Charles Maurras | |
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.jpg) Maurras in 1937 | |
| Born | Charles-Marie-Photius Maurras (1868-04-20)20 April 1868 |
| Died | 16 November 1952(1952-11-16) (aged 84) |
| Awards | Order of the Francisque |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 20th century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | |
| Main interests | Political philosophy |
| Notable works | |
| Signature | |
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Charles-Marie-Photius Maurras (/mɔːˈrɑːs/;[1]French:[ʃaʁlmoʁas]; 20 April 1868 – 16 November 1952) was a French author, politician, poet and critic. He was an organiser and principal philosopher ofAction Française, a political movement that wasmonarchist,medievalist,conservative,corporatist,integralist,nationalist,traditionalist, andcounter-revolutionary. Maurras also heldanti-capitalist,anti-communist,anti-liberal,anti-Masonic,anti-Nazi,anti-Protestant andantisemitic views. His ideas greatly influencedNational Catholicism andintegral nationalism,[2] and led to the political doctrine ofMaurrassisme.
While raisedRoman Catholic, Maurras went deaf and became anagnostic in his youth, but remained anti-secularist and politically supportive of the Catholic Church. AnOrléanist, he began his career by writing literary criticism and became politically active as a leadinganti-Dreyfusard. In 1926,Pope Pius XI issued a papal condemnation ofAction Française. In 1927, several of Maurras's works were put in theIndex of Forbidden Books,Action Française became the first newspaper to ever be placed on the Catholic Church's list of banned books, and AF members were forbidden from receiving the sacraments.
In 1936, after voicing death threats against the socialist politicianLéon Blum, Maurras was sentenced to eight months inLa Santé. Maurras was elected to theAcadémie Française in 1938 and later expelled in 1945. During theSecond World War Maurras opposedNazi Germany andFascist Italy, but supportedVichy France, believing thatFree France was apuppet state of theSoviet Union.[3][4] He explained his support for Vichy, writing: "As a royalist I never lost sight of the necessity of monarchy. But to enthrone the royal heir, the heritage had to be saved."[5] After Vichy's collapse he was arrested and accused of complicity with the enemy.[5] Following apolitical trial he was convicted of incitement to murder, and receivedIndignité nationale and a life sentence. In 1951, after falling ill, he was transferred to a hospital and subsequently received a medical pardon. In his final days he reverted to Catholicism and received thelast rites shortly before his death.
As a political theorist and major right-wing intellectual of 20th-century Europe, Maurras significantly influenced right-wing andfar-right ideologies, anticipating some of the ideas offascism.[6] He has been described as the most importantFrench conservative intellectual,[7] and has directly influenced a large number of politicians, theorists, and writers on both the left and right. Maurras' legacy has remained controversial to this day. Critics have derided him as a "fascist icon", while supporters, includingGeorges Pompidou, have praised him as a prophet. Others, including Macron, have taken a nuanced approach, with Macron stating: "I fight all the antisemitic ideas of Maurras, but I find it absurd to say that Maurras must no longer exist."[8][9]
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Maurras was born into aProvençal family, brought up by his mother and grandmother in a Catholic and monarchist environment. In his early teens, he became deaf.[10] Like many other French politicians, he was affected greatly by France's defeat in the 1870Franco-Prussian War.[11] After the 1871Commune of Paris and the 1879 defeat ofPatrice de MacMahon'sMoral Order government, French society slowly found a consensus for theFrench Third Republic, symbolised by the rallying of the monarchistOrleanists to the Republic. Maurras published his first article at the age of 17 years in the reviewAnnales de philosophie chrétienne.[10] He then collaborated on various reviews, includingL'Événement,La Revue bleue,La Gazette de France andLa Revue encyclopédique, in which he praisedClassicism and attackedRomanticism.[10]
At some point during his youth Maurras lost his Catholic faith and became anagnostic. In 1887, at the age of seventeen, he came to Paris and began writingliterary criticism in the Catholic and OrleanistObservateur.[11] At this time Maurras was influenced by Orleanism, as well asGerman philosophy reviewed by Catholic thinkerLéon Ollé-Laprune, an influence ofHenri Bergson, and by the philosopherMaurice Blondel, one of the inspirations of Christian "modernists", who would later become his greatest opponents.[11] He became acquainted with the Provençal poetFrédéric Mistral in 1888 and shared thefederalist thesis of Mistral'sFélibrige movement (seeMaurras and Félibrige).[11] The same year he met the nationalist writerMaurice Barrès.[12]
In 1890 Maurras approvedCardinal Lavigerie's call for the rallying of Catholics to the Republic, thus making his opposition not to the Republic in itself, but to "sectarian Republicanism".[11]
Beside this Orleanist affiliation, Maurras shared some traits withBonapartism. In December 1887 he demonstrated to the cry of "Down with the robbers!" during themilitary decorations trafficking scandal, which had involvedDaniel Wilson, the son-in-law of PresidentJules Grévy.[11] Despite this, he initially opposed the nationalist-populistBoulangist philosophy.[11] But in 1889, after a visit to Maurice Barrès, Barrès voted for the Boulangist candidate; despite his "anti-Semitism of the heart" ("anti-sémitisme de coeur"), he decided to vote for aJew.[11]
During 1894–1895, Maurras briefly worked for Barrès' newspaperLa Cocarde (TheCockade), although he sometimes opposed Barrès' opinions concerning the French Revolution.[11]La Cocarde supported GeneralGeorges Ernest Boulanger, who had become a threat to the parliamentary Republic in the late 1880s.
During a trip to Athens for thefirst modern Olympic Games in 1896, Maurras came to criticise theGreek democratic system of thepolis, which he considered doomed because of its internal divisions and its openness towardsmétèques (foreigners).[11]
Maurras became involved in politics at the time of theDreyfus affair, becoming an anti-Dreyfusard. He endorsedHubert-Joseph Henry's forgery, blamingAlfred Dreyfus, as he considered that defending Dreyfus weakened the Army and the justice system. According to Maurras, Dreyfus was to be sacrificed on the altar ofnational interest.[11] But while the Republican nationalist thinker Barrès accused Dreyfus of being guilty because of his Jewishness, Maurras went a step further, vilifying the "Jewish Republic".[11] While Barrès' anti-Semitism originated both inpseudo-scientific racist contemporary theories andBiblical exegesis, Maurras decried "scientific racism" in favor of a more radical "state anti-Semitism."[11] Maurras assisted with the foundation of the nationalist and anti-DreyfusardLigue de la patrie française at the end of 1898, along with Maurice Barrès, the geographerMarcel Dubois, the poetFrançois Coppée and the critic and literature professorJules Lemaître.[13]
In 1899, Maurras founded the reviewAction Française (AF), an offshoot of the newspaper created byMaurice Pujo andHenri Vaugeois the year preceding.[10] Maurras quickly became influential in the movement, and converted Pujo and Vaugeois to monarchism, which became the movement's principal cause. WithLéon Daudet, he edited the movement's review,LaRevue de l'Action Française, which during 1908 became a daily newspaper with the shorter titleL'Action Française. The AF mixedintegral nationalism with reactionary themes, shifting the nationalist ideology, previously supported by left-wing Republicans, to the political right.[14] It had a wide readership during the implementation of the1905 law on the separation of Church and State. In 1899 he wrote a short notice in favour of monarchy, "Dictateur et roi" ("Dictator and King"), and then in 1900 hisEnquête sur la monarchie (Investigations on Monarchy), published in theLegitimist mouthpieceLa Gazette de France, which made him famous. Maurras also published thirteen articles in the newspaperLe Figaro during 1901 and 1902, as well as six articles between November 1902 and January 1903 inEdouard Drumont's anti-Semitic newspaper,La Libre Parole.[12]
Between 1905 and 1908, when theCamelots du Roi monarchist league was initiated, Maurras introduced the concept of political activism throughextra-parliamentary leagues, theorising the possibility of acoup d'état.[11] Maurras also founded the Ligue d'Action Française in 1905, whose mission was to recruit members for the Action Française. Members pledged to fight the republican regime and to support restoration of the monarchy underPrince Philippe, Duke of Orléans (1869–1926).[15]
Many early members of the Action Française were practising Catholics, includingBernard de Vésins, the art historianLouis Dimier and the essayistLéon de Montesquiou. They helped Maurras develop the royalist league's pro-Catholic policies.[16]
Maurras entered into a conflict with Paul Granier de Cassagnac editor of L'Autorite, and his brother Guy. The affair ended with a sword duel between Paul de Cassagnac and Charles Maurras which took place inNeuilly on 26 February 1912. Maurras was struck in the forearm, and his arm was seriously injured, which brought the combat to a close.
Maurras then endorsed France's entry into the First World War (even to the extent of supporting the thoroughly republicanGeorges Clemenceau) against theGerman Empire. During the war the Jewish businessman Emile Ullman was forced to resign from the board of directors of theComptoir d'Escompte bank after Maurras accused him of being a German agent. He then criticised theTreaty of Versailles for not being harsh enough on the Germans and condemnedAristide Briand's policy of cooperation with Germany.[10] In 1923Germaine Berton carried out the assassination of his fellow Action Française memberMarius Plateau. Berton had planned to also assassinateLéon Daudet and Maurras but was unsuccessful.[17]
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In 1925, he called for the murder ofAbraham Schrameck, theInterior Minister ofPaul Painlevé'sCartel des Gauches's (left-wing coalition) government, who had ordered the disarming of thefar-right leagues.[12] For this death threat, he was sentenced to a fine and a year in jail (suspended).[12]
In 1929,Pope Pius XI condemned theAction Française, which until then was supported by a large number of Catholics, clergy, and laity alike. Several of the works of the Maurras, the movement's founder, were placed into theIndex Librorum Prohibitorum,[18] alongside the movement's official newspaper.[19] This was a devastating blow to the movement. On 8 March 1927, AF members were prohibited from receiving thesacraments. Many of its members left (two Catholics who were forced to look for a different path in politics and life were the writersFrançois Mauriac andGeorges Bernanos) and it entered a period of decline.[20]
Maurras again voiced death threats against the President of the Council (prime minister)Léon Blum, organiser of thePopular Front, in theAction Française of 15 May 1936, emphasising his Jewish origins (he once called him an "old semitic camel").[12] This other death threat earned him eight months in prison, from 29 October 1936 to 6 July 1937.[12] While imprisoned, he received the support ofMarie-Pauline Martin,Henry Bordeaux, Pius XI and up to 60,000 sympathetic citizens.[21] Fearing communism, he joined thepacifists and praised theMunich Agreement of 1938, which the President of the CouncilÉdouard Daladier had signed without any illusions. He also wrote inAction Française:
There are certain conservatives in France who fill us with disgust. Why? Because of their stupidity. What kind of stupidity?Hitlerism. These French "conservatives" crawl on their bellies beforeHitler. These former nationalists cringe before him. A few zealots wallow in dirt, in their own dirt, with endlessHeils. The wealthier they are, the more they own, the more important it is to make them understand that if Hitler invaded us he would skin them much more thoroughly than Blum,Thorez andStalin combined. This "conservative" error is suicidal. We must appeal to our friends not to let themselves be befogged. We must tell them: Be on your guard! What is now at stake is not anti-democracy or anti-Semitism. France above all![22]
During the 1930s – especially after the6 February 1934 crisis[23]—many of Action Française members turned to fascism, includingRobert Brasillach,Lucien Rebatet,Abel Bonnard, Paul Chack andClaude Jeantet. Most of them belonged to the staff of the fascist newspaperJe suis partout (I am everywhere).
InfluencingAntónio de Oliveira Salazar'sEstado Novo regime in Portugal, Maurras also supportedFrancisco Franco and, until spring 1939,Benito Mussolini'sFascist regime. OpposingAdolf Hitler because he was anti-German, Maurras himself criticised theracist policies of Nazism in 1936, and requested a complete translation ofMein Kampf – some passages had been censored in the French edition.
After his failure againstCharles Jonnart in 1924 to be elected to the Académie française, he succeeded in entering the ranks of the "Immortals" on 9 June 1938, replacingHenri-Robert, winning by 20 votes against 12 toFernand Gregh. He was received into the Academy on 8 June 1939 by the Catholic writerHenry Bordeaux. In the same year,Pope Pius XII repealed his predecessor's condemnation of theAction Française.[20]
In June 1940, articles inAction Française signed by Maurras,Léon Daudet, andMaurice Pujo praised GeneralCharles de Gaulle.[24] While Maurras described MarshalPhilippe Pétain as a "divine surprise",[25] the statement is usually quoted without context; Maurras was referring specifically to Pétain having political talent as well as being a symbol of France, and there is no evidence of the remark until February 1941.[26]
Vichy France's reactionary program of aRévolution Nationale (National Revolution) was fully approved of by Maurras, who inspired large parts of it.[10] The monarchist newspaper was forbidden in the Occupied Zone and under Vichy censorship in the Southern Zone from November 1942.[27] InLa Seule France (1941) Maurras argued for a policy ofFrance d'abord ("France First"), whereby France would restore itself politically and morally under Pétain, resolving what Maurras saw as the causes of France's defeat in 1940, before dealing with the issue of the foreign occupation. This position was contrasted to the attitude of the Gaullists, who fled France and continued the military struggle. Maurras savaged the pre-war French governments for taking an increasingly bellicose position vis-à-vis Germany at precisely the same time that these governments were weakening France, militarily, socially and politically, thereby making France's defeat during 1940 all but inevitable. Maurras also criticised the 1940Law on the status of Jews for being too moderate.[11] At the same time, he continued to express elements of his longstanding antipathy towards Germany by arguing inLa Seule France that Frenchmen must not be drawn to that country's model and by hosting anti-German conferences,[28] and he opposed both the "dissidents" in London and the collaborators in Paris and Vichy (such asLucien Rebatet,[29]Robert Brasillach,Pierre Laval orMarcel Déat).[30] In 1943 the Germans planned to arrest Maurras.[31]
A pre-war admirer of de Gaulle, who himself had been influenced by Maurras'integralism, Maurras then harshly criticised the General in exile. He later claimed he believed that Pétain was playing a "double game", working for anAllied victory in secret.[citation needed]
After the liberation of France Maurras was arrested in September 1944 together with his right-hand manMaurice Pujo, and indicted before the High Court of Lyon for "complicity with the enemy" on the basis of the articles he had published since the beginning of the war. At the end of the trial, during which there were many irregularities such as false dating or truncated quotations,[32] Maurras was sentenced to life imprisonment and deprivation of civil liberties. He was automatically dismissed from the Académie française (a measure included in the ordinance of 26 December 1944).[10] His response to his conviction was to exclaimC'est la revanche de Dreyfus! ("It's Dreyfus's revenge!")[11]
According to the historianEugen Weber the trial against Maurras was political and was rigged against him. Weber writes that the jurors who were chosen for Maurras' case were taken from a list drawn up by his political enemies.[33]
Meanwhile, the Académie française declared his seat vacant, as it had for Pétain's, instead of expelling him as it did forAbel Hermant andAbel Bonnard.[10] (The academy waited until his death to elect his successor, and choseAntoine de Lévis-Mirepoix, who was himself influenced by Action Française and collaborated withPierre Boutang's monarchist reviewLa Nation Française.)
After being imprisoned inRiom and thenClairvaux, Maurras was released in March 1952 to be hospitalised. He was supported by Henry Bordeaux, who repeatedly asked the President of the Republic,Vincent Auriol, to pardon Maurras. Although weakened, Maurras collaborated withAspects de la France, which had replaced the outlawed reviewAction Française in 1947. He was transferred to a clinic inTours, where he died soon afterwards. In his last days, he readopted the Catholic faith of his childhood and received thelast rites.[34]
AProvence-born author, Maurras joinedFélibrige, a literary and cultural association founded byFrédéric Mistral and other Provençal writers to defend and promote Occitan languages and literature. The name of the association was derived fromfélibre, aProvençal word meaning pupil or follower.
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Maurras' political ideas were based on intense nationalism (what he described as "integral nationalism") and a belief in an ordered society based on strong government. These were the bases of his endorsement for both the French monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church.
He formulated an aggressive political strategy, which contrasted with theLegitimists' apathy for political action.[11] He managed to combine the paradox of areactionary thought which would actively change history, a form of Counter-revolution opposed to simple conservatism.[11] His "integral nationalism" rejected alldemocratic principles which he judged contrary to "natural inequality", criticising all evolution since the 1789French Revolution, and advocated the return to a hereditary monarchy.[10]
Like many people in Europe at the time, he was haunted by the idea of "decadence", partly inspired by his reading of the publications ofHippolyte Taine andErnest Renan, and admiredclassicism. He felt that France had lost its grandeur during theFrench Revolution in 1789, a grandeur inherited from its origins as a province of theRoman Empire and forged by, as he put it, "forty kings who in a thousand years made France." The French Revolution, he wrote in theObservateur Français, was negative and destructive.
He traced this decline further back, to theEnlightenment and theReformation; he described the source of the evil as "Swiss ideas", a reference to the adopted nation ofJohn Calvin and the birth nation ofJean-Jacques Rousseau. Maurras further blamed France's decline on "Anti-France", which he defined as the "four confederate states of Protestants, Jews,Freemasons and foreigners" (his actual word for the latter being the xenophobic termmétèques). Indeed, to him the first three were all "internal foreigners."[35]
Antisemitism andanti-Protestantism were common themes in his writings. He believed that theReformation, theEnlightenment and the eventual outcome of theFrench Revolution andNapoleonic Wars had all contributed to individuals valuing themselves more than the nation, with consequent negative effects on the latter, and that democracy, modernism and secular liberalism were only making matters worse.
Although Maurras advocated the revival of monarchy, in many ways, Maurras did not typify the French monarchist tradition. His endorsement of the monarchy and Catholicism was explicitly pragmatic, as he alleged that a state religion was the only way of maintaining public order. By contrast withMaurice Barrès, a theorist of a kind ofRomantic nationalism based on the Ego, Maurras claimed to base his opinions on reason rather than on sentiment, loyalty, and faith.
Paradoxically, he admired thepositivist philosopherAuguste Comte, like many of theThird Republic politicians he detested, with which he opposedGerman idealism. Whereas theLegitimist monarchists refused to engage in political action, retreating into an intransigently conservative Catholicism and a relative indifference to a modern world they believed was irredeemably wicked and apostate, Maurras was prepared to engage in political action, both orthodox and unorthodox (the Action Française'sCamelots du Roi league frequently engaged in street violence with left-wing opponents, as well asMarc Sangnier's socialist CatholicLe Sillon). Maurras was twice convicted of inciting violence against Jewish politicians, andLéon Blum, the first Jewish French prime minister, nearly died from the injuries inflicted by associates of Maurras.[36] His slogan was the phrase "La politique d'abord!" ("Politics first!"). Other influences includedFrédéric Le Play,British empiricism, which allowed him to reconcileCartesian rationalism with empiricism,[11] andRené de La Tour du Pin.
Maurras' religious views were likewise less than orthodox. He supported the political Catholic Church both because it was intimately involved with French history and because its hierarchical structure and clerical elite mirrored his image of an ideal society. He considered the Church to be the mortar which held France together, and the association linking all Frenchmen together. However, he distrusted the Gospels, written, as he put it, "by four obscure Jews",[37] but admired the Catholic Church for having allegedly concealed much of theBible's "dangerous teachings". Maurras' interpretation of theGospels and integralist teachings were fiercely criticised by many Catholic clergy. However, towards the end of his life, Maurras eventually converted from agnosticism to Catholicism.
Notwithstanding his religious unorthodoxy, Maurras gained a large following among French monarchists and Catholics, including theAssumptionists and theOrleanist pretender to the French throne, thecomte de Paris, Philippe. Nonetheless, his agnosticism worried parts of the Catholic hierarchy, and in 1926Pope Pius XI placed some of Maurras's writings on theIndex of Forbidden Books[18] and condemned the Action Française philosophy as a whole. Seven of Maurras' books had already been placed on this list in 1914 and a dossier on Maurras had been submitted to Pius X.
It was not just his agnosticism which worried the Catholic hierarchy, but that by insisting uponpolitiques d'abord he questioned the primacy of the spiritual and thus the teaching authority of the Church and the authority of the Pope himself. That this was the basis of the matter is shown byJacques Maritain's bookPrimauté du Spirituel. Maritain was associated with L'Action Française and knew Maurras. While his unease with the movement pre-dates the 1926 crisis, it was this which occasioned his alienation from Maurras and L'Action Française. This papal condemnation was a great surprise to many of his devotees, who included a considerable number of French clergy, and caused great damage to the movement. The papal ban was later ended byPope Pius XII in 1939, a year after Maurras was elected to theAcadémie française.[38]
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Maurras was a major intellectual influence ofintegral nationalism,national Catholicism, Latinconservatism, and far-right movements.[2] He and theAction Française influenced many people and movements including GeneralFrancisco Franco,José Antonio Primo de Rivera,António Sardinha,Leon Degrelle, the historian and journalistÁlvaro Alcalá-Galiano y Osma and autonomist movements in Europe. The Christian DemocratJacques Maritain was also close to Maurras before the papal condemnation of the AF in 1927,[2] and criticised democracy in one of his early writings,Une opinion sur Charles Maurras ou le devoir des catholiques.[2] Furthermore, Maurrassism also influenced many writings from members of theOrganisation armée secrète who theorised "counter-revolutionary warfare".[2] In Spain theAcción Española adopted not only its far right monarchism but also its name from Maurras's movement.[39]
The influence extended toLatin America, as in Mexico where Jesús Guiza y Acevedo[2] was nicknamed "the little Maurras", as well as the historianCarlos Pereyra or the Venezuelan authorLaureano Vallenilla Lanz, who wrote a book titledCesarismo democrático (DemocraticCaesarism).[2] Maurras' thought also influenced Catholic fundamentalist supporters of theBrazilian dictatorship[2] (1964–85) as well as theCursillos de la Cristiandad (Christendom Courses), similar to theCité Catholique group, which were initiated during 1950 by the bishop ofCiudad Real, Mgr. Hervé.[2] The Argentine militaristJuan Carlos Onganía, who overthrewArturo Illia in a military putsch in 1966, as well asAlejandro Agustín Lanusse, who succeeded Onganía after another coup, had participated in theCursillos de la Cristiandad,[2] as did also the Dominican militaristsAntonio Imbert Barrera andElías Wessin y Wessin, chief of staff of the military and an opponent of the restoration of the 1963 Constitution afterRafael Trujillo was deposed.[2] In Argentina he also influenced the nationalist writers of the 1920s and 1930s such asRodolfo Irazusta andJuan Carulla.[40]
In 2017, Michael Crowley wrote thatSteve Bannon, then chief strategist to U.S. PresidentDonald Trump, "has also expressed admiration for the reactionary French philosopher Charles Maurras, according to French media reports confirmed byPolitico."[41]
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