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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: LUP-MAL |
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MAISTRE, JOSEPH DE (1754-1821) , French diplomatist and polemical writer, was born at Chambery on the 1st of April 1754. His family was an ancient and noble one, enjoying the title of count, and is said to have been of Languedocian extraction. The father of Joseph was president of the senate of Savoy, and held other important offices. Joseph himself, after studying at Turin, received various appointments in the civil service of Savoy, finally becoming a member of the senate. In 1786 he married Francoise de 1\forand. The invasion and annexation of Savoy by the French Republicans made him an exile . He did not take refuge
work
After the still further losses which, in the year of the publication of this book, the French Revolution inflicted on Sardinia; Charles Emmanuel summoned Joseph de Maistre to Turin, and he remained there for the brief space during which the king retained a remnant of territory on the mainland. Then he went to the island of Sardinia, and held office at Cagliari. In 1802 he was appointed envoy
Petersburg
exile and travelling, which he had hitherto known, and his literary activity was great. He only published a single treatise, on the Principe generateur des Constitutions; but he wrote his best and most famous works, Du Pape, De L'eglise gallicane and the Soirees de St Petersbourg, the last of which was never finished. Du Pape, which the second-named book completes, is a treatise in regular form, dealing with the relations of the sovereign pontiff to the Church, to temporal sovereigns, to civilization generally, and to schismatics, especially Anglicans and the Greek Church. It is written from the highest possible standpoint of papal absolutism. The Soirees de St Petersbourg, so far as it is anything (for the arrangement is some-what desultory), is a kind of theodicee, dealing with the fortunes of virtue and vice in this world. It contains two of De Maistre's most famous pieces, his panegyric on the executioner as the foundation of social order, and his acrimonious, and in part unfair, but also in part very damaging, attack on Locke. The Du Pape is dated May 1817; on the Soirees the author was still engaged at his death. Besides these works he wrote an examination of the philosophy of Bacon, some letters on the Inquisition (an institution which, as may be guessed from the remarks just noticed about the executioner, was no stumbling-block
Joseph de Maistre was one of the most powerful, and by far the ablest, of the leaders of the neo-Catholic and anti-revolutionary movement
opinion which hardly admit of argument, and on which men take sides in consequence chiefly of natural bent, and of predilection for one state of things rather than for another. The absolute necessity of order may be said to have been the first principle of this thinker, who, in more ways than one, will invite comparison with Hobbes. He could not conceive such order without a single visible authority, reference to which should settle all dispute. He saw that there could be no such temporal head, and in the pope he thought that he saw a spiritual substitute. The anarchic tendencies of the Revolution in politics and religion were what offended him. It ought to be.added that he was profoundly and accurately learned in history and philosophy, and that the superficial blunders of the 18th-century philosophes irritated him as much as their doctrines. To Voltaire in particular he shows no mercy. Of the two works named as his masterpieces, Du Pape and the Soirees de St Petersbourg, editions are extremely numerous. No complete edition of his works appeared till 1884-1887, when one was published at Lyons in 14 volumes. This had been preceded, and has been followed, by numerous biographies and discussions: C. Barthelemy
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