On the Pope
The book Du Pape (About the Pope / by the Pope and others) is the political- theoretical main work of the Savoyard writer, political philosopher and diplomat Joseph de Maistre. The book first appeared in 1819 in two volumes in Lyon.
Classification
Despite its close relations with France de Maistre was a subject of the King of Piedmont - Sardinia, whom he, as a member of the Senate of Savoy (1787-1792), ambassador to Russia (1803-1817) and as Minister of State at the court of Turin (1817 -1821 ) was used.
The educated by Jesuits de Maistre was a major representative of the counter-revolutionary and royalist political clericalism, a chief ideologue of the restoration. In his attempt to justify absolutism and feudal social order, he saw in Catholicism and papal primacy, the basis of political and social life.
Already de Maistre's Essai sur le principe generateur the constitutions politiques et des autres institutions humaines about the emergence of political constitutions and other institutions from 1809 had caused a stir.
He defended in this work, the foundations of the ancien regime - the absolutism and feudal social order - against the ideas of the Enlightenment and its consequences during the French Revolution.
Content
The work is divided into four parts. The first argues de Maistre, the Pope is in the Church of the sovereign, and it is an essential characteristic of all sovereign power that their decisions should not be subject to challenge.
After de Maistre, the Pope is thus infallible in his teaching, because he exercises his sovereignty through his teaching. Maistre's argument in favor of papal infallibility extends out of the history of theology, because he was one of the earliest Catholic writers who discussed the doctrine open, was not dogmatically defined until the end of the 19th century.
Maistre writes usually from the point of view of the infallibility character possessing ordinary Magisterium, during the First Vatican Council (1868-1869) defined a dogma of the infallibility of the extraordinary papal magisterium.
In the rest, the author examines the relationship of the Pope to the secular powers, to culture and the good of nations and to the " schismatic churches."
He argues that above all nations of the protection bedürften against abuse of power by a higher sovereign and that the sovereign should be the Pope, as the savior and creator of European civilization.
Regarding the " schismatic churches " de Maistre believed that they would eventually fall into philosophical indifference, since Catholicism is the only religion that is completely compatible with science.
Effect
The work was translated early on by Moritz Lieber into German ( by Pabst, 1822) and of Aeneas McD. Dawson into English ( The Pope, 1850).
1821 published De l' eglise de Maistre gallicane dans son rapport avec le souverain pontife, pour servir de suite a l' ouvrage intitule Du Pape; par l' auteur of Considerations sur la France ( A German translation appeared in 1823 in Frankfurt am Main in the Andreäischen bookstore under the title: From the Gallican Church in its relation to the Church supreme head A continuation of the work by the Pope. ). There he tried to prove that the French church " always walked hand in hand in the true spirit and meaning of the Roman see ."
Isaiah Berlin was one of de Maistre in 1952 along with Helvetius, Rousseau, Fichte, Hegel and Saint- Simon to the Six Enemies of Human Liberty ( six enemies of human freedom ).
Expenditure
Of several French editions, some are digitized before: 1841, 1867, 1838, 1868.
English Translation
- The Pope. Translated by Aeneas McD. Dawson, 1851 ( online )
German translation
- Joseph of Maistre: From Pabst. Translated from the French by Moriz dear. 2 vols. Frankfurt, Andrae 1822 ( not yet online )