Who Was Joseph de Maistre? (And Why He Matters)

“Notice how Maistre does not consider the actions of the people valid because they committed a crime against the nation by undermining its sovereign.”

Introduction

Over the last few months, I have been preparing for the publication of my two books on post-modern conservatism. The first is called What Is Post-Modern Conservatism?: Essays on Our Hugely Tremendous Times and is a collection of essays for Zero Books. This is designed as a more informal introduction to the topic. The second, The Rise of Post-Modern Conservatism for Palgrave MacMillan, is a more academic monograph that sketches out a critical theory of neoliberal society and post-modern culture. My point is to demonstrate how reactionary movements could emerge in such a context. But the book also develops a brief genealogy of post-modern conservatism, tracing elements of it back to the thinking of Edmund Burke, Michael Oakeshott, Lord Devlin, and other luminaries. My point with this genealogical approach is not to establish that these figures are post-modern conservatives in gestation—but rather to showcase how elements of their thought could mutate in that direction under the correct social and cultural conditions.

The most obvious forebear of post-modern conservatism was, in fact, none of these figures but rather a minor nobleman from Savoy. I am referring, of course, to Joseph de Maistre, famously hailed by Isaiah Berlin as the key figure of the counter-Enlightenment and a predecessor to many forms of reactionary politics. In these two essays, I will be discussing how Maistre’s outlook anticipated the emergence of post-modern conservatism while also discussing how it is fundamentally limited as an approach to the world and society. My hope is that this will provide a sense of historical clarity and continuity when evaluating the contemporary situation.

Joseph de Maistre, the Man

Joseph de Maistre was born into the nobility of the Kingdom of Piedmont and Sardinia in 1753. His father was a senator and was later promoted to Count by the King. Maistre received a fine education, probably at the hands of the Jesuits. This may incline one to interpret him as a quasi-scholastic conservative in the vein of Ignatius of Loyola. And indeed, there is something of the Church father’s reverence for authority in Maistre’s work. But what is paradoxically novel about Maistre is the manner in which he came to violently defend the past using extremely novel intellectual means. The stately and magisterial prose of Jesuit writings is nowhere to be found in his oeuvre. Instead, one gets denunciations, scathing insults, and apocalyptic dualisms.