Joseph de Maistre
Joseph Marie, Comte de Maistre ( born April 1, 1753 Chambéry, † February 26, 1821 in Turin) was a statesman, Savoyard writer and political philosopher of the foundations of the ancien régime against the ideas of the Enlightenment and its consequences during the French Revolution defended. He was a major representative of the Counter-Enlightenment.
Life
Born de Maistre as the eldest of ten children of a Savoyard (at that time not to France belonging ) noble family. His father was president of the Senate in the Duchy of Savoy, which 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 on the Court.
1774 Joseph de Maistre joined the masonic lodge Trois Mortier at Chambery and then moved to the Rectified Scottish Masonry of Willermoz in Lyon. In 1779 he was a founding member of Le collège particulier de Chambery, where he served under the pseudonym Josephus a Floribus. When the French Savoy ( Savoie) occupied, in 1793, he emigrated to Switzerland to Lausanne.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, he was sent as an official representative of the Kingdom of Sardinia Russia to St. Petersburg. He was also a member of a Masonic lodge, which inspired by the Grand Lodge of England was established in 1749 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 the Enlightenment and the French Revolution
In 1793 he defended the Freemasonry in a Mémoire of vignettes d' Etoles against accusations that were brought against them because of the French Revolution. In his Mémoires pour servir à l' histoire du Jacobinisme to Abbé Barruel he defended Freemasonry against the accusation that she was responsible for all the acts of the French Revolution. In it he distinguished between non-political Freemasons, French Martinist and the Illuminati.
Joseph de Maistre, whose political and ideological positions are influenced by the writings of Edmund Burke, along with Louis -Gabriel -Ambroise de Bonald is the main representative of the traditionalist reaction to the French Revolution. It represents the rationalism of the 18th century against the faith and unwritten laws and summarizes the company as an organic reality on. De Maistre proves as a dedicated critic of social theory Jean -Jacques Rousseau: During the reconnaissance all forms of social inequality criticized and is a supporter of the idea of popular sovereignty, to de Maistre presented as a propagandist of a hierarchical social structure and apologist of a divinely legitimated monarchical autocracy. Not only Rousseau's theses, but also those of the other " philosophes " of the Enlightenment, are in his view, the theoretical basis for the terror of the French Revolution. For him Terror ( Terror ) is the logical consequence of the revolution. Who provides the freedom and virtue ideal of equality over all, therefore all must fight, which contradicts the realization of this utopia of necessity. Who declared the freedom of the supreme law of the political order, has all the traditions and social structures that support the individual and influence inevitably be questioned. So also all the foundations are destroyed, the create meaning and guarantee stability. De Maistre's main objection to the glorification of freedom is that he does not believe that freedom makes you happy. He quotes for an unnamed Swiss philosopher who is said to have said about his country: "In the democratic countries of Switzerland, there are, if we except the schemers, position seekers who do not appreciate, conceited and bad people, the drunks and idlers, in all over the country not only happy and contented people. "
In addition, as conjectured de Maistre, is never in a democracy the people are sovereign, but the money. And as far as the ideological glue that has this to do it, especially with the fluctuations of public opinion, which play a far greater role than the " philosophes " of the vaunted reason. Moreover, anyway never decides the individual, in which form of government he wants to live. Self- elected to the state forms in which people live is next to nothing in most cases. " There is no purely voluntary community -founded state," says the anti- rousseauistischen treatise of the sovereignty. Democracy would be from de Maistre's view at best in a manageable amount of people possible. However, what usually happens in the name of the people, has mostly to do with the many individuals who belong to him precious little. Democracy and therefore does not work for truly democratic principles because " you count in a republic only to the extent, such as birth, connections, and great talents give us influence". What states: "The ordinary citizen applies, in fact, nothing." And therefore one should affirm domination as something necessary, instead of appending Equality illusions.
Monarchies are not only the more honest forms of government, they are also superior to any kind of flimsy democracy timeless. According to possess the clear, tight organization of the Catholic Church and even despotic oriental power relations against all attempts to pretend the people, it could have a say, only advantages. What de Maistre concludes that it must end as soon as possible again with the recent " oracle rule of reason." " The hatred against the authority is the plague of our day, the remedy for this evil is only in the holy maxims which you have made you forget. Archimedes knew that he needed a point outside the world to lift up the world, " he announced, has God and the king of as an indispensable cornerstone of any viable order.
The state theorists mourned not only absolutism, but also the Inquisition and he regrets that it has not banned the writings of the Enlightenment. Had the censorship still works as before, it would not have come so far in his eyes. "The French government," he explains, " has caused great damage by too much blind eye to such excesses. It has it the throne and the unfortunate Louis XVI. killed. , The books have it all ' causes says Voltaire. Without a doubt, because everything had let others do the books. "
The modern enlightened faith in the blessings of the sciences and the arts held de Maistre as a " folly " because in his opinion it does not matter that a people is always wiser and well-read and can have a say in everything, but that living together smoothly as possible works. Voltaire had for him something ridiculous, because " he believed that a nation that has no theater and no observatory, was not worthy to breathe." History has proven, however, that scientific findings, important art and great architecture are by no means come under democratic conditions materialize. " The arts need a king in general. They shine only under the influence of the scepter, "it says in his book From the sovereignty. In a democracy, de Maistre's argument that there had been no Michelangelo, and we also did not possess the Louvre and the gardens of Versailles, nor the many operas that have arisen regardless of the taste of the people for the court theater.
In his book Reflections on France from 1796 ( Considérations sur la France ), he writes: "I 'm not French, I was never one and I would be none. " With a country that tried to break with all traditional systems and in the during the Revolution a virtue terror was preached, which led to mass executions, he wanted nothing more to do.
Aftereffect
Joseph de Maistre is considered one of the fathers of sociology. He was a pioneer of Ultramontanism and the infallibility of the Pope. Among others to Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Isaiah Berlin and Aimé Césaire have dealt with his work.
In his 1957 published essay on de Maistre, which bears the title over the reactionary thinking, noticed Emil Cioran: " At the promises of utopia, everything seems admirable and is all wrong; to the findings of the reactionaries everything is detestable and everything seems true. " De Maistre was so Cioran claimed, was " sincerely in love with the paradox ," and it was for him " the only chance of originality after a whole century of talking about freedom and equality consisted in the other fictions to seize ," namely " that the authority "to be so " getting lost in a different way. "