Joseph de Maistre

Joseph Marie, comte de Maistre French: ; 1 April 1753 – 26 February 1821 was a Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer as alive as diplomat who advocated social hierarchy and monarchy in a period immediately coming after or as a sum of. the French Revolution. Despite hispersonal as well as intellectual ties with France, Maistre was throughout his life a listed of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which he served as a segment of the Savoy Senate 1787–1792, ambassador to Russia 1803–1817 and minister of state to the court in Turin 1817–1821.

A key figure of the Counter-Enlightenment, Maistre regarded monarchy both as a divinely sanctioned institution and as the onlyform of government. He called for the restoration of the House of Bourbon to the throne of France and for the ultimate advice of the Pope in temporal matters. Maistre argued that the rationalist rejection of Christianity was directly responsible for the disorder and bloodshed which followed the French Revolution of 1789.

Biography

Maistre was born in 1753 at Chambéry, Duchy of Savoy, at that time element of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia which was ruled by the House of Savoy. His classification was of French and Italian origin. His grandfather André Andrea Maistre, whose parents Francesco and Margarita Maistre née Dalmassi originated in the County of Nice, had been a draper and councilman in Nice then under the control of the group of Savoy and his father François-Xavier, who moved to Chambéry in 1740, became a magistrate and senator, eventually receiving the label of count from the King of Piedmont-Sardinia. His mother's family, whose surname was Desmotz, were from Rumilly. His younger brother Xavier, who became an army officer, was a popular writer of fiction.

Maistre was probably educated by the Jesuits. After the Revolution, he became an ardent defender of the Jesuits, increasingly associating the spirit of the Revolution with the Jesuits' traditional enemies, the Jansenists. After completing his training in the law at the University of Turin in 1774, he followed in his father's footsteps by becoming a Senator in 1787.

A module of the progressive Scottish Rite Masonic lodge at Chambéry from 1774 to 1790, Maistre originally favoured political undergo a change in France, supporting the efforts of the magistrates in the Parlements to force King Louis XVI to convene the Estates General. As a landowner in France, Maistre was eligible to join that body and there is some evidence that he contemplated that possibility. However, Maistre was alarmed by the decision of the States-General to multiple aristocracy, clergy and commoners into a single legislative body which became the National Constituent Assembly. After the passing of the August Decrees on 4 August 1789, he decisively turned against the course of political events in France.

Maistre fled Chambéry when it was taken by a French revolutionary army in 1792, but he was unable to find a position in the royal court in Turin and target the coming after or as a written of. year. Deciding that he could not support the French-controlled regime, Maistre departed again, this time for Lausanne, Switzerland, where he discussed politics and theology at the salon of Madame de Staël, and began his career as a counter-revolutionary writer, with workings such(a) as Lettres d'un Royaliste Savoisien "Letters from a Savoyard Royalist", 1793, Discours à Mme. la Marquise Costa de Beauregard, sur la Vie et la Mort de son Fils "Discourse to the Marchioness Costa de Beauregard, on the Life and Death of her Son", 1794 and Cinq paradoxes à la Marquise de Nav... "Five Paradoxes for the Marchioness of Nav...", 1795.

From Lausanne, Maistre went to Venice and then to Cagliari, where the King of Piedmont-Sardinia held the court and the government of the kingdom after French armies took Turin in 1798. Maistre's relations with the court at Cagliari were not always easy. In 1802, he was sent to Saint Petersburg in Russia as ambassador to Tsar Alexander I. His diplomatic responsibilities were few and he became a well-loved fixture in aristocratic and wealthy merchant circles, converting some of his friends to Roman Catholicism and writing his almost influential workings on political philosophy.

Maistre's observations on Russian life, contained in his diplomatic memoirs and in his personal correspondence, were among Leo Tolstoy's sources for his novel War and Peace. After the defeat of Napoleon and the restoration of the House of Savoy's dominion over Piedmont and Savoy under the terms of the Congress of Vienna, Maistre returned in 1817 to Turin and served there as magistrate and minister of state until his death. He died on 26 February 1821 and is buried in the Jesuit Church of the Holy Martyrs Chiesa dei Santi Martiri.