Table Of ContentPage i
A Modern Maistre
Page ii
European Horizons: Series Editors
Richard Golsan, Texas A&M University
Christopher Flood, University of Surrey
Jeffrey Schnapp, Stanford University
Richard Wolin, Rice University
Page iii
A Modern Maistre
The Social and Political Thought of Joseph de Maistre
Owen Bradley
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Publication of this book was assisted by a grant
from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
© 1999 by the University of Nebraska
Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data
Bradley, Owen, 1960
A modern Maistre: the social and political thought of Joseph de Maistre / Owen Bradley.
p. cm.—(European horizons)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 080321295X (cl.: alk. paper)
1. Maistre, Joseph Marie, comte de, 1753–1821—Contributions in political science.
2. Maistre, Joseph Marie, comte de, 1753–1821—Contributions in sociology.
I. Title. II. Series.
JCI79.M28B73 1999
320.52'092—dc21
98–43636 CIP
Page v
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction ix
1. French Traditionalism 1
2. Sacrifice 32
3. Punishment and War 61
4. Symbolic Power 87
5. Legitimacy and the Origins of Sovereignty 110
6. Science and Society 137
7. Providence 166
8. Revolution and Counterrevolution 199
Afterword 231
Notes 239
Works Cited 251
Index 261
Page vii
Preface
Surprising as it may seem, there exists as of yet no comprehensive account of Joseph de Maistre's social and political philosophy, despite his tremendous influence
upon the modern European intellectual tradition. There are, of course, a large number of works devoted to Maistre and his place in history. Yet these accounts have
been either of an entirely biographical nature, tracing the narrative of Maistre's rather tumultuous life story, or of a primarily ideological bent, treating him as a merely
representative mouthpiece of the forces of reaction. Often, these two approaches are combined to present Maistre's thinking as no more than an ideological
superstructure built up upon the narrow base of his aristocratic material life interests. 1
The chief exceptions to this style of interpretation have been several able studies of Maistre as a religious thinker that, however, leave the modern resonance of his
social and political ideas unexamined.2 One significant anomaly to this silence is found in Carl Schmitt's pregnant misreading of Maistre's theory of sovereignty, which I
will have cause to examine at some length.3 Finally, a host of valuable essays on specific aspects of his life and ideas has appeared over the last two decades in a
journal devoted solely to Maistrean studies.4 Still, there has been no systematic study of his social and political thought, much less an extended consideration of its
modern character.
My interpretation avoids the common strategy of starting from Maistre's negative response to the French Revolution and deducing therefrom the reactionary character
of his thought as a whole. Instead, I start from a close reading of his ideas, often upheld long before the Revolution, in order to grasp the internal coherence of his
philosophical conservatism. Only in light of that philosophy can we make sense of his response to events in France, a response that was in fact much more nuanced
than received interpretations would allow.
The organizing factor upon which my own work relies is Maistre's theory of sacrifice, a cultic practice of which he was the first European to offer a comparative cross
cultural analysis. Around this theme gravitate all the major themes of his intellectual production: power and victimization, religious customs and institutions, social norms
and trans
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gressions, legal sanction and criminal punishment, war, revolution, and the sacred bases of political authority. The issues raised by Maistre's analysis resonate strongly
with twentiethcentury continental philosophy, much of which itself emerges from an awareness of conceptual impasses insurmountable by the canons of the
Enlightenment, especially the questions of language, difference, and power, which were at the heart of Maistre's intellectual project.
The Maistre that thus emerges is less an irrationalist than a theorist of social irrationality, less a lover of paradoxes than a philosopher of paradoxical situations. For all
his emphasis upon moments of excess and extremity and for all his royalist allegiances, Maistre was a voice of moderation in his day and one of the most moderate
defenders of the French monarchy, of which he was often highly critical. Maistre's doubts about popular sovereignty and the rational organization of society themselves
remain important for the effort to understand the potential abuses unique to modern democracy, an effort that has become all the more pressing in the twentieth
century.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge a few of the many people who in one way or another have assisted in the long gestation of my argument. Dominick LaCapra watched
over its early growth as a doctoral dissertation at Cornell University, as did Steven Kaplan and Satya Mohanty. Since that time, correspondence with Richard Lebrun
and conversations with JeanLouis Darcel and George Steiner have contributed greatly to whatever merits may be found in the result. I would also like to thank the
entire University of Nebraska Press staff and Mary Hill for their exceptional editorial work. Finally, a faculty development award granted by the University of
Tennessee allowed me to investigate archival sources in Chambéry, Turin, and Paris during the summer of 1995. None of these individuals or institutions, of course, is
responsible for the risks or limits of my interpretation, sometimes maintained against their better judgment.
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Introduction
At first glance, and even perhaps at second glance, no one would seem farther from our horizons than Joseph de Maistre. If he is known at all to contemporary
readers, it is as the ultraconservative defender of Catholicism against the Enlightenment, monarchy against democracy, tradition against innovation, the advocate of the
executioner, sacrifice, and papal authority. Each of these claims will have to be considered closely in the following chapters, where it will be seen that Maistre's
arguments were neither so onesided nor so backward as they might appear and that they may indeed provide insight into some of the defining themes of modern
thought.
Such an interpretation goes very much against the grain of received scholarship, which has consistently pictured Maistre as the last spokesman of a bankrupt old
regime. Influential readings have portrayed him as "a blind traditionalist and reactionary" whose political thought "appears feeble and thin," a writer "as dogmatic,
intransigent, absolute, and violent as possible" who ''called for a return to absolutism, with the Pope as the final arbiter and the executioner as his henchman." 1 These
extreme evaluations are understandable when viewed with historical hindsight. Maistre was among the first and most forceful critics of nascent modern democracy, and
his ideas have proven serviceable in France to one regressive political force after another. Any critical study of Maistre's ideas must carefully sift what remains valuable
for thought from what is useful merely for a reactionary politics. Yet Maistre's position is far more complicated and far more interesting than a narrow ideological
reading, whether from the Left or the Right, would allow.
If Maistre were as feeble, thin, and dogmatic a philosopher as his critics contend, he could hardly represent much of a threat to what they hold dear. It is only because
his understanding of political authority was as profound as it was that the translation of his theory into political practice could be a danger to democracy. For if Maistre
was an ideologue of sorts, he was far more of a philosopher than a rabblerouser. Like all conservatives, he emphasized the limits human irrationality places upon
progressive social change. His writing does stand out, however, for the depths of human depravity it portrays.
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This portrayal certainly has its dangers. Thus his close attention to social irrationality could be transformed into a call for irrational social action, his emphasis on the
symbolic bases of social order into an assertion of the legitimacy of a merely symbolic order, of the mere illusion of good government. His attack on Jacobinism and his
call for a royal restoration could be transformed into a rejection of all progressive reform, a violent denial of the Left that encourages scapegoating and social violence.
These steps were taken much more by Maistre's posterity than by Maistre himself. They are forcefully contested by other elements of his thinking. Nonetheless, the
step from a theory of violence to an affirmation of violence was prepared by him, for which he must bear some responsibility (just as Nietzsche must bear some
responsibility for the misappropriation of his thought by the Nazis). I am convinced and mean to show, however, that in no sense did he simply venerate violence.
A danger equal to reading Maistre uncritically would be to believe that the social irrationality and symbolic violence that so concerned him have been put behind us and
thus may be safely ignored. His work illuminates a class of social and political facts generally ignored by the tradition of political thought inspired by the Enlightenment
he opposed. Early conservatives like Maistre, critics of revolution and rationalization, provide essential material for understanding the irrational bases of domination
and social order, of the theological dimension of politics, of the Mysteries of State. Shaken by the French Revolution, they were constrained in defense of their own
political world to voice those "political secrets" the very essence of which is to remain unexamined and accepted without reason. It is this sacred or irrational element
of social and political life that is the guiding thread of all their meditations on politics. Maistre is arguably the most sophisticated of these early conservative
philosophers. As a mere denunciation of democracy Maistre's thought would be of little value (unless as a pretext for noble indignation). He is of value to the extent
that his criticism is founded on a critical analysis of irrational social forces too often left unanalyzed by critics working within liberal horizons.
Latterday silence on Maistre is especially surprising given the similarities between the world of his thought and the world in which we live. The modern world, one
might well say, has shown itself to be all too Maistrean. It would be a gross understatement to say that the horrors that have punctuated the twentieth century have
shaken our faith in the progress of enlightenment and darkened our view of humanity.
