Maistre, Comte Joseph de (1754–1821)

views updated

MAISTRE, COMTE JOSEPH DE
(1754–1821)

Comte Joseph de Maistre, the Savoyard philosopher and diplomat, was born in Chambéry. After the conquest of Savoy by the French revolutionary forces, he retired to Lausanne, where he lived for three years, devoting himself mainly to writing his Considérations sur la France (1796), an attack on the political philosophy of republicanism. He was then summoned to Turin by the king of Sardinia and later moved to Cagliari, the capital of the very diminished kingdom of Sardinia. In 1802 he was appointed Sardinian minister plenipoteniary to St. Petersburg and remained there for fourteen years, composing his famous Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, which was not published until the year of his death.

Ultramontanism

De Maistre is best known for his ultramontanism and traditionalism, which are most forcibly stated in Du pape, written in 1817, although anticipated in certain details in his Considérations sur la France. His presuppositions were those of any medieval Roman Catholic—the church is a divine institution; its foundation was given to St. Peter; St. Peter was the first pope; his successors have inherited the powers conferred on him by Jesus Christ himself. The book opens with a demonstration of papal infallibility. Identifying the sovereignty of the pope with that of any secular ruler, de Maistre argued that sovereignty implies infallibility, since no ruler is sovereign whose decisions can be set aside or be subject to appeal. He thus made no distinction between executive competence and validity. As parliaments exist simply to inform the sovereign of matters of which he might not be aware or to make requests and express occasional desires, so the church councils have no power to do more than this. They are convoked and presided over by the pope, who is not bound by their decisions, for they have no real power of decision. The notion that matters of faith and doctrine can be decided by a council is as absurd as the notion that a parliament can actually rule. De Maistre maintained that when the pontiff speaks ex cathedra and without restraint to the church, he has never erred nor can he ever err in questions of faith. He might be constrained to make a false pronouncement, or he might be speaking merely as a man and not as a pope, but in his function as a sovereign monarch, it is impossible that he should ever be in error.

The reason we require any kind of government is that we are born corrupt, yet with a sense of morality. Our souls are thus in a state of conflict. Sovereigns exist in order to prevent the disasters that arise from this conflict and to keep order within the state. No man is capable of governing himself, for no man can spontaneously quell the evil that is in him; therefore, the power to do so must reside in the hands of one ruler who will be above criticism and have absolute power. This ruler, whether he is a king or a pope, does not rule by the consent of his people but because of their needs. Kings, although infallible in regard to their own provinces, are nevertheless subject to the laws of God, and the pope is the only possible judge of whether they have been faithful to them. The pope is the deputy of God, and when a secular ruler has erred, he can be deposed and his subjects can be freed from their oaths of allegiance to him by papal decree. This power, de Maistre maintained, has been used only rarely where hereditary sovereigns were involved; it was used more freely against elected sovereigns, such as the Holy Roman emperors, for they were chosen by man, not by God. The pope, it should be noted, does not interfere in purely secular problems of administration; his intervention is invoked only in morals and religion.

Nevertheless, the pope is not a universal sovereign, for his power is checked by the canons, the laws, the customs of nations, duty, fear, prudence, and opinion, "which governs the world." Is it not better, de Maistre asked, to settle disputes by the decision of a wise and prudent ruler, inspired by God himself, than by rebellions, civil wars, and all the evils that follow from them? Such an arbitrator will inevitably submit to the commands of duty and prudence, will be sensitive to custom and opinion, and will intuitively know which road to take when conflict arises.

Traditionalism

A reader of Du pape will be impressed by de Maistre's use of tradition to justify his conclusions. The supremacy of the pope, he argued, has always been acknowledged, even by his critics. That is, they all admitted that he has done what de Maistre said he has the power to do, and, de Maistre added, no one except those who had suffered at his hands objected to his power. That something has always been done is to de Maistre proof that it has been done correctly. He even denied the right to liberty on the ground that slavery was the fate of most men until the rise of Christianity.

To de Maistre the human race is a single being, the soul of which is expressed in its language. Language develops, but so does tradition. The tradition of Catholicism is simply the fulfillment of the covenant God gave to Abraham; passed to Moses and then to Aaron, the high priest; and so on down to the promise made to Peter. But in every tradition, in spite of its development, there is a unity of idea, and the maintenance of that unity is entrusted to the pontiff.

Royalism

Concurrent with de Maistre's traditionalism was his royalism. He was so convinced of the need for absolute monarchs that he even maintained that since kings had a longer life expectancy than other men, royal families differ in nature from nonroyal families, as a tree differs from a shrub. A king is not a private individual and must not be judged as such. He is the nation in the same way that the pope is the church. Consequently, his power is also absolute, for when he speaks, it is the nation speaking through him. Kings alone preserve national unity. The word unity was a eulogistic term for de Maistre. To be unified is better than to be manifold; to remain the same is better than to change. And although de Maistre had to admit those changes that have obviously occurred and are not evil, he insisted on the unity that underlay them.

De Maistre usually carried his ideas to their logical conclusions. His famous apostrophe to the hangman in the Soirées is based on de Maistre's presupposition of the twofold nature of man. If the hangman is removed from society, order will give way to chaos, thrones will totter, and society will disappear. "God who is the author of sovereignty is also the author of punishment." He is the author of punishment so that corrupt man may still be redeemed. But if man is to be punished, there must be an absolute and unquestioned power to execute the punishment, and that power is the king's.

De Maistre was the first philosopher of the counterrevolution in France. With the vicomte de Bonald, he gave a set of arguments to legitimists and Catholics. But although de Maistre was admired by many for his consistency in both principle and inference, his variety of political philosophy was never popular, even during the restoration. The anti-intellectualism of François René de Chateaubriand and Mme. de Staël, as fully opposed to the extremes of revolution as was de Maistre's traditionalism, gained more adherents. Moreover, ultramontanism was disclaimed by the Vatican. This disclaimer, perhaps, was the main reason for the failure of de Maistre's thought to become popular in France.