Joseph de Maistre: interpreter of the French Revolution and modernity

Author(s)

José Miguel Nanni Soares

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2014-09-12

Examining board members

Modesto Florenzano; José Leonardo do Nascimento; Josemar Machado de Oliveira; Elcio de Gusmão Verçosa Filho; Carlos Alberto de Moura Ribeiro Zeron

• Advisor: Modesto Florenzano

Abstract

This thesis aims to study the Maistrean interpretation of the French Revolution, which, contrary to the common view postulated by great part of the historiography, was not confined to the famous providential treatment exposed in the Considérations sur la France (1797), but manifested instead in many other writings distributed along the 14 volumes of his Collected Works, not to mention the thousands pages of his unpublished notebooks. We would like to show that Maistre had the merit of considering the French Revolution in the light of the long-term historical process of modernization of the West, whose guidelines, expressed by the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment, allowed him to explain not only the Revolution in France, but also to predict the advent of an \'age of revolutions \'. Above all, we seek to demonstrate how Joseph de Maistre\'s (1753-1821) critique of the Enlightenment - and, by extension, revolutionary - project to humanity is, surprisingly, not only coincident with the way recent scholars interpret the genesis of the modern world, but, despite its deeply conservative character and intentions, is also supported by indelibly humanist and rationalist assumptions (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 09/18380-9 - Joseph de Maistre: interpreting both the French Revolution and the Modernity
• Grantee: José Miguel Nanni Soares
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate