I suppose this is the sort of thought animating capital-C capital-N Christian Nationalists[0] in the Old Country? (albeit presumably, there, with more of a proddie than a catholic justification?)
IIRC, Isaiah Berlin suggested[1] that de Maistre was worth reading, because although he was a loon, he is no fool[2].
[2] by way of supportive evidence, he did help prepare Pound for capital-F Fascism
[Edit: some clarifications for modern readers:
> ... the nation which itself bears so great a name, since it gave its name to frankness, ...
Here, of course, de Maistre means the french and France.
etymologically similar: Ferengi, political franchise.
> ... inhabited by pickpockets and street girls.
In the days when (a) the institution of matrimony was between men of 35+ and girls of 15+ (leaving boys and younger men with a couple of decades of fending for themselves), and (b) OnlyFans would not be invented for at least another century (those days having ended ca. 1918), prostitution (especially of the sort that did not require ascending staircases) was much more common. ]
I'm not sure I would class de Maistre as a "Christian nationalist", certainly not if we are opening that term up to Protestants. The authority of the Church is essential to the whole of his theopolitical conception.
I was introduced to de Maistre years ago in my reading of Berlin. While I appreciate Berlin for having shared his name and thought to a generation of people who otherwise never would have heard of him, nowadays his reading of de Maistre appears to me to obscure his meaning.
Interesting about Pound; I was entirely unaware that he had read de Maistre, but I definitely see the connection.
I would certainly hesitate to class de Maistre as "proto-fascistic". Fascism was always opposed to the Church and held to an all-encompassing view of the state, and the Church hierarchy is not simply an alternative form that "the state" takes in de Maistre.
However, I can see how it would make sense to class de Maistre in such a way if one represents political thought strictly within the dimensions of "libertarian/authoritarian" etc. [For myself, the key dimension in politics is "modern" (in the sense of an obedience to what is immediate in the senses)/"traditional" (in the sense of an obedience to what is received mediately). There are, of course, many subsidiary dimensions that are important to consider, but from an aerial view it seems to boil down to this primary axis.]
mod/trad makes sense to me; thank you for the clarification — with just the bare link it was not at all clear what was supposed to be of interest!
> I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong, and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid. —GKC
(and the US context is just plain odd — some of the most vocal backers of "The Constitution is Divinely Inspired" dogma are not even protestant christian: they are Mormon)
I just shared it here because it because it is a good excerpt from one of his most important essays and the editor gave it the fantastic (and nowadays clickbait-y) title of 'Human and Divine Nomenclature'. I was just flipping through this volume because I found it referenced on de Maistre's wiki page, and figured I would share it somewhere (I don't use any conventional social media).
To the issue of American "civic" nationalism: I must say I have always been perplexed by the phenomenon, but it is perhaps most unsurprising to witness among Mormons. Quite like the framing of the Constitution, the LDS is undoubtedly freemasonic in its origins, and many Mormons are themselves heritage Americans. There's also that whole BYU-CIA recruitment thing.
I went on to try "War, Peace, and Social Order", and was reminded of the Verhoeven version of Starship Troopers. And as to the necessity of serfdom in Russia; with hindsight I know it only lasted a couple of decades past Мёртвые души...
Are there other parts of the essay I should try reading?
(in the english context, I think both William and Henry might contest the "without violence on the one part"?)
Looking through a mod/trad prism, there probably is little to justify the separation. I think it was Simone Weil who pointed out that in germany, finding the fascists and the communists working together on occasion against the establishment was not necessarily as surprising as it might seem to intellectuals, for both thought they were thoroughly modern, "on the right side of history" as it were, and on this point they differed only in each thinking their own side would be the one to ultimately replace the "traditional" (in their eyes) globalist capitalist world.
[Edit: Looking at Proverbs 8, I would say the me in "By me kings reign" is wisdom, as distinct from the all-powerful]
Perhaps I should clarify my use of the dimension of "modern"/"traditional" - my intention was not that politics ought to be understood through the lens of those who are against and in favor of the present establishment. It is instead an epistemological distinction: do the certainties which motivate my actions originate in my immediate sensibility and in abstract arguments, or in relationships and in the thoroughly-mediated historicity of my surroundings? What is intended in my use of "modern" is closer to the original sense of "modo" - "at-present", etc. The same goes for my use of "traditional" - I don't mean "old" or "established" as much as I mean "transmitted" or "perennial".
The contest between liberalism, communism, and the axis ideologies that culminated in the second World War was one between different versions of modernism, and different visions of a post-war world. You are definitely correct in your observation about the collaboration between NatSocs and communists, though I'm not sure they would have regarded the forces of international capital as "traditional". Status quo certainly, but I imagine, since their thinking was deeply-infected by the ideas of Rousseau and Hobbes (and Marx of course), that they, like most traditionalists, would at least assent to the proposition that capitalism is more fat than meat as far as the transmission of intergenerational wisdom goes. The reasons for doing so might differ among all parties involved, but their is at least an assent to the proposition taken at face value.
So as a Ship-of-Theseus question: how traditional is the (post Vatican II) Church?
If I am understanding de Maistre correctly, he would consider Francis to be part of tradition, for that is the whole point of not being bound to ink (as the protestants err) ... and this despite the fact that the catechism resembles nothing so much to an outsider as a Napoleonic-style civil code*: eg, https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P8M.HTM
9 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 32.3 ms ] threadI suppose this is the sort of thought animating capital-C capital-N Christian Nationalists[0] in the Old Country? (albeit presumably, there, with more of a proddie than a catholic justification?)
IIRC, Isaiah Berlin suggested[1] that de Maistre was worth reading, because although he was a loon, he is no fool[2].
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/10/27/views-of-the...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Berlin#Counter-Enlighte...
[2] by way of supportive evidence, he did help prepare Pound for capital-F Fascism
[Edit: some clarifications for modern readers:
> ... the nation which itself bears so great a name, since it gave its name to frankness, ...
Here, of course, de Maistre means the french and France.
etymologically similar: Ferengi, political franchise.
> ... inhabited by pickpockets and street girls.
In the days when (a) the institution of matrimony was between men of 35+ and girls of 15+ (leaving boys and younger men with a couple of decades of fending for themselves), and (b) OnlyFans would not be invented for at least another century (those days having ended ca. 1918), prostitution (especially of the sort that did not require ascending staircases) was much more common. ]
Lagniappe: https://youtu.be/JLMuZ517jfk?t=120
I was introduced to de Maistre years ago in my reading of Berlin. While I appreciate Berlin for having shared his name and thought to a generation of people who otherwise never would have heard of him, nowadays his reading of de Maistre appears to me to obscure his meaning.
Interesting about Pound; I was entirely unaware that he had read de Maistre, but I definitely see the connection.
I would certainly hesitate to class de Maistre as "proto-fascistic". Fascism was always opposed to the Church and held to an all-encompassing view of the state, and the Church hierarchy is not simply an alternative form that "the state" takes in de Maistre.
However, I can see how it would make sense to class de Maistre in such a way if one represents political thought strictly within the dimensions of "libertarian/authoritarian" etc. [For myself, the key dimension in politics is "modern" (in the sense of an obedience to what is immediate in the senses)/"traditional" (in the sense of an obedience to what is received mediately). There are, of course, many subsidiary dimensions that are important to consider, but from an aerial view it seems to boil down to this primary axis.]
> I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong, and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid. —GKC
(and the US context is just plain odd — some of the most vocal backers of "The Constitution is Divinely Inspired" dogma are not even protestant christian: they are Mormon)
To the issue of American "civic" nationalism: I must say I have always been perplexed by the phenomenon, but it is perhaps most unsurprising to witness among Mormons. Quite like the framing of the Constitution, the LDS is undoubtedly freemasonic in its origins, and many Mormons are themselves heritage Americans. There's also that whole BYU-CIA recruitment thing.
Are there other parts of the essay I should try reading?
(in the english context, I think both William and Henry might contest the "without violence on the one part"?)
Looking through a mod/trad prism, there probably is little to justify the separation. I think it was Simone Weil who pointed out that in germany, finding the fascists and the communists working together on occasion against the establishment was not necessarily as surprising as it might seem to intellectuals, for both thought they were thoroughly modern, "on the right side of history" as it were, and on this point they differed only in each thinking their own side would be the one to ultimately replace the "traditional" (in their eyes) globalist capitalist world.
[Edit: Looking at Proverbs 8, I would say the me in "By me kings reign" is wisdom, as distinct from the all-powerful]
Not a bad source of counter-argumentation.
>Looking through a mod/trad prism...
Perhaps I should clarify my use of the dimension of "modern"/"traditional" - my intention was not that politics ought to be understood through the lens of those who are against and in favor of the present establishment. It is instead an epistemological distinction: do the certainties which motivate my actions originate in my immediate sensibility and in abstract arguments, or in relationships and in the thoroughly-mediated historicity of my surroundings? What is intended in my use of "modern" is closer to the original sense of "modo" - "at-present", etc. The same goes for my use of "traditional" - I don't mean "old" or "established" as much as I mean "transmitted" or "perennial".
The contest between liberalism, communism, and the axis ideologies that culminated in the second World War was one between different versions of modernism, and different visions of a post-war world. You are definitely correct in your observation about the collaboration between NatSocs and communists, though I'm not sure they would have regarded the forces of international capital as "traditional". Status quo certainly, but I imagine, since their thinking was deeply-infected by the ideas of Rousseau and Hobbes (and Marx of course), that they, like most traditionalists, would at least assent to the proposition that capitalism is more fat than meat as far as the transmission of intergenerational wisdom goes. The reasons for doing so might differ among all parties involved, but their is at least an assent to the proposition taken at face value.
If I am understanding de Maistre correctly, he would consider Francis to be part of tradition, for that is the whole point of not being bound to ink (as the protestants err) ... and this despite the fact that the catechism resembles nothing so much to an outsider as a Napoleonic-style civil code*: eg, https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P8M.HTM
(otoh, I doubt de Maistre would approve of the 15 commandments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXeTsWGPT0w )
* but how long has the catechism been presented in this form? does the resemblance go in the opposite direction?
I've had experience with both azure and salmon legal systems: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Map_of_t... and IMX the azure have been equally just, while being both faster and cheaper than, the salmon.