Joseph de Maistre | Biography

One of the chief opponents of the Enlightenment (from the French "siecle de lumières, " or Age of the Enlightened) was Joseph de Maistre, French political philosopher and diplomat. The Enlightenment was a European intellectual movement during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that celebrated reason, the power by which humans improve their condition. This synthesis of ideas concerning God, reason, nature, and humans led to revolutionary developments in philosophy, art, and politics.

Maistre was born at Chambery, Savoy, then in the French-speaking area of Sardinia, Italy, but now part of France, on April 1, 1753. His family had served the state for generations, his father being a civil servant and former president of the senate. After being educated by Jesuits and then at the royal college in Chambery, Maistre went to Turin to study law. In 1787, he followed in his father's footsteps and became a member of the Savoy senate. When his father died two years later, Maistre inherited the family estate, his father's title of count, and all responsibilities. But that was also the year the French Revolution began. Napoleon and his revolutionary army invaded Savoy in 1792, prompting Maistre to leave his family--Francoise-Marguerite de Moraud, whom he had married in 1786, and their three children--for refuge and lifelong exile in Switzerland and Italy.

After being named regent of the island of Sardinia, Maistre was appointed Sardinian ambassador to Russia in 1802, beginning a 14-year sojourn at the Russian court of St. Petersburg. Although he was often lonely and without funds, Maistre nonetheless enjoyed the diplomatic society at the Russian court, which included cordial terms with Czar Alexander. Finally, in 1815, Maistre was joined in Russia by his wife and two daughters.

Probably hoping to restore the Bourbons to the throne, Maistre requested an interview with Napoleon Bonaparte. He was refused. His attempt to see Louis XVIII to become the exiled king's ambassador in Russia was also refused. Maistre left Russia with his family on May 27, 1817, and saw Paris for the first time that June. This time, however, he did meet Louis XVIII, who reportedly gave the exile a rather cool reception. The reason might have been Maistre's political opinions expressed in his The Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions, 1814. The king regarded himself as a constitutional monarch, not an absolute ruler, as Maistre had indicated. Also while in Paris, Maistre tried to get support for the publication of his major work Du pape (On the Pope, 1819). It was published in December 1819. Maistre returned to Sardinia, where he died in Turin on February 26, 1821.

Joseph de Maistre was convinced of the absolute rule of sovereign and pope and the need for Christian supremacy. He was against the liberal beliefs of and the scientific progress advocated by such philosophers as Voltaire, Rousseau, and Bacon. In particular, he disagreed with Rousseau and the social contract, stating that people cannot give themselves a body or rights through a social contract. The right must exist in the political tradition of a people; otherwise, the written document simply will not be followed or will be followed in such a way as to make the rights meaningless. In his first major work Considerations on France (1796), he emphasized this theme, stating that "paper" constitutions can never and will never establish the rights of a people.

Maistre wrote numerous works stating his views, filling 13 volumes while in exile in Russia, mainly arguing against the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Perhaps his best, although unfinished, work written in Russia is Les Soirées de St. Petersbourg in which he acclaimed the public executioner as guardian of social order. It contains his analysis of the French Revolution and his belief that the Church should be not only the spiritual ruler of the world but its indirect temporal ruler as well. He wanted the monarchy restored in France, held in check by councils named by electors, whom the king would appoint. If such measures failed, the authority of the pope would be brought into play. Maistre believed the pope to be divinely instituted to judge human affairs. All human institutions, Maistre claimed, were the work of God operating through secondary causes.