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Evola on de Maistre

Hello again,

This cannot but remind us of de Maistre's most pertinent comment
on 'man', on Montesquieu's 'man', a comment whose causticity is not
much felt in the English translation. "La constitution de 1795, tout
comme ses aînées, est faite pour l'homme. Or, il n'y a point d'homme
dans le monde. J'ai vu, dans ma vie, des Français, des Italiens, des
Russes, etc.; je sais même, grâces à Montesquieu ["thanks to
Montesquieu"], qu'on peut être Persan: mais quant à l'homme, je
déclare ne l'avoir rencontré de ma vie; s'il existe, c'est bien à mon
insu." ('Considérations sur la France', chapter VI).

De Maistre is suspected by some modern scholars to have spend much
less time reading Thomas Aquinas than the works of Montesquieu,
Voltaire, Rousseau, Saint-Martin, and, in general, of all those who
contributed to spread Enlightenment, who, as a matter of fact, turned
out to be quoted more frequently in his books than any Catholic
authority. And so what? To have a chance to defeat an enemy, one must
first know him, and, in times like those, time was short; besides,
there are, as revealed by a careful analysis of Maistre's work,
significant differences between his views and traditional Catholic
teaching. Some would say, fortunately.

However, things are not as simple as they appear with respect to de
Maistre's relationship to Enlightenment thinkers. While stating
that "if a man runs his eye over his book-shelves and feels attracted
to the Works of Ferney, God does not love him", he acknowledged that
Voltaire had a "fine talent". This ambivalence is even more striking
at the end of one of his long diatribes on Voltaire's writings: "How
can I express the feelings he arouses in me? When I see what he was
capable of doing, and what he in fact did, his inimitable talents
inspire nothing less in me than a kind of sacred rage, which has no
name. Divided between admiration and horror, I sometimes feel I would
like to have a statue erected to him... by the hand of the common
hangman." In 1777, in Discours sur la Vertu, he described the origin
of society in Rousseauian terms: "Picture for yourself the birth of
society. See those men able to do whatever they wish, gathered in a
crowd around the sacred altars of the country which has just been
born. They all voluntarily abdicate a portion of their liberty; they
all consent to submit their particular wills to the sceptres of the
general will." In his later works, however, de Maistre rejected
unequivocally the notion of a "social contract". As for the idea that
revolution is a regenerative divine punishment, which is often
attributed to the theosophist Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and, more
generally, to the circles impregnated with Illuminism, one should
bear in mind that one of the first authors to have expressed it was
Edmund Burke in his "Reflections on the French Revolution", of which
de Maistre was a great admirer.

Likewise, it must be stressed that, if, in the middle of the 1780's,
de Maistre was in contact with Masonic lodges in Chambéry ("camera
regis") and even joined the Lyon Scottish Rite, through which he got
acquainted with Illuminism and Martinism, which he described later,
in 'Les Soirées de Saint-Petersbourg', as "a mix of Platonism,
Origenism and hermetic philosophy on a Christian base", he gave up
his Masonic membership around 1790. In 1793, he justified his Masonic
activity in these terms: "It is as surprising as extraordinary that,
as scepticism seems to me to have killed throughout Europe any
religious truth, societies whose only goal and concern is the study
of religion rise everywhere." (Letter to Baron Vignet des Etoles,
cited in F. Vermale, La Franc-Maçonnerie savoisienne à l'Epoque
révolutionnaire d'après ses Registraires secrets (Paris, 1912)). As
shown by a letter to the Grand-Master of the Scottish Rite Freemasons
of the Strict Observance, what he mainly expected from Masonry was to
work for the reunion of the Christian churches.

Thus, there is every reason to believe that the only reason de
Maistre and many French representatives of counter-revolution joined
Masonic lodges was that, incredibly as it seems, they thought that
Masonry was fighting irreligion and rationalism.

Thompkins&Cariou

P.s: in 'Ricognizioni', this article is called 'Joseph de Maistre',
and not 'Maestri della Destra: Joseph de Maistre'.


--- In evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, "Tony Ciopa"
<hyperborean@b...> wrote:
> I came upon this article by Evola on Joseph de Maistre:
>
> http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1404/maistre.html
>
> In it, Evola mentions that Masonry at the time of de Maistre was
different
> from its later incarnations. ("nel quadro della massoneria, la
quale a quel
> tempo era assai diversa da quella più recente, tanto che lo stesso
de
> Maistre ne fece parte")
>
> Though it seems that de Maistre was actually involved with
Martinism.
>
> The rest of the book review may be of interest to some. While Evola
rejects
> de Maistre's Christian concept of divine Providence, there are
other aspects
> of his thought (which stem from the esoteric current in de Maistre
derived
> from Louis Claude de St Martin) that appeal to Evola.







Wed May 11, 2005 3:44 pm

evola_as_he_is
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Hello, A comma at the end of the address of the site we gave yesterday prevents you from accessing the site by clicking the link. Here it is again: ...
evola_as_he_is Offline Send Email May 12, 2005
7:29 pm

Hello again, This cannot but remind us of de Maistre's most pertinent comment on 'man', on Montesquieu's 'man', a comment whose causticity is not much felt in...
evola_as_he_is Offline Send Email May 11, 2005
3:45 pm
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