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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2014
It is a commonplace observation of French politics of the past century that men who started out as radicals turned conservative as they grew older, and that party groups launched with radical names and programs, though they kept the names, swung to the Right with the passage of time. In both cases we explain the transformation, in part at least, as evidence of an increasing satisfaction with the status quo, as the political system made room for the newcomer. In Joseph de Maistre we have an example from a somewhat earlier age of a less common phenomenon, the conservative turned reactionary, and impelled, moreover, to develop a systematic justification of his new position. Evidently, no parallel explanation will serve to account for this change, for Maistre, though he found a place for himself in the public life of his time, grew increasingly dissatisfied with the trend of events around him. It will not do, either, to dismiss him—in the manner of the orthodox tradition in the history of political thought—as an authoritarian ogre, or an irrationalist, or simply as a confused man, a split personality with humanitarian impulses and reactionary ideas. There was no inconsistency in this combination. Rather the explanation must be sought in the political situation of his day as he saw it, and in his concern for the perennial problem of political obligation. The positions that concern led him to take, his rationalizations of them, and the difficulties they landed him in, are the subject of this article.
1 Popularized by Brandes, G., Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature (6 vols., N. Y., 1906), Vol. III, pp. 75, 87–112 Google Scholar.
2 His letters show that Maistre was a humane person who found the Russian punishment by the knout épouvantable (letter [1806], Oeuvres complètes de Joseph de Maistre [14 vols., Lyon, 1884], Vol. X, pp. 268–269 Google Scholar); from St. Petersburg he reminded his Sovereign, after discovering the arbitrary treatment dealt out to several wretches, that “crime against the State … like any others … must be proved” (letter of 28 Aug. 1805, Oeuvres, Vol. IX, p. 462 Google Scholar). The use of torture that he presented as a paradox (Les soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg [1817] really upset him as a magistrate ( Descostes, F., Joseph de Maistre avant la Révolution [2 vols., Paris, 1893], Vol. II, p. 18 Google Scholar).
3 Berlin, I., The Hedgehog and the Fox (N. Y., 1953)Google Scholar. But surely Maistre believed in authority, not “because it was an irrational force,” but because he thought it was well-grounded. The alternative was, moreover, anarchy.
4 It is patronizing, as well as unjust, to Maistre as a reactionary not to concede that his patrician humanity is part and parcel of his reactionary theories. The Revolution was a human catastrophe, hence the Eighteenth Century was wrong. Protestantism caused dissension and the bloody Wars of Religion, hence it should never have been tolerated.
5 Muret, S. T., French Royalist Doctrines (N. Y., 1933)Google Scholar.
6 Shklar, J. N., After Utopia (Princeton, 1957), pp. 18 ff.Google Scholar
7 Cf. Menabrea, H., Histoire de Savoie (Paris, 1933), p. 250 Google Scholar.
8 Descostes, Vol. II, p. 22.
9 Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 230.
10 Viatte, A., Les sources occultes du romantisme (2 vols., Paris, 1928), Vol. II, pp. 79, 92 Google Scholar.
11 Dermenghem, E. (ed.), de Maistre, Joseph, La Francmaçonnerie (Paris, 1925), p. 112 Google Scholar.
12 “Les soirees,” Oeuvres, Vol. V, p. 249 Google Scholar.
13 Palmer, R. R., Catholics and Unbelievers in Eighteenth Century France (Princeton, 1939), p. 181 Google Scholar, n. 6.
14 Cogordan, G., Joseph de Maistre (Paris, 1894), p. 7 Google Scholar.
15 “Essai sur le principe générateur des constitutions politiques” (1809), Oeuvres, Vol. I, p. 237 Google Scholar.
16 Michel, H., L'Idée de l'état (Paris, 1896), p. 108 Google Scholar.
17 Op. cit., pp. 21–22.
18 “l'Éloge de Victor-Amédée III.” Cf. Descostes, Vol. I, pp. 298, 304.
19 “Le caractère extérieur du magistrat,” Oeuvres, Vol. VII, pp. 9 ff.Google Scholar
20 Letter of 21 Jan. 1791, id., Vol. IX, p. 11.
21 Ibid.; letter of 26 June 1791, id., Vol. IX, p. 19.
22 Id., Vol. VII, pp. 35 ff.
23 Ibid., pp. 114, 200.
24 Ibid., p. 37.
25 Id., Vol. I. The work was written during 1793–96, but not finished, and was first published posthumously.
26 Ibid., pp. 367, 406. Thus Voltaire has destroyed the religious “cement,” and Rousseau political authority.
27 “Mémoire” (1809), id., Vol. XI, p. 352.
28 It goes back to antiquity, of course. Maistre cites Tacitus as well as Montesquieu.
29 “Étude,” Oeuvres, Vol. I, pp. 317, 331–332 Google Scholar.
30 Ibid., p. 322.
31 Ibid., pp. 318, 323.
32 Ibid., pp. 329, 347, 352, 354, 361.
33 Maistre is not in a position to take advantage of the help offered by Burke, who defends the old France by minimizing its difference from England. National representation, alive in England, is dead or dormant in France. Ibid., p. 45.
34 In fairness, it ought not to be forgotten, as it usually is, that Maistre means limited monarchy, in which there is an independent judiciary, room for talent, advisory councils and the liberty indigenous among the European peoples—i.e., the ancien régime as it had lately functioned in Savoy and was supposed to function in France. Ibid., pp. 430–437, 440–441, 450–452. Furthermore, the army law excluding the third estate from commissions was une gaucherie ministerielle and simply unenforceable. Nor is Maistre sure that venality of offices is good. The old French constitution is not absolutism, but a mélange de liberté et d'autorité. “Considerations sur la France,” id., Vol. I, pp. 89, 95 n.1, 132.
35 “Étude,” id., Vol. I, pp. 524–525. As with Hobbes, the alternative is anarchy. This applies, of course, to any form of government for both writers, democracy included.
36 “Considérations sur la France.”
37 Cf. Soltau, R., French Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century (New Haven, 1931), pp. 486 ff.Google Scholar
38 “Considérations,” op. cit., pp. 12, 17–19, 21–22, 24, 130.
39 Ibid., ch. 3, pp. 28 ff.
40 Ibid., pp. 62, 66.
41 Ibid., p. 47.
42 Ibid., p. 87. Cf. also “Fragments sur la France,” Oeuvres, Vol. I, p. 218 Google Scholar.
43 “Du Pape,” Oeuvres, Vol. II, p. 514 Google Scholar.
44 “Reflexions sur la Protestantisme,” id., Vol. XIII, p. 86.
45 Cf. Marcuse, H., Reason and Revolution (2d ed., N. Y., 1954), pp. 328, 344 Google Scholar.
46 “Reflexions,” op. cit., pp. 6, 76, 82–84, 90, 93, 97. For a more dispassionate treatment, see Poland, B. C., French Protestantism and the French Revolution (Princeton, 1957)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
47 “Soirées,” Oeuvres, Vol. IV, pp. 372, 380 Google Scholar.
48 Ibid., p. 109 ff; “Cinq paradoxes” (1795), id., Vol. VII, p. 328. Bergier so argued before the Revolution. Cf. Palmer, op. cit., p. 19. Earlier, Maistre had learned from Hume, as well as from Burke, to pooh-pooh a priori notions. “Principe générateur,” Oeuvres, Vol. I, p. 286 Google Scholar, n. 1.
49 “Examen de la philosophic de Bacon” (published posthumously, manuscript 1815), id., Vol. VI, p. 513.
50 “Quatre chapitres sur la Russie” (1811), id., Vol. III, pp. 240, 349.
51 “Examen d'un écrit de J.-J. Rousseau,” id., Vol. VII.
52 “Quatre chapitres,” id., Vol. III, pp. 344–345.
53 “Principe générateur,” id., Vol. I, pp. 266, n. 1, 285 ff., 299, 303.
54 “Considérations,” ibid., p. 90.
55 Portraits littéraires (rev. ed., Paris, 1862), Vol. II, p. 437 Google Scholar.
56 Politiques et moralists du dix-neuvième siècle (Paris, 1890), Vol. I, p. 43 Google Scholar.
57 Descostes, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 76.
58 Oeuvres, Vol. II, pp. ix–xi Google Scholar.
59 Woodruff, D. (ed.), Essays on Church and State (N. Y., 1953), p. 43 Google Scholar.
60 Letter of 1 Dec. 1815, Oeuvres, Vol. XIII, p. 185 Google Scholar.
61 “Reflexions,” id., Vol. VIII, p. 76, 78.
62 “Sur la chronologie biblique” (1810), ibid., pp. 114–115.
63 “Lèttre à une dame russe” (1810), ibid., p. 141.
64 Letter of 22 May 1814, id., Vol. XII, pp. 427–428.
65 “Du Pape,” id., Vol. II, p. xxiv.
66 “Cinq Lettres sur l'Éducation Publique en Russie,” id., Vol. VIII, p. 165.
67 “Reflexions,” ibid., p. 67.
68 “Léttre à une Dame Russe,” ibid., p. 154, and elsewhere.
69 “De l'Église gallicane,” id., Vol. III, p. 125; “Du Pape,” id., Vol. II, p. 173.
70 De Cive, Part II, ch. 13.
71 “Du Pape,” p. 274.
72 “De l'Église gallicane,” pp. 264–265, 268.
73 “Du Pape,” p. 411.
74 “Soirées,” Oeuvres, Vol. IV, p. 83 Google Scholar.
75 “Du Pape,” pp. 337, 441, 274–275.
76 Cogordan, op. cit., p. 126.
77 Constantine, C., “Joseph de Maistre,” Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique (15 vols., 1899–1950)Google Scholar.
78 Bonald, who was acting as Maistre's friend and agent, apparently overlooked Maistre's instructions that the work be printed anonymously like the earlier edition—although it was no great secret who the author was—and was taken to task for allowing Maistre's name to appear. Letter of 13 Feb. 1815, Oeuvres, Vol. XIII, p. 42 Google Scholar.
79 Letter of 27 July 1815, ibid., p. 113.
80 Letter of 3 March 1819, id., Vol. XIV, p. 156.
81 Letter of 29 May 1819, ibid., p. 168.
82 Conversation with Ch. de Lavau, printed ibid., p. 285.
83 “Lèttres d'un royaliste savoisien,” id., Vol. VII, p. 65.
84 “Lèttres sur l'Inquisition espagnole,” (1815) id., Vol. III (trans., J. Fletcher [London, 1838]), Letter V.
85 Earlier, “Considérations,” see above; later, “Générteur,” Oeuvres, Vol. I, p. 284 Google Scholar. Maistre came also to defend venality of judicial office as securing the independence of the judiciary.
86 “Quatre chapitres sur la Russie,” id., Vol. VIII, p. 355.
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