffering is the deserved punishment for past crimes, all crimes of the fathers pass on guilt to the children. All suffering besides death is an expiation of sin - you should be grateful, because you'll have to finish the remainder of your suffering in purgatory. The ultimate punishment, death, does not reform or expiate - but Executioners hold the world-order together!! The senseless death of War is in fact a necessary blood-sacrifice of the (relatively) innocent, in imitation of Christ!!
It is worth noting that de Maistre's argument on sacrifice seems to be directly influential to René Girard's apocalyptic theory of sacrifice, for whom the unique innovation of Christianity is that the sacrificial victim, the "scapegoat", is revealed to be innocent. I wonder if de Maistre's strange comments on The Illuminati and the Apocalypse, in the final dialogues, are connected to Girard's apocalyptic vision...
I was also disappointed by how short the editor's selection from "On the Pope" was (16 pages!), as it seems to have been influential for the utopian socialism of the Saint-Simonians due to its reassertion (or perhaps modification?) of the classical Christian distinction between the Spiritual Authority and the Temporal Authority. I have also heard that "On the Pope" influenced the Catholic fascist Carl Schmitt, although de Maistre's influence on Schmitt is plenty clear from the other texts here, especially in de Maistre's justification of the monarch as the final decider, resolving disputes which the formal legal framework, necessarily incomplete in his understanding, never can. He also seems to gesture at the Greek conception of "nomos", or at least Schmitt's understanding of it, as the unwritten laws of a society which make a constitutional order possible. de Maistre says that to write down these unwritten laws would threaten them, turning them from a divine commandment into something which, appearing man-made in its written form, one might dare to rewrite.
Here's the outcome of this fusion. If the Christian neo-Platonist pseudo-Dionysius in the 5th century could say that the apparent suffering of the oppressed was merely because they didn't deserve to be less oppressed, due to the material attachments evident in their very claim to oppression, de Maistre goes further: all suffering is the deserved punishment for past crimes, all crimes of the fathers pass on guilt to the children. All suffering besides death is an expiation of sin - you should be grateful, because you'll have to finish the remainder of your suffering in purgatory. The ultimate punishment, death, does not reform or expiate - but Executioners hold the world-order together!! The senseless death of War is in fact a necessary blood-sacrifice of the (relatively) innocent, in imitation of Christ!!
It is worth noting that de Maistre's argument on sacrifice seems to be directly influential to René Girard's apocalyptic theory of sacrifice, for whom the unique innovation of Christianity is that the sacrificial victim, the "scapegoat", is revealed to be innocent. I wonder if de Maistre's strange comments on The Illuminati and the Apocalypse, in the final dialogues, are connected to Girard's apocalyptic vision...
I was also disappointed by how short the editor's selection from "On the Pope" was (16 pages!), as it seems to have been influential for the utopian socialism of the Saint-Simonians due to its reassertion (or perhaps modification?) of the classical Christian distinction between the Spiritual Authority and the Temporal Authority. I have also heard that "On the Pope" influenced the Catholic fascist Carl Schmitt, although de Maistre's influence on Schmitt is plenty clear from the other texts here, especially in de Maistre's justification of the monarch as the final decider, resolving disputes which the formal legal framework, necessarily incomplete in his understanding, never can. He also seems to gesture at the Greek conception of "nomos", or at least Schmitt's understanding of it, as the unwritten laws of a society which make a constitutional order possible. de Maistre says that to write down these unwritten laws would threaten them, turning them from a divine commandment into something which, appearing man-made in its written form, one might dare to rewrite.
February 3, 2019
Good collection of de Maistre's writings in English
January 28, 2020
Always interesting, even when making a point that I disagree with.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews