The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions

Studies on Sovereignty, Religion and Enlightenment

Joseph de Maistre

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351482318
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

Joseph de Maistre had no doubt that the root causes of the French Revolution were intellectual and ideological. The degeneration of its first immense hopes into the Reign of Terror was not the result of a ruthless competition for power or of prospects of war. He echoed Voltaire's boast that "books did it all." The philosophers of the Enlightenment were the architects of the new regimes; and the shadow between revolutionary idea and social reality could be traced directly to a fatal flaw in their thought.De Maistre asserts that society is the product, not of men's conscious decision, but of their instinctive makeup. Both history and primitive societies illustrate men's gravitation toward some form of communal life. Since government is in this sense natural, it can not legitimately be denied, revoked, or even disobeyed by the people. Sovereignty is not the product of the deliberation or the will of the people; it is a divinely bestowed authority fitted not to man's wishes but to his needs.The French Revolution to de Maistre's mind was little more than the expansion, conversion, pride, and consequent moral corruption of the philosophers. It differs in essence from all previous political revolutions, finding a parallel only in the biblical revolt against heaven. These sentiments are the passionate and awe-inspired language of one who sees the political struggles of his time on a huge and cosmic scale, judges events sub specie aeternitatis (under the aspect of eternity), and looks on revolution and counter-revolution as a battle for the soul of humanity. The force of this classic volume still resonates in present-day ideological struggles.

The Saint Petersburg Dialogues

First Dialogue

THE KNIGHT: You believe, then, that the wicked are not happy? I too would like to believe this, yet I hear it said every day that they succeed in everything. If this were really the case, I would be a little angry that Providence had reserved the punishment of the wicked and the reward of the just entirely for another world; it seems to me that a little on account on both sides, in this life, would have done no harm. . . .

THE COUNT: For long there have been complaints of Providence in the distribution of good and evil, but I confess that these difficulties have never been able to make the least impression on my mind. I see with the certainty of intuition, and I humbly thank this Providence for it, that on this point man misleads himself in the full meaning of the phrase and in its natural sense.

I should have liked to be able to say with Montaigne, Man fools himself, for this is exactly right. It is quite true: man fools himself; he is his own dupe; he takes the sophisms of his naturally rebellious heart (alas, nothing is more certain) for real doubts born of his understanding. If occasionally superstition believes in belief, as it is accused of, more often still, you can be sure, pride believes in disbelief. In both cases, man fools himself, but in the second this is much worse.

In a word, gentlemen, there is no subject on which I feel more strongly than the temporal rule of Providence: it is therefore with complete conviction and profound satisfaction that I shall reveal to two men whom I love dearly some useful thoughts I have gathered through an already long life entirely devoted to serious studies.

THE KNIGHT: I will listen to you with the greatest pleasure, and I have no doubt our common friend will give you the same attention, but allow me, I beg you, to start by contradicting you before you begin. Do not accuse me of replying to your silence, for it is just as if you had already spoken, and I know very well what you are going to say to me. Without any doubt, you were about to start where the preachers end, with the life eternal. “The guilty are happy in this world, but will be tormented in the next; the just, on the other hand, suffer in this but will be happy in the next.” This is a commonplace. And why should I hide that this peremptory reply does not satisfy me fully? I hope you will not suspect me of wishing to destroy or weaken this valuable argument, but it seems to me that it would not be harmed at all if it was associated with others.

THE SENATOR: If our friend is indiscreet or too precipitous, I confess that I am at fault like him and as much as he, for I was also about to quarrel with you before you had broached the question; or, more seriously, I should like to ask you to leave the beaten tracks. I have read several of your ascetic writers of the first rank, whom I honor deeply, but, while giving them all the praise they deserve, it pains me that, on this great question of the ways of divine justice in this world, they almost all seem to accept criticisms of the fact and to admit that there is no way of justifying divine Providence in this life. If this proposition is not false, it seems to me at least to be extremely dangerous, for there is grave danger in allowing men to believe that virtue will be rewarded and vice punished only in another life. Skeptics, for whom this world is everything, ask for nothing better, and the masses themselves must take the same line: man is so muddled, so dependent on the things immediately before his eyes, that every day even the most submissive believer can be seen to risk the torments of the afterlife for the smallest pleasure. What will be the case with those who do not believe or whose belief is weak? Let us then rely as much as you like on the future life, which answers every objection, but if a truly moral regime exists in this world, and if even in this life crime should go in fear, why relieve it of this fear?

THE COUNT: Pascal observes somewhere that the last thing that is discovered in writing a book is to know what should be put first. I am not writing a book, my friends, but I am beginning a discourse that may well be long and should have had the opportunity to think about its beginning. Fortunately, you have saved me the trouble of deliberation by telling me where I should start.

The familiar expression that should be addressed only to a child or an inferior, You do not know what you are saying, is nevertheless the compliment that a man of good sense has the right to make to the crowd who meddle in discussions of the thorny questions of philosophy. Have you ever heard a soldier complain that in war wounds are suffered only by honest men and that it is sufficient to be a rascal to be invulnerable? I am sure the answer is no, for in fact everyone knows that the bullet does not choose the person it hits. It would be quite proper to lay down at least a perfect parallel between the evils of war in relation to soldiers and the evils of life in general in relation to all men; and this parallel, exact as I assume, is alone sufficient to overcome a difficulty based on a manifest falsehood; for it is not only false but obviously false that crime in general prospers and virtue suffers in this world: on the contrary, it is very evident that good and evil are a kind of lottery in which each, without distinction, can draw a winning or a losing ticket. The question therefore should be changed to, Why, in the temporal world, are the just not exempt from the evils which can afflict the guilty; and why are the wicked not deprived of the benefits that the just can enjoy? But this question is entirely different from the other, and I should even be astonished if the simple statement of it does not show you its absurdity; for it is one of my favorite ideas that the upright man is very commonly informed, by an inner sentiment, of the falsity or truth of certain propositions before any examination, often even without having made the studies necessary to be in a position to examine them with full knowledge of the case.

THE SENATOR: I am so much of your opinion, and so drawn to this doctrine, that I have perhaps exaggerated it by carrying it into the natural sciences; yet I can, at least to a certain point, invoke experience in this respect. More than once, in questions of physics or natural history, I have been shocked, without knowing quite why, by certain accepted opinions, which in one case at least I have had the pleasure subsequently of seeing attacked and even ridiculed by men deeply versed in these very sciences, in which as you know I have few pretensions. Do you think it necessary to be the equal of Descartes to make fun of these flurries? If anyone tells me that this earth we inhabit is only a bit of the sun drawn off some millions of years ago by some erratic comet hurtling through space; or that animals are made like houses by putting this by the side of that; or that geological strata are only the result of some chemical action, and a hundred other splendid theories of this kind that have been spread abroad in our time, must I be very well read and very reflective, should I have been to four or five universities to feel that these theories are absurd? I shall go further: I believe that in those very questions pertaining to the exact sciences or which appear to rest entirely on experience, this rule of the intellectual conscience is far from worthless for those who are not initiated in this kind of knowledge; which is what has led me to doubt, I confess to you in confidence, several things which commonly pass as certain. The explanation of tides by lunar and solar attraction, the decomposition and recomposition of water and other theories that I could quote to you and that are accepted today as dogmas are repelled by my mind, and I feel led to the inevitable conclusion that some day a scholar of good faith will come to teach us that we were in error on these important subjects or that they were not understood. Since friendship carries this right, you might say to me, This is pure ignorance on your part. I have said this to myself a thousand times. But tell me in your turn why I should not be equally intractable about other truths. I believe them on the word of the masters, and never does a single idea against the faith occur to my mind.

Where then does this internal feeling that revolts against certain theories originate? These theories are based on arguments that I am unable to counter, and yet this conscience of which we talked still says, Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi....

THE COUNT: I shall not examine at this point to what degree one can rely on this internal feeling that the Senator so justly calls intellectual conscience.

Still less will I allow myself to discuss the particular example to which he has applied it; these details would carry us too far from our subject. I shall say only that righteousness of heart and habitual purity of intention can have hidden effects and results that extend very much further than is commonly imagined. I am therefore very disposed to believe that among men such as those who now hear me, the secret instinct we were just talking about will very often guess correctly even in the natural sciences; but I am led to believe it well-nigh infallible in questions of theoretical philosophy, morality, metaphysics, and natural theology. It is well worthy of the supreme wisdom, which has created and regulated all things, to have excused man from deep learning in everything that really matters to him. I have thus been right to affirm that once the question occupying us was posed exactly, the internal agreement of every right-thinking person had necessarily to precede discussion. . . .

I repeat that I have never understood this eternal argument against Providence drawn from the misfortune of the just and the prosperity of the wicked. If good men suffered because they are good, and likewise the wicked prospered because they are wicked, the argument would be incontrovertible; it falls to the ground once it is assumed that good and ill fortune are distributed indiscriminately among all men. But false opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing. Impiety first noised this objection abroad; frivolity and good nature have repeated it; but in truth it is nothing. I return to my first analogy: a good man is killed in war; is this an injustice? No, it is a misfortune. If he has gout or gravel, if his friend betrays him, if he is crushed under a falling building, this is again a misfortune, but nothing more, since all men without distinction are subject to these kinds of bad fortune. Never lose from sight this great truth: A general law, if it is not unjust to all, cannot be unjust to an individual. You have not a certain illness, but you could have it; you have it, but you could be free from it. Whoever has perished in a battle could have escaped; whoever returns from it could have remained. All are not dead, but all were there to die.

Consequently more injustice: the just law is not that which takes effect on everyone but that which is made for everyone; the effect on such and such an individual is no more than an accident. To find difficulties in this order of things, they must be loved for their own sake; unfortunately they are loved and sought out; the human heart, always in revolt against the authority that constricts it, tells stories to the mind, which believes them; we accuse Providence in order to be freed from accusing ourselves; we raise objections to it that we would be ashamed to raise against a sovereign or even an official whose wisdom we would assess. How strange that it is easier for us to be just toward men than toward God!

It seems to me, gentlemen, that I would abuse your patience if I went any further in proving to you that the question is ordinarily wrongly put, and that really they know not what they are saying when they complain that vice is happy and virtue unhappy in this world; whereas, even on the assumption most favorable to the grumblers, it is patently proved that evils of every kind fall on humanity like bullets on an army, without any distinction of persons. Now, if the good man does not suffer because he is good, and if the wicked man does not prosper because he is wicked, the objection vanishes and good sense has reasserted itself.

THE KNIGHT: I admit that, if the distribution of physical and external evils alone is considered, the objection drawn from it against Providence is obviously based on inattention or bad faith, but it seems to me that the impunity of crimes is much more significant. This is the great scandal and the point on which I am most curious to hear what you say.

THE COUNT: It is not yet time, Knight. You have decided in my favor a little too quickly on the evils that you call external. If I have up to now assumed, as you have taken it, that evils are distributed equally among all men, this was only for the sake of argument, for in truth this is not the case. But before going any further, let us be careful not to stray from our path; there are questions which are so interconnected that it is easy to slide from one to another without being aware of it. So, for example, the question Why do the just suffer?, leads imperceptibly to another, Why does man suffer? Yet the last is quite different, being a question about the origins of evil. Let us then start by abjuring all equivocation. That evil exists on the earth is alas a truth that needs no proof, but, it should be added, it is there very justly, and God could not have been its author. This is another truth that we here do not, I hope, doubt and that I can dispense with proving since I know to whom I am speaking.

THE SENATOR: I wholeheartedly profess the same belief without any reservation, but this profession of faith demands an explanation precisely because of its scope. Saint Thomas said with the laconic logic that marked him, God is the author of the evil which punishes, but not of the evil which defiles.¹ He is certainly right in one sense, but it is necessary to understand him aright. God is the author of the evil which punishes, that is to say, of physical evil or pain, as a sovereign is the author of punishments inflicted under his laws. In a remote and indirect sense, God himself hangs men and breaks them on the wheel, since all authority and every legal execution derives from him; but in the direct and immediate sense, it is the robber, the forger, the murderer who are the real authors of this evil which punishes. It is they who build the prisons, who raise the gallows and the scaffolds. In all this the sovereign acts, like Homer’s Juno, of his free will, but very unwillingly.²

It is the same with God (while still excluding any rigorous comparison which would be blasphemous). Not only can he not in any sense be the author of moral evil or of sin; he cannot even be taken to be originally the author of physical evil, which would not exist if rational creatures had not made it necessary by abusing their liberty. Plato said, and nothing is more immediately obvious, The good person cannot wish to injure anyone.³ But as no one will ever think of holding that the good man ceases to be so because he justly punishes his son or kills an enemy on the battlefield or sends a ruffian for punishment, let us, as you have just said, Count, guard against being less equitable toward God than toward men. Every right-thinking person is convinced by intuition that evil cannot proceed from an all-powerful being. This was the infallible feeling that formerly taught Roman good sense to join, as if by a necessary link, the two august titles of most good and most powerful. This wonderful expression, although born of paganism, appeared so right that it passed into our religious vocabulary, so discerning and exclusive. I shall even say that it has occurred to me more than once that the ancient inscription iovi óptimo máximo could be placed in full on the pediments of your Latin churches, for what is iov-i but iov-ah?

THE COUNT: You know well that I have no wish to dispute anything you have just said. Without doubt, physical evil could come into the world only through the fault of free beings; it can be there only as a remedy or an expiation, and consequently God cannot be its direct author; these are for us indisputable dogmas. Now I come back to you, Knight. You agreed just now that it was unjustifiable to quarrel with Providence over the distribution of good and evil but that the scandal lies above all in the impunity of sinners. I doubt, however, if you can give up the first objection without abandoning the second, for if there is no injustice in the distribution of pains, on what will you base the complaints of virtue? The world being governed only by general laws, you do not claim, I imagine, that, if the foundations of the terrace on which we are now speaking were suddenly thrown into the air by some underground disturbance, God would be obliged to suspend in our favor...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Considerations on France
• Study on Sovereignty
• The Pope
• Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions
• The Saint Petersburg Dialogues
• Enlightenment on Sacrifices
• Index