Joseph Marie, comte de Maistre[a] (1 April 1753 – 26 February 1821)[3] was aSavoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, diplomat, and magistrate. One of the forefathers ofconservatism, Maistre advocatedsocial hierarchy andmonarchy in the period immediately following theFrench Revolution.[4] Despite his close personal and intellectual ties with France, Maistre was throughout his life a subject of theKingdom of Sardinia, which he served as a member of the Savoy Senate (1787–1792), ambassador to theRussian Empire (1803–1817),[5] and minister of state to the court inTurin (1817–1821).[6]
Maistre was born in 1753 atChambéry,Duchy of Savoy, at that time part of theKingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia which was ruled by theHouse of Savoy.[11] His family was of French and Italian origin.[12] His grandfather André (Andrea) Maistre (1661–1722), whose parents François Maistre (1630–1674) and Margarita Maistre (née Dalmassi) (1641–1717) originated in theCounty of Nice,[13] had been a draper and councilman inNice (then under the rule of the House of Savoy) and his father François-Xavier Maistre (1705–1789), who moved to Chambéry in 1740, became a magistrate and senator, eventually receiving the title ofcount from the King of Piedmont-Sardinia. His mother's family, whose surname was Desmotz, were fromRumilly.[14] He was the eldest of ten surviving children and godfather to his younger brother,Xavier, who would become a major general and a popular writer of fiction.[15][16]
Maistre was probably educated by theJesuits.[15] After the Revolution, he became an ardent defender of the Jesuits, increasingly associating the spirit of the Revolution with the Jesuits' traditional enemies, theJansenists. After completing his training in the law at theUniversity of Turin in 1774, he followed in his father's footsteps by becoming a senator in 1787.
In his early years Maistre was a liberal and supporter ofGallicanism. The philosopher and mysticLouis Claude de Saint-Martin was a major and lasting influence for Maistre. In one of his first public addresses Maistre praised theAmerican Revolution proclaiming "Liberty, insulted in Europe, has winged its flight to another hemisphere."[17]
A member of the progressiveScottish RiteMasonic lodge at Chambéry from 1774 to 1790,[18] Maistre originally favoured political reform in France, supporting the efforts of the magistrates in theParlements to force KingLouis XVI to convene theEstates General. As alandowner in France, Maistre was eligible to join that body and there is some evidence that he contemplated that possibility.[19] Maistre was alarmed by the decision of the Estates-General to combinearistocracy,clergy andcommoners into a single legislative body which became theNational Constituent Assembly. After the passing of theAugust Decrees on 4 August 1789, he decisively turned against the course of political events in France.[20]
Portrait of Maistre by Swiss painterFélix Vallotton fromLa Revue blanche, 1895
Maistre fled Chambéry when it was taken by a French revolutionary army in 1792, but he was unable to find a position in the royal court in Turin and returned the following year. Deciding that he could not support the French-controlled regime, Maistre departed again, this time forLausanne, Switzerland,[21] where he discussed politics and theology at the salon ofMadame de Staël, and began his career as a counter-revolutionary writer,[22] with works such asLettres d'un Royaliste Savoisien ("Letters from a Savoyard Royalist", 1793),Discours à Mme. la Marquise Costa de Beauregard, sur la Vie et la Mort de son Fils ("Discourse to the Marchioness Costa de Beauregard, on the Life and Death of her Son", 1794) andCinq paradoxes à la Marquise de Nav... ("Five Paradoxes for the Marchioness of Nav...", 1795).[11]
From Lausanne, Maistre went toVenice and then toCagliari, where the King of Piedmont-Sardinia held the court and the government of the kingdom after French armies took Turin in 1798. Maistre's relations with the court at Cagliari were not always easy.[11] In 1802, he was sent toSaint Petersburg in Russia as ambassador toTsarAlexander I.[23] His diplomatic responsibilities were few and he became a well-loved fixture in aristocratic and wealthy merchant circles, converting some of his friends to Roman Catholicism and writing his most influential works on political philosophy.
Maistre's observations on Russian life, contained in his diplomatic memoirs and in his personal correspondence, were amongLeo Tolstoy's sources for his novelWar and Peace.[11] After the defeat ofNapoleon and the restoration of the House of Savoy's dominion overPiedmont and Savoy under the terms of theCongress of Vienna, Maistre returned in 1817 to Turin and served there asmagistrate and minister of state until his death. He died on 26 February 1821 and is buried in the Jesuit Church of the Holy Martyrs (Chiesa dei Santi Martiri).
InConsidérations sur la France ("Considerations on France", 1796), Maistre claimed that France has a divine mission as the principal instrument of good and evil on Earth. He interpreted the Revolution of 1789 as aprovidential event in which themonarchy, thearistocracy and theAncien Régime in general, instead of directing the influence of French civilization to the benefit of mankind, had promoted theatheistic doctrines of the 18th-century philosophers. He claimed that the crimes of theReign of Terror were thelogical consequence ofEnlightenment thought as well as its divinely-decreed punishment.[24]
In his short bookEssai sur le Principe Générateur des Constitutions Politiques et des Autres Institutions Humaines ("Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions and other Human Institutions", 1809), Maistre argued thatconstitutions are not the product ofhuman reason, but rather come fromGod, who slowly brings them to maturity.
What was novel in Maistre's writings was not his enthusiastic defense of monarchical and religious authorityper se, but rather his arguments concerning the practical need for ultimate authority to lie with an individual capable of decisive action as well as his analysis of the social foundations of that authority's legitimacy. In his own words which he addressed to a group of aristocratic French émigrés, "You ought to know how to be royalists. Before, this was an instinct, but today it is a science. You must love the sovereign as you love order, with all the forces of intelligence."[25] Maistre's analysis of the problem of authority and its legitimacy foreshadows some of the concerns of early sociologists such asAuguste Comte[26] andHenri de Saint-Simon.[27][28]
Despite his preference for monarchy, Maistre acknowledged that republics could be the superior form of government, depending on the situation and the people. Maistre also defended the government of theUnited States because its people were heirs to the democratic spirit ofGreat Britain, which he felt France lacked.[29]
After the appearance in 1816 of his French translation ofPlutarch's treatiseOn the Delay of Divine Justice in the Punishment of the Guilty, Maistre publishedDu Pape ("On the Pope") in 1819, the most complete exposition of his religious conception of authority. According to Maistre, any attempt to justify government on rational grounds will only lead to unresolvable arguments about the legitimacy and expediency of any existing government and that this in turn will lead to violence and chaos.[30][31] As a result, Maistre argued that the legitimacy of government must be based on compelling, but non-rational grounds which its subjects must not be allowed to question.[32] Maistre went on to argue thatauthority in politics should derive from religion and that in Europe this religious authority must ultimately lie with thePope.
In addition to his voluminous correspondence, Maistre left two books that were published posthumously.Soirées de St. Pétersbourg (1821) is atheodicy in the form of aPlatonic dialogue[33] in which Maistre argues that evil exists because of its place in the divine plan, according to which the blood sacrifice of innocents returns men to God via the expiation of the sins of the guilty. Maistre sees this as a law of human history as unquestionable as it is mysterious.
Examen de la Philosophie de Bacon ("An Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon", 1836) is a critique of the thought ofFrancis Bacon,[34] whom Maistre considers to be the fountainhead of the destructive rationalistic thought.[35] Maistre also argued,romantically, thatgenius plays a pivotal role in great scientific discoveries, as demonstrated by inspired intellects such asJohannes Kepler,Galileo Galilei andIsaac Newton, contrary to Bacon's theory about conforming to a mechanistic method.[36]
Statue of the Joseph and Xavier de Maistre brothers outside the old fortress in their hometown ChambéryStreet named after Joseph de Maistre inMontmartre, ParisJoseph de Maistre's tomb at the Church of the Holy Martyrs in Turin
However, according toCarolina Armenteros, who has written four books about Maistre, his writings influenced not only conservative political thinkers but also theutopian socialists.[45] Early sociologists such asAuguste Comte andHenri de Saint-Simon explicitly acknowledged the influence of Maistre on their own thinking about the sources of social cohesion and political authority.[27][28]
Maistre has been criticized byclassical liberals. Literary criticÉmile Faguet described Maistre as "a fierce absolutist, a furious theocrat, an intransigent legitimist, apostle of a monstrous trinity composed of pope, king and hangman, always and everywhere the champion of the hardest, narrowest and most inflexible dogmatism, a dark figure out of the Middle Ages, part learned doctor, part inquisitor, part executioner".[46] Political historianIsaiah Berlin considered Maistre a forerunner to the 20th-century movement offascism, claiming that Maistre knew the self-destructive impulses in human nature and intended to exploit them.[47] However,Italian fascism openly rejected Maistre's reactionary conservatism.[48]
Maistre's skills as a writer and polemicist ensured that he continues to be read.Matthew Arnold, an influential 19th-century critic, wrote as follows while comparing Maistre's style with that of his Irish counterpartEdmund Burke:
"Joseph de Maistre is another of those men whose word, like that of Burke, has vitality. In imaginative power he is altogether inferior to Burke. On the other hand, his thought moves in closer order than Burke's, more rapidly, more directly; he has fewer superfluities. Burke is a great writer, but Joseph de Maistre's use of the French language is more powerful, more thoroughly satisfactory, than Burke's use of the English. It is masterly; it shows us to perfection of what that admirable instrument, the French language, is capable."[49]
TheCatholic Encyclopedia of 1910 describes his writing style as "strong, lively, picturesque" and states that his "animation and good humour temper his dogmatic tone".[15]George Saintsbury called him "unquestionably one of the greatest thinkers and writers of the eighteenth century".[50] Although a political opponent,Alphonse de Lamartine called him the "Plato of the Alps".[51] Admiring the splendour of his prose, Lamartine stated:
"That brief, nervous, lucid style, stripped of phrases, robust of limb, did not at all recall the softness of the eighteenth century, nor the declamations of the latest French books: it was born and steeped in the breath of the Alps; it was virgin, it was young, it was harsh and savage; it had no human respect, it felt its solitude; it improvised depth and form all at once ... That man was new among theenfants du siècle [children of the century]."[52]
Maistre is also associated with theCounter-Enlightenment movementRomanticism[53][54][55][56] and is often referred to as a Romantic.[36][57][24][58] Among those who admired him wasCharles Baudelaire – the most famous Romantic poet in France – who described himself a disciple of the Savoyard counter-revolutionary, claiming that Maistre had taught him how to think.[59][60][61]
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^Maistre is traditionally pronounced[mɛstʁ] (i.e. sounding the "s" and rhyming withbourgmestre); that is how it is usually heard at university and in historical movies (as inSacha Guitry's 1948 filmLe Diable boiteux. The pronunciation[mɛːtʁ] (rhymes withmaître) is sometimes heard under the influence of the modernized pronunciation, adopted by some descendants (such as Patrice de Maistre)
^John Powell, Derek W. Blakeley, Tessa Powell.Biographical Dictionary of Literary Influences: The Nineteenth Century, 1800-1914. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. P267.
^The issue of Maistre's national identity has long been contentious. In 1802, after the invasion of Savoy andPiedmont by the armies of theFrench First Republic, Maistre had fled toCagliari, the ancient capital of Kingdom of Sardinia that resisted the French invasion; he wrote to the French ambassador inNaples, objecting to having been classified as a Frenchémigré 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 theComplete 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 theEncyclopædia Britannica and theCatholic Encyclopedia identify Maistre as French by culture, if not by law. In 1860, Albert Blanc, professor of law at theUniversity 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 theHouse of Savoy, he supported the end of theAustrian 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.
^Masseau, Didier (2000).Les Ennemis des Philosophes. Editions Albin Michel.
^Alibert, Jacques (1992).Joseph de Maistre, Etat et Religion. Paris: Perrin.
^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.
^Garrard, Graeme (1996). "Joseph de Maistre's Civilization and its Discontents",Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 57, No. 3, pp. 429–446.
^Greifer, Elisha (1961). "Joseph de Maistre and the Reaction Against the Eighteenth Century,"The American Political Science Review, Vol. 55, No. 3, pp. 591–598.
^Bordeaux, Henri (1895). "Joseph de Maistre à Genève et à Lausanne". In:Semaine Littéraire, II, pp. 478–480.
^Ferret, Olivier (2007).La Fureur de Nuire: Échanges Pamphlétaires entre Philosophes et Antiphilosophes, 1750-1770. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.
^Teeling, T.T. (1985)."Joseph de Maistre,"The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. XX, p. 824.
^Spektorowski, Alberto (2002). "Maistre, Donoso Cortes, and the Legacy of Catholic Authoritarianism,"Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 63, No. 2, pp. 283–302.
^Gerin-Ricard, Lazare de (1929).Les Idées Politiques de Joseph de Maistre et la Doctrine de Maurras. La Rochelle: Editions Rupella.
^Armenteros, Carolina (2011).The French Idea of History: Joseph de Maistre and his Heirs, 1794-1854. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University PressISBN0-8014-4943-X
^Émile Faguet,Politiques et Moralistes du Dix-neuvieme Siècle, 1st series, Paris: Société Française d'Imprimerie et de Librairie, 1899. Cited in:Maistre, Joseph de; Isaiah Berlin (1994). "Introduction".Considerations on France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. xi.ISBN0-521-46628-8.
^Richard A., Lebrun (1998). "Introduction". In de Maistre, Joseph (ed.).An Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon. McGill's Queen's University Press. p. ix.ISBN0-7735-1727-8.
^Alphonsus, Mère Mary (1942).The Influence of Joseph de Maistre on Baudelaire. "De Maistre et Edgar Poe m'ont appris à Raisonner" (journaux intimes). Bryn Mawr: Bryn Mawr College doctoral thesis.
^Eygun, Francois-Xavier (1990). "Influence de Joseph de Maistre sur les "Fleurs du Mal" de Baudelaire",Revue des Etudes Maistriennes, Vol. 11, pp. 139–147.
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Joseph-Marie, Comte de Maistre".Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
