Cassius
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Posts: 4,598
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« Reply #5 on: September 11, 2014, 04:15:01 PM » |
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FF. I mean, I disagree with some of his moral philosophy and most of his political philosophy, but nonetheless I think its clear that he was a great thinker who was profoundly shaped by the events going on around him. I mean, I wasn't alive during the French Revolution, but I can imagine that it must have been a horrible time to be alive; the government executing people left, right and centre, land being expropriated from its proper owners, a full-frontal assault being mounted against the Church and, of course, the continued economic problems and wars going on in the background. De Maistre started off as a moderate reformer, but was quickly repulsed by the appalling excesses of some of the revolutionaries, and thus reversed hard into an extremely reactionary standpoint (although its arguable that he wasn't really a 'reactionary' given that the sort of society that he envisioned had never really existed in the first place). I don't blame him for that.
I agree, to some extent, with his views on the use of 'reason', and with his particularly negative conception of human nature (although I'd argue that men are morally neutral, as opposed to morally repellant, though obviously some can be). However, I'd argue against his absolutist political philosophy; for the simple reason that an absolute monarchy, with supreme power held by one man, cannot work, and has never worked (or in reality even existed), for all men are naturally fallible and can only do so much. The only hope for crafting a stable society lies in cooperation between its different elements, and the recognition that there can sometimes be legitimate disagreement. Nonetheless, he was right about the idea of order; people cannot simply choose to obey the law or not, to respect the institutions of government and their country on the basis of pure 'reason'. Instead, they must be compelled to do so, at least publically (for one cannot make 'windows into mens souls', nor is that a desirable thing).
But, on the whole de Maistre was an FF.
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