Joseph de Maistre

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Joseph de Maistre

Joseph Marie, Comte de Maistre (born April 1, 1753 in Chambéry ; † February 26, 1821 in Turin ) was a Savoyard statesman, writer and political philosopher who laid the foundations of the Ancien Régime against the ideas of the Enlightenment and their consequences during the French Defended revolution . This made him an important representative of the counter-enlightenment .

Life

De Maistre was born as the eldest of ten children of a noble Savoy family. His father was President of the Senate in the Duchy of Savoy , which at that time belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia . He attended a Jesuit school. In 1788 he was appointed Senator of Savoy and was a member of the Senate at the Court of Justice.

In 1774 Joseph de Maistre joined the Masonic lodge Trois mortiers in Chambéry and then switched to the rectified Scottish masonry of Willermoz in Lyon . In 1779 he was a founding member of Le collège particulier de Chambéry, to which he belonged under the pseudonym Josephus a Floribus . When the French occupied Savoy , he emigrated to Lausanne in Switzerland in 1793 .

At the beginning of the nineteenth century he was sent to St. Petersburg as the official representative of the Kingdom of Sardinia for Russia . He was also a member of a Masonic Lodge , which was built in 1749 on the model of the Grand Lodge of England as one of the first continental European Masonic lodges in Paris. Xavier de Maistre (1763-1852), one of his brothers, was also a writer.

Response to Enlightenment and the French Revolution

In 1793 he defended the Freemasonry in a Mémoire on Vignet d'Etoles against accusations that because of the French Revolution were brought against them. In his Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du Jacobinisme to Abbé Barruel , he defended Freemasonry against the charge that it was responsible for all deeds of the French Revolution. In this he distinguished between apolitical Freemasons, French Martinists and the Illuminati .

Joseph de Maistre, whose political and ideological positions are shaped by the writings of Edmund Burke , is, together with Louis-Gabriel-Ambroise de Bonald, the main exponent of the traditionalist reaction to the French Revolution. He contrasts the rationalism of the 18th century with belief and unwritten laws and sees society as an organic reality. De Maistre turns out to be a staunch critic of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's social theory : While the Enlightenment criticism all forms of social inequality and is an advocate of the idea of popular sovereignty , de Maistre presents himself as a propagandist of a hierarchical social structure and an apologist for a divinely legitimized monarchical monarchy. In his view, not only Rousseau's theses, but also those of the other “ philosophes ” of the Enlightenment form the theoretical basis for the terror of the French Revolution. For him the terror ( Terreur ) is the logical consequence of the revolution. Whoever puts freedom and the ideal of virtue of equality above everything must therefore necessarily fight everything that contradicts the realization of this utopia . Anyone who declares freedom to be the supreme law of political order must inevitably call into question all the traditions and social structures that support and shape the individual. However, this also destroys all foundations that have a meaningful effect and guarantee stability. De Maistre's main objection to the glorification of freedom is that he does not believe that freedom makes happy . He quotes a Swiss philosopher, who is not named by name, who is said to have said about his country: “In the democratic states of Switzerland , if you exclude the schemers, position seekers, the worthless, conceited and bad people, the drunk and idle, in not a single happy and satisfied person in the entire republic . "

Incidentally, so de Maistre speculates, in a democracy the people are never the sovereign, but the money. And as far as the ideological cement is concerned, one has above all to do with the fluctuations in public opinion , which play a far greater role than the reason praised by the “philosophes”. In addition, the individual never decides in which form of government he would like to live. As a rule, choosing yourself in the forms of government in which people live is next to nothing. “There is no state based on purely voluntary community,” says the anti-Rousseauist treatise On Sovereignty. From de Maistre's point of view, democracy would at best be conceivable in a manageable number of people. However, what usually happens in the name of the people usually has little to do with the many individuals who belong to them. Democracy also does not work according to really democratic principles, because “in a republic you only count to the extent that birth, connections and great talents give us influence”. Which means: “The common citizen is in fact nothing.” And that is why one should affirm rule as something necessary instead of attaching illusions of equality.

Monarchies are not only the more honest forms of rule, they are also timelessly superior to any kind of flimsy democracy. Correspondingly, the clear, tight organization of the Catholic Church and even despotic oriental power relations have advantages over all attempts to fool the people into believing that they can have a say. From this, De Maistre draws the conclusion that the renewed “ oracle rule of reason ” must come to an end as soon as possible. “The hatred of authority is the plague of our day, the cure for this evil lies only in the holy maxims that you have been made to forget. Archimedes knew well that he needed a point outside the world in order to lift the world up, ”he proclaimed, identifying God and the king as indispensable pillars of any stable order.

The state theorist mourned not only absolutism , but also the Inquisition and he regrets that the writings of the Enlightenment were not banned. If the censorship had worked as it used to, it would not have gotten that far in his eyes. “The French government,” he explains, “has done itself great harm by turning a blind eye to such debauchery. It has her the throne and the unfortunate Louis XVI. cost your life. 'The books did everything,' says Voltaire . Without a doubt, because you let the books do everything. "

De Maistre also considered the modern enlightened belief in the blessings of the sciences and the arts to be "foolishness", since in his opinion it is not important that a people become more and more wise and well-read and can have a say in everything, but that coexistence as smoothly as possible works. Voltaire had something ridiculous for him, since "he believed that a nation that had no theater and no observatory was not worthy to breathe." However, history has proven that scientific knowledge, significant art and great architecture were by no means created under democratic conditions. “The arts generally need a king. They only shine under the influence of the scepter, ”he says in his work On Sovereignty. In a democracy, so de Maistre's argument, there would have been no Michelangelo , and then we would not have the Louvre and the gardens of Versailles , nor the many operas that were written for the court theaters without taking the people's taste into account .

In his work Reflections on France from 1796 (Considérations sur la France) he writes: “I am not a Frenchman, I have never been one and I don't want to be one either.” With a country that tried to break with all traditional orders and in that During the revolution a virtue terror was preached that led to mass executions, he wanted nothing more to do.

Aftermath

Joseph de Maistre is considered to be one of the fathers of sociology . He was a pioneer of ultramontanism and the Pope's infallibility . Lev Nikolajewitsch Tolstoy , Elias Canetti , Isaiah Berlin and Aimé Césaire have dealt with his work, among others . According to Friedrich Nietzsche , Charles Baudelaire claimed: “De Maistre and Edgar Allan Poe taught me to reason”.

In his 1957 treatise on de Maistre, entitled On Reactionary Thought , Emil Cioran observes : “ Everything about the promises of utopia seems admirable and everything is false; in the statements of the reactionaries everything is abhorrent and everything seems true ”. De Maistre was, Cioran claims, “genuinely in love with the paradox ” and for him “the only chance of originality after a century of talking about freedom and equality was to seize other fictions ”, namely “ that of authority ”in order to“ get lost in another way ”. Beatrice Bondy sees in his style already the method of attacking the claims of his ideological opponents through exaggerations. Henning Ottmann judges de Maistre that, unlike de Bonald, he is a "brilliant stylist, a gloomy apocalyptic, a literary terrorist".

Works

Among de Maistre's political and philosophical writings, the best known are:

  • De la sovereignty of the peuple. 1794
  • Lettres d'un royaliste savoisien à ses compatriotes. 1794
  • De l'État de nature ou Examen d'un écrit de Jean-Jacques Rousseau sur l'inégalité des conditions. 1795
  • Considérations sur la France. 1796
  • You pape . 1819
  • Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg ou Entretiens sur le gouvernement temporel de la Providence and Traité sur les Sacrifices. 1821 (posthumous)
  • Lettres à un gentilhomme russe sur l'inquisition espagnole. 1822 (posthumous)
  • Examen de la philosophie de Bacon. 1836 (posthumous)
In German translation
  • Reflections on France. About the creative source of the state constitutions. German by Ms. von Oppeln-Bronikowski. Edited by PR Rohden. Hobbing, Berlin 1924.
  • Evening hours at St Petersbung or conversations about the exercise of divine caution in matters of time, and an appendix about sacrifices. 2 volumes. Andreean bookstore, Frankfurt am Main 1824–1825.
  • The evenings of St. Petersburg or conversations about the temporal rule of Providence. Edited by Jean J. Langendorf and Peter Weiß . Karolinger, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-85418-128-6 .
  • From sovereignty. An anti-social contract. Kulturverlag Kadmos, Berlin 2002
  • From the Pope. Translated from the French by Moriz Lieber . 2 volumes. Frankfurt a. M., Andreean bookstore 1822 ( digitized I , II )
  • From the Pope. Selected texts. Semele Verlag, Berlin 2007 [These are selected excerpts from various of his works].
  • Of the Gallican Church in its relationship to the head of the church. Continuation of the work of the Pope. Andräische Buchhandlung, Frankfurt am Main 1823.

literature

  • Carolina Armenteros: The French Idea of ​​History: Joseph de Maistre and his Heirs, 1794-1854. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) / London 2011.
  • Carolina Armenteros & Richard Lebrun, Joseph de Maistre and his European Readers: From Friedrich von Gentz ​​to Isaiah Berlin. Brill, Leiden / Boston 2011.
  • Carolina Armenteros & Richard Lebrun: Joseph de Maistre and the Legacy of Enlightenment. Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2011.
  • Carolina Armenteros & Richard Lebrun: The New enfant du siècle: Joseph de Maistre as a Writer . In: St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture. No. 1, 2010.
  • Philippe Barthelet: Joseph de Maistre: Les Dossiers H. L'Age d'homme, Geneva 2005.
  • EM Cioran: About reactionary thinking. To Joseph de Maistre. In: ders .: About reactionary thinking. Suhrkamp Library, 1980
  • Jean-Louis Darcel : Joseph de Maistre et la Révolution française. In: Revue des études maistriennes , 3, 1977, pp. 29–43.
  • Jean-Louis Darcel: Registres de la correspondance de Joseph de Maistre. Paris 1981.
  • Jean-Louis Darcel: Joseph de Maistre and the House of Savoy. Some aspects of his career. In: Richard Lebrun : Joseph de Maistre's Life, Thought and Influence. McGill-Queen's University Press. 2001, pp. 47-62.
  • Charles Philippe Count Dijon de Monteton: The Disenchantment of the Social Contract. A comparison of the anti-social contract theories of Carl Ludwig von Haller and Joseph Graf de Maistre in the context of the history of political ideas. Lang, Frankfurt [a. a.] 2006, ISBN 978-3-631-55538-5
  • Jens Peter Kutz: Will the common will or God's will? Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Joseph de Maistre on sovereignty and statehood. Norderstedt 2008, ISBN 978-3-8370-2685-6
  • Richard Lebrun: Joseph de Maistre - an intellectual militant. Quebec 1988
  • Eduard Rheinlaender: The philosophy of history of Count Joseph de Maistre. Elberfeld 1926
  • Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve , in the portraits littéraires
  • Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann: Political Theology of the Counter-Enlightenment. Saint-Martin - de Maistre - Kleuker - Baader. Berlin 2004

Web links

Wikisource: Joseph de Maistre  - Sources and full texts (French)
Wikisource: Joseph de Maistre  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Joseph de Maistre  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ The Little Encyclopedia. Encyclios-Verlag, Zurich, 1950, volume 2, page 101
  2. ↑ Beatrice Bondy: The reactionary utopia. Joseph de Maistre's political thinking . Cologne 1982, p. 204.
  3. ^ Henning Ottmann: History of political thought. The Modern Age. The political currents in the 19th century . Metzler, Stuttgart 2008, p. 35
  4. ↑ This German translation appeared in later editions (e.g. Munich 1923) under the title Vom Papste.
personal data
SURNAME Maistre, Joseph de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Comte de Maistre, Joseph Marie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French statesman and Savoyard writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1753
PLACE OF BIRTH Chambery
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 1821
Place of death Turin