Joseph de Maistre

Joseph de Maistre
de Maistre by von Vogelstein
Born(1753-04-01)1 April 1753
Chambéry, Kingdom of Sardinia
Died26 February 1821(1821-02-26) (aged 67)
Turin, Kingdom of Sardinia
Notable work
Era18th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
School
Main interests
Notable ideas
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Preview warning: Page using Template:Infobox philosopher with unknown parameter "influenced"

Joseph Marie, comte de Maistre[a] (1 April 1753 – 26 February 1821)[3] was a Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, diplomat, and magistrate. One of the forefathers of conservatism, Maistre advocated social hierarchy and monarchy in the period immediately following the French Revolution.[4] Despite his close personal and intellectual ties with France, Maistre was throughout his life a subject of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which he served as a member of the Savoy Senate (1787–1792), ambassador to Russia (1803–1817),[5] and minister of state to the court in Turin (1817–1821).[6]

A key figure of the Counter-Enlightenment and a precursor of Romanticism,[7] Maistre regarded monarchy both as a divinely sanctioned institution and as the only stable form of government.[8] He called for the restoration of the House of Bourbon to the throne of France and for the ultimate authority of the Pope in both spiritual and temporal matters. Maistre argued that the rationalist rejection of Christianity was directly responsible for the Reign of Terror which followed the French Revolution of 1789.[9][10]

  1. ^ John Powell, Derek W. Blakeley, Tessa Powell. Biographical Dictionary of Literary Influences: The Nineteenth Century, 1800-1914. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. P267.
  2. ^ Rosengarten, Frank (2012). Giacomo Leopardi's Search For A Common Life Through Poetry. A Different Nobility, A Different Love. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. p. 6. ISBN 9781611475067.
  3. ^ "Joseph de Maistre". Encyclopædia Britannica.
  4. ^ Beum, Robert (1997). "Ultra-Royalism Revisited," Modern Age, Vol. 39, No. 3, p. 305.
  5. ^ "Joseph de Maistre," The Dublin Review, Vol. XXXIII, 1852.
  6. ^ The issue of Maistre's national identity has long been contentious. In 1802, after the invasion of Savoy and Piedmont by the armies of the French First Republic, Maistre had fled to Cagliari, the ancient capital of Kingdom of Sardinia that resisted the French invasion; he wrote to the French ambassador in Naples, objecting to having been classified as a French émigré and thus subject to confiscation of his properties and punishment should he attempt to return to Savoy. According to the biographical notice written by his son Rodolphe and included in the Complete Works, on that occasion Maistre wrote:

    "He had not been born French, and did not desire to become French, and that, never having set foot in the lands conquered by France, he could not have become French."

    — Œuvres complètes de Joseph de Maistre, Lyon, 1884, vol. I, p. XVIII.
    Sources such as the Encyclopædia Britannica and the Catholic Encyclopedia identify Maistre as French by culture, if not by law. In 1860, Albert Blanc, professor of law at the University of Turin, in his preface to a collection of Maistre's diplomatic correspondence wrote that

    "this philosopher [Maistre] was a politician; this Catholic was an Italian; he foretold the destiny of the House of Savoy, he supported the end of the Austrian rule [of northern Italy], he has been, during this century, one of the first defenders of [Italian] independence."

    — Correspondance diplomatique de Joseph de Maistre, Paris, 1860, vol. I, pp. III-IV.
  7. ^ Masseau, Didier (2000). Les Ennemis des Philosophes. Editions Albin Michel.
  8. ^ Alibert, Jacques (1992). Joseph de Maistre, Etat et Religion. Paris: Perrin.
  9. ^ Lebrun, Richard (1989). "The Satanic Revolution: Joseph de Maistre's Religious Judgment of the French Revolution", Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, Vol. 16, pp. 234–240.
  10. ^ Garrard, Graeme (1996). "Joseph de Maistre's Civilization and its Discontents", Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 57, No. 3, pp. 429–446.


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