Download or read book St Petersburg Dialogues written by Joseph de Maistre and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 1993-03-09 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written and set on the banks of the Neva, St Petersburg Dialogues is a startlingly relevant analysis of the human prospect in the twenty-first century. As the literary critic George Steiner has remarked, "the age of the Gulag and of Auschwitz, of famine and ubiquitous torture ... nuclear threat, the ecological laying waste of our planet, the leap of endemic, possibly pandemic, illness out of the very matrix of libertarian progress" is exactly what Joseph de Maistre foretold. In the Dialogues Maistre addressed a number of topics that are discussed briefly or not at all in his other works already available in English. These include an apologetic for traditional Christian beliefs about providence, reflections on the social role of the public executioner and the "divinity" of war, a critique of John Locke's sensationalist psychology, meditations on prayer and sacrifice, and a mini-course on "illuminism." The literary form is that of the "philosophical conversation" – one that allowed Maistre to be deliberately provocative and to indulge his taste for paradox, a "methodical extravagance" that he judged particularly appropriate for the eighteenth-century salon. Translator and editor Richard Lebrun provides a full scholarly edition of this classic work, complete with an introduction, chronology, critical bibliography, and generous explanatory notes. The Dialogues will be of interest to scholars of literary history as well as the history of ideas.
Download or read book More Moderate Side of Joseph de Maistre written by Cara Camcastle and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2005 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The More Moderate Side of Joseph de Maistre expertly contextualizes his work within the historical events and intellectual debates that emerged in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Camcastle sheds new light on Maistre's conception of government as being made up of groups in dynamic counterbalance and on the system of inconvertible paper money that he developed a century before a similar system was universally adopted in the twentieth century. Camcastle provides a more complete and balanced picture of Maistre's political writings through original interpretations of his published works and translations from French and Italian into English of previously unpublished writings that substantiate key points.
Download or read book Joseph de Maistre written by Richard Lebrun and published by Kingston, Ont. : McGill-Queen's University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joseph de Maistre is the first full biography in English of one of the founders of conservatism, and the first to have benefited from access to the family archives. Richard Lebrun shows that understanding the dynamics of Maistre's political evolution contributes not only to our knowledge of Continental conservatism as it emerged from the crucible of the French Revolution but also to a better understanding of the roots of modem conservatism. Even in France, where his stature as a great stylist generally has been acknowledged, Maistre is often dismissed with a brief remark about his scandalous comments on bloodshed and war. Lebrun argues that this dismissal is unwarranted: study of Maistre's life and thought is worthwhile in itself and provides useful insights into the factors that encourage the formulation and acceptance of conservatism or reactionary ideologies. Lebrun shows how Maistre became a renowned defender of throne and altar by detailing the formative influences -the Savoyard roots, religious heritage, and predominant intellectual influences - of Maistre's experience before 1794. The Joseph de Maistre revealed here is a more complex figure than either the bloody-minded apologist for conservatism portrayed by his liberal critics or the steadfast Church Father of his traditional Roman Catholic admirers. Maistre was a scholarly magistrate in the tradition of Montesquieu, a man who had been open to the trends of his time but was profoundly shaken by the violence of the French Revolution. Appalled by the prospect of chaos, he used his rhetorical skills as a lawyer to defend monarchical institutions and traditional Catholicism. Lebrun argues that only with the opening of the family archives and the discoveries in recent studies are we able to appreciate Maistre's struggles to understand the upheavals of his time, his doubts and hesitations, and his reasons for taking the public positions he chose.
Download or read book Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions written by Joseph Marie comte de Maistre and published by . This book was released on 1847 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Catalogue of Printed Books written by and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Reactionary Mind written by Corey Robin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now updated to include Trump's election and the rise of global populism, Corey Robin's 'The Reactionary Mind' traces conservatism back to its roots in the reaction against the French Revolution.
Download or read book Democracy and Populism written by John Lukacs and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-08 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This intensely interesting—and troubling—book is the product of a lifetime of reflection and study of democracy. In it, John Lukacs addresses the questions of how our democracy has changed and why we have become vulnerable to the shallowest possible demagoguery. Lukacs contrasts the political systems, movements, and ideologies that have bedeviled the twentieth century: democracy, Liberalism, nationalism, fascism, Bolshevism, National Socialism, populism. Reflecting on American democracy, Lukacs describes its evolution from the eighteenth century to its current form—a dangerous and possibly irreversible populism. This involves, among other things, the predominance of popular sentiment over what used to be public opinion. This devolution has happened through the gigantic machinery of publicity, substituting propaganda—and entertainment—for knowledge, and ideology for a sense of history. It is a kind of populism that relies on nationalism and militarism to hold society together. Lukacs's observations are original, biting, timely, sure to inspire lively debate about the precarious state of American democracy today.
Download or read book The Anatomy of Antiliberalism written by Stephen Holmes and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Holmes challenges the philosophical arguments of the high communitarians ... and their intellectual forebears. By the time he is finished, the opposing camp has no survivors, ancient or modern. Anybody who feels drawn to the high communitarian cause owes it to himself (though not to society) to read Mr. Holmes's book; everybody else should read it for pleasure.
Download or read book The Hedgehog and the Fox written by Isaiah Berlin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-02 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Leo Tolstoy and the philosophy of history, the subject of the epilogue to War and Peace. Although there have been many interpretations of the adage, Berlin uses it to mark a fundamental distinction between human beings who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system. Applied to Tolstoy, the saying illuminates a paradox that helps explain his philosophy of history: Tolstoy was a fox, but believed in being a hedgehog. One of Berlin's most celebrated works, this extraordinary essay offers profound insights about Tolstoy, historical understanding, and human psychology. This new edition features a revised text that supplants all previous versions, English translations of the many passages in foreign languages, a new foreword in which Berlin biographer Michael Ignatieff explains the enduring appeal of Berlin's essay, and a new appendix that provides rich context, including excerpts from reviews and Berlin's letters, as well as a startling new interpretation of Archilochus's epigram.
Download or read book Joseph de Maistre and his European Readers written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-05-23 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the publication of Isaiah Berlin's essay on Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), the Savoyard philosopher has been known primarily in the English-speaking world as a precursor of fascism. The essays in this volume challenge this view. Disclosing the inaccuracies and limitations of Berlin's account, they illustrate Maistre's colossally diverse European posterity. Far from an inflexible ideologist, Maistre was a versatile and deeply modern thinker who attracted interpreters across the political spectrum. Through the centuries, Maistre's passionate Europeanism has contributed to his popularity from Madrid to Moscow. And in our times, when religion is re-asserting itself as a source of public reason, his theorization of the encounter between tradition and modernity is lending his work ever more urgent relevance. Cover illustration by Matthieu Manche
Download or read book British Museum Catalogue of printed Books written by and published by . This book was released on 1892 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Public Opinion written by and published by . This book was released on 1870 with total page 876 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Irish Ecclesiastical Journal written by and published by . This book was released on 1849 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions written by Joseph de Maistre and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The American Enemy written by Philippe Roger and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2006-11 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Georges-Louis Buffon, an eighteenth-century French scientist, was the first to promote the widespread idea that nature in the New World was deficient; in America, which he had never visited, dogs don't bark, birds don't sing, and—by extension—humans are weaker, less intelligent, and less potent. Thomas Jefferson, infuriated by these claims, brought a seven-foot-tall carcass of a moose from America to the entry hall of his Parisian hotel, but the five-foot-tall Buffon remained unimpressed and refused to change his views on America's inferiority. Buffon, as Philippe Roger demonstrates here, was just one of the first in a long line of Frenchmen who have built a history of anti-Americanism in that country, a progressive history that is alternately ludicrous and trenchant. The American Enemy is Roger's bestselling and widely acclaimed history of French anti-Americanism, presented here in English translation for the first time. With elegance and good humor, Roger goes back 200 years to unearth the deep roots of this anti-Americanism and trace its changing nature, from the belittling, as Buffon did, of the "savage American" to France's resigned dependency on America for goods and commerce and finally to the fear of America's global domination in light of France's thwarted imperial ambitions. Roger sees French anti-Americanism as barely acquainted with actual fact; rather, anti-Americanism is a cultural pillar for the French, America an idea that the country and its culture have long defined themselves against. Sharon Bowman's fine translation of this magisterial work brings French anti-Americanism into the broad light of day, offering fascinating reading for Americans who care about our image abroad and how it came about. “Mr. Roger almost single-handedly creates a new field of study, tracing the nuances and imagery of anti-Americanism in France over 250 years. He shows that far from being a specific reaction to recent American policies, it has been knit into the very substance of French intellectual and cultural life. . . . His book stuns with its accumulated detail and analysis.”—Edward Rothstein, New York Times “A brilliant and exhaustive guide to the history of French Ameriphobia.”—Simon Schama, New Yorker
Download or read book Joseph de Maistre s Life Thought and Influence written by Richard A. Lebrun and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2001-10-08 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joseph de Maistre (1753B1821) was an extraordinarily gifted and insightful commentator on foundational developments that have shaped our modern world. His reaction to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, though hostile, was remarkably open and included innovative and still-valuable theorizing about such human phenomena as violence and unreason. The political and theoretical issues he addressed continue to challenge us today. In Joseph de Maistre's Life, Thought, and Influence leading Maistre scholars offer interpretations of his thought and make available in English recent French scholarship on his life and work. They provide a portrait of Maistre as a significant thinker in numerous fields, upsetting the image of him as a backward-looking "reactionary," a reinterpretation furthered by contemporary interest in Counter-Enlightenment thought in general. Joseph de Maistre's Life, Thought, and Influence is a valuable resource, providing not only a cross-section of current Maistre scholarship but also notes and biographical suggestions for further study. Contributors include Owen Bradley (University of Tennessee), Jean-Louis Darcel (Université de Savoie), Jean Dinezet (former OECD director-general), Graeme Garrard (University of Wales), Richard A. Lebrun, Vera Miltchyna (Writer's Union, Moscow), Jean-Yves Pranchère (independent scholar), W. Jay Reedy (Bryant College), and Benjamin Thurston (D.Phil. candidate, Oxford).
Download or read book Humanity written by and published by . This book was released on 1921 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
