Two hundred years ago, on February 26, 1821, in Turin, Joseph de Maestre, a French philosopher, writer and diplomat who was a ferocious critic of the French Revolution and Enlightenment, was one of the most famous polymists among the counters – Revolutionaries.
De Maestre traces the roots of the rationalist and individualist mindset of ‘philosophers’ to the ‘free examination’ of Protestants and the interpretation of ‘terrorism’ as the inevitable result of atheistic and fanatical sentiment, as well as the punishment sent by Providence Of. In its philosophical reflection, a weak creature corrupted by original sin, cannot control itself: a stable political order is possible only when it is founded on the truths of religion.
Born in Chambry on 1 April 1753, Joseph de Maestre was educated by the Jesuits and graduated in law from the University of Turin; He entered witchcraft in 1774 and rose to the dignity of senator in 1788. In Chambéry he first enrolled in the Masonic Lodge of the English Rite of Tris Mortiers (1774), then moved to the Scottish Lodge of Cincitre, of which he became one of the leaders (1778).
His dream was, through Freemasonry, through the reunification of all churches and religious statements: people of different faiths united in lodges, ending any orthodox tradition, as a religious doctrine and as a form of Catholicism. Confirmed the perennial value of Christianity. The world would have found itself Catholic without realizing it.
Facing the French Revolution, at first his attitude seemed favorable, but then, influenced by the historicity of Edmund Burke, he opposed it. After being invaded by the French Savoy, he took refuge in Switzerland (1793). Returning to Turin (1797), but was again forced to leave the city, he was appointed as Chancellor of Sardinia (1799); However, at Cagliari, he got into a dispute with Viceroy Carlo Felice, and was then sent by Vittorio Emanuel I (1802) to Russia as Minister of Ecumenism, where the Tsari offered him to go into his service.
However, his fierce criticism against his theory of autocratic autocracy and liberal thinking pushed Alexander I forward, then leaning towards Western ideas of progress and freedom, calling for his appeal. De Maestre spent his last years in Turin.
In “Thoughts on France” (1796), written in Switzerland, after criticizing revolutionary theory and action, he outlined a program of restoration in keeping with the new interests of the revolution. His return to Turin became his anti-revolutionary controversy, the anti-apartheid controversy: in “Reflections sur le Protestantism dans son rapport avere la suvernete” he was genuinely concerned with religious sentiment with the free will of religious reformers.
He composed his major works in Russia: “Petersburg or the colloquial evening on the Provisional Government of Providence (published posthumously in 1821), which faced mystical enlightenment, takes an explicit critical position, and” Del Papa “( 1819 again in Turin, he wrote “Letters on the State of Christianity in Europe” (1819), in which he reconnected his faith in the arrival of a single Catholic Church capable of uniting all churches in itself.
The Restoration de Maestre is the greatest exponent in Europe, with Louis de Bonald of the Democratic and ultramonist who speculatively inserts himself into the great movement of European Romanticism, contributing to it with the concept of history (as opposed to Enlightenment )) As tradition (in the sense of eternal preservation of supreme and hereafter moral-religious values).
Correspondingly, in politics he lays the foundations of life based on the principle of legitimacy, the only moral force capable of reviving man and restoring the law that the French Revolution trampled. This principle should be realized in a democratic framework of the state. De Maistre’s reactionary bias explained the decline of his fortune in politics and culture following the rise of liberal thought.