Joseph de Maistre and the legacy of Enlightenment

Volume: 2011 :01

Series: SVEC

Volume Editors: Carolina Armenteros and Richard A. Lebrun

Series Collaborators: Dr Carolina Armenteros, Universities of Groningen and Cambridge; Aimee E. Barbeau, Georgetown University; Philippe Barthelet, Independent Scholar; Yannis Constantinidès, Espace éthique de l’Assistance publique / Hôpitaux de Paris and Faculté de médecine de l’Université Paris–XI; Professor Joe Eaton, National Chengchi University, Taiwan; †Dr Emile Perreau-Saussine, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge; Dr Douglas Hedley, Clare College, Cambridge; Professor Richard A. Lebrun, University of Manitoba; Professor Darrin M. McMahon, Florida State University; Jean-Yves Pranchère, Université Libre de Bruxelles; Dr Elcio Verçosa Filho, International Institute of Social Research, São Paulo.

Publication Date: 2011

Pages: 264

ISBN: 978-0-7294-1008-3

Price: £70

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About

Although Joseph de Maistre has long been regarded as characterising the Counter-Enlightenment, his intellectual relationship to eighteenth-century philosophy remains unexplored. In this first comprehensive assessment of Joseph de Maistre’s response to the Enlightenment, a team of renowned scholars uncover a writer who was both the foe and heir of the philosophes. While Maistre was deeply indebted to thinkers who helped to fashion the Enlightenment – Rousseau, the Cambridge Platonists – he also agreed with philosophers such as Schopenhauer who adopted an overtly critical stance. His idea of genius, his critique of America and his historical theory all used ‘enlightened’ language to contradict Enlightenment principles. Most intriguingly, and completely unsuspected until now, Maistre used the writings of the early Christian theologian Origen to develop a new, late, religious form of Enlightenment that shattered the logic of philosophie.

The Joseph de Maistre revealed in this book calls into question any simple opposition of Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment, and offers particular lessons for our own time, when religion is at the forefront of public debate and a powerful political tool.

Carolina Armenteros and Richard A. Lebrun, Introduction
I. Polemics of the Counter-Enlightenment
Darrin M. McMahon, The genius of Maistre
Joseph Eaton, ‘This babe-in-arms’: Joseph de Maistre’s critique of America
Jean-Yves Pranchère, The negative of the Enlightenment, the positive of order and the impossible positivity of history
II. Makers and heirs of the Enlightenment
Philippe Barthelet, The Cambridge Platonists mirrored by Joseph de Maistre
Carolina Armenteros, Maistre’s Rousseaus
Yannis Constantinidès, Two great enemies of the Enlightenment: Joseph de Maistre and Schopenhauer
III. Maistrian afterlives of the theological Enlightenment
Douglas Hedley, Enigmatic images of an invisible world: sacrifice, suffering and theodicy in Joseph de Maistre
Emile Perreau-Saussine, Why Maistre became Ultramontane
Aimee E. Barbeau, The Savoyard philosopher: deist or Neoplatonist?
Elcio Vercosa Filho, The pedagogical nature of Maistre’s thought
Carolina Armenteros, Conclusion
Summaries
Bibliography
Index

Reviews

Oxford Journals, French Studies

‘Perceptive and scholarly essays on topics such as Maistre’s views on genius […] Hedley’s article (in part a response to Bradley) provides a particularly valuable reassessment of the central place of sacrifice in Maistre’s thought’.

Journal of Eighteenth Century studies

‘This collection of insightful and revealing essays will appeal equally to Maistre scholars and to students or researchers, who (…) know that there is no better way to do this than by exploring its fringes’

Canadian Journal of History

‘The editors contribute to the growing body of work that understands the Enlightenment as diverse, coloured in shades of grey, and cutting across assumption of “tradition” and “innovation” that a generation ago would have seemed impenetrable barriers’