Clerical philosophers

Group of Catholic intellectuals

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Clerical philosophers" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (February 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

|

Part of a series on

Conservatism in France

Ideologies

* Bonapartism
* Christian democracy
* Gaullism
* Integralism
* nationalist
* Legitimism
* Maurrassisme
* Nouvelle Droite
* Orléanism
* Révolution nationale
* Royalism
* Sarkozysm
* Ultramontanism

Principles

* Anti-communism
* Counter-revolution
* Dirigisme
* Elitism
* Meritocracy
* Noblesse oblige
* Ethnopluralism
* Family values
* French culture
* Imperialism
* Monarchism
* Metapolitics
* Nationalism
* Nativism
* Natural order
* Patriotism
* Social hierarchy
* Social order
* Souverainisme
* Traditional authority

History

* Ancien Régime
* Monarchiens
* Feuillant
* Catholic and Royal Armies
* War in the Vendée
* Thermidorian Reaction
* Chouannerie
* Chouan
* First White Terror
* Companions of Jehu
* Muscadins
* Second White Terror
* Bourbon Restoration
* Ultra-royalists
* Dreyfus affair
* Second French Empire
* Philippe Daudet affair
* Vichy France
* Algiers putsch of 1961
* 2024 The Republicans alliance crisis

Intellectuals

* Ballanche
* Bainville
* Barbey d'Aurevilly
* Barruel
* Barrès
* Baudelaire
* de Benoist
* Blanc de Saint-Bonnet
* de Bonald
* Boutang
* Bruckner
* Brunetière
* Brague
* Cau
* de Chateaubriand
* Fustel de Coulanges
* Cochin
* Daudet
* Delsol
* Dumézil
* Faguet
* Faye
* Freund
* Girardet
* Guénon
* de Gobineau
* Houellebecq
* de Jouvenel
* Lamennais (early)
* Le Bon
* Lefebvre
* Lemaître
* Le Play
* Lugan
* Madiran
* de Maistre
* Morel
* Maffesoli
* Massis
* Maurras
* Maulnier
* Marcel
* Nimier
* Poulat
* Rémond
* Renan
* de Rivarol
* Rohmer
* Rueff
* Siegfried
* Taine
* de Tocqueville
* Thibon

Literature

* Considerations on France (1796)
* Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (1797)
* The Genius of Christianity (1802)
* The Pope (1819)
* St Petersburg Dialogues (1821)
* Democracy in America (1835)
* The Ancient City (1864)
* "What Is a Nation?" (1882)
* The Crowd (1895)
* Inquiry into the Monarchy (1900)
* "The Future of the Intelligentsia" (1905)
* My Political Ideas (1937)
* The Reign of Quantity (1945)
* The Opium of the Intellectuals (1955)
* Violence and the Sacred (1972)
* The Camp of the Saints (1973)
* The Tyranny of Guilt (2006)
* The French Suicide (2014)
* Submission (2015)

Politicians

* Bardella
* Bellamy
* de Bonald
* Boulanger
* Cathelineau
* de Chateaubriand
* Ciotti
* Flandin
* Fouéré
* de Gaulle
* Holeindre
* Juppé
* de Kérillis
* Le Pen (Jean-Marie)
* Le Pen (Marine)
* Maurras
* Malraux
* MacMahon
* Maréchal
* Messiha
* Messmer
* Pécresse
* Pétain
* Peyrefitte
* Pichegru
* Poincaré
* Poisson
* de Polignac
* Pompidou
* Retailleau
* de La Rocque
* de La Tour du Pin
* Sarkozy
* Schuman
* de Vaublanc
* de Villèle
* de Villiers
* Zemmour

Commentators

* Barbier
* Buisson
* Camus
* Cassen
* Jean
* Giesbert
* de Girardin
* d'Escufon
* Jamet
* Lasserre
* Lévy
* Marmin
* Massis
* Maulnier
* Ménard
* Mougeotte
* Nay
* Obertone
* d'Orcival
* d'Ornellas
* Pauwels
* Pujo
* Sastre
* Sérant
* Tasin
* Venner

Parties

Active

* Alliance Royale
* Debout la France
* French Future
* The Nationalists
* National Republican Movement
* Future with Confidence
* National Centre of Independents & Peasants
* National Rally
* Reconquête
* The Republicans
* Senate Republicans
* Soyons libres
* VIA, the Way of the People

Defunct

* Democratic Republican Alliance
* Feuillants
* French Agrarian and Peasant Party
* French Social Party
* Movement for France
* Independent Radicals
* Independent Republicans
* Party of Order
* Rally of the French People
* Popular Liberal Action
* Rally for France
* Rally for the Republic
* Republican Federation
* Resistance Party
* Union for a Popular Movement
* Union for the New Republic

Organisations

Active

* Action Française
* Carrefour de l'Horloge
* Cité catholique
* Groupement de Recherche et d'Études
pour la Civilisation Européenne
* Initiative and Liberty Movement
* La Manif pour tous
* Les Identitaires
* March for Life
* Nouvelle Action Royaliste
* Rassemblement national de la jeunesse
* Student Cockade
* UDR group
* Union Nationale Inter-universitaire

Defunct

* Action Française (pre Liberation)
* Camelots du Roi
* Cercle Proudhon
* Civitas
* Croix-de-Feu
* Independent Republicans
* Hussards
* Service d'Action Civique

Media

Active

* Atlantico
* CNews
* Éléments
* Famille chrétienne
* L'Écho du Sud
* La Croix
* Le Figaro
* Le Figaro Magazine
* Le Point
* Nouvelle École
* Radio Courtoisie
* Valeurs actuelles

Defunct

* La Liberté
* La Presse
* La Nation française
* Le Quotidien de Paris
* Minute
* Présent

Related topics

* Archeofuturism
* Clerical philosophers
* European New Right
* Far-right movements in France
* France profonde
* French–German enmity
* French Revolution
* "Islamo-leftism"
* List of French conservatives
* Maurrassisme in Argentina
* Ligues d'extrême droite
* Politics of France
* Remigration
* Sinistrisme
* Sovereigntist Right
* Tocqueville effect

* Conservatism portal
* France portal

* v
* t
* e

Clerical philosophers[1] is the name given to a group of Catholic intellectuals, namely the Savoyard Joseph de Maistre, and the French Louis de Bonald and François-René de Chateaubriand, who sought to undermine the intellectual foundations of the French Revolution in reaction to what they perceived as its overt anti-religious and destructive character.

## Aftermath of the French revolution

[edit]

In the Revolution's aftermath, France was continually wracked with the quarrels between the right-wing Bourbonist restorationists and left-wing Revolutionaries; herein arose the clerical philosophers whose answer was restoring monarchy and reinstalling the Roman Catholic Church as the official State Church of France.

## Return to a Golden Age

[edit]

Since then, France's history features said recurrent patterns of political thought, with reactionaries longing for an erstwhile pre-Revolutionary Golden Age, by repudiating two centuries of progress since the Revolution in 1789. (see Action Française)

## Joseph de Maistre

[edit]

Joseph de Maistre, even though not a French citizen (being a magistrate and diplomat of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia), is the Bourbon Restoration's philosopher of reaction; his writings are authoritative sources of reactionary ideas advocating authoritarian government of a society classified according to a divinely-established "natural inequality". A pessimist about Man's nature, he repudiated the Revolution's humanist principles and socio-political institutions, because they originated in the anti-Christian Enlightenment, saying it was God who created the State, not a human social contract; societal order and stability are paramount, yet feasible only via obedience to a Church-anointed absolute monarch; and that civil law expressed custom and tradition, not the fickle opinion of the people. In the book, Examen de la philosophie de Bacon (An Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon), he attacked Francis Bacon's materialism.

## Louis de Bonald

[edit]

Louis de Bonald was of the same cloth as De Maistre. He buttressed the convictions of already-convinced reactionaries; attacked the Revolution for creating individualism and centralization in government; championed absolute monarchy and the Church as the only means of securing domestic tranquillity. He proposed restoring the mediaeval guild system to ensure the rights (and obligations) of every French social class.

## François-René de Chateaubriand

[edit]

François-René de Chateaubriand was an eloquent writer described as Rousseau in Catholic (black) dress, and is considered the first Romantic writer. Although not reactionary per se, he accepted Revolutionary change, but not its social principles. He mingled new institutions with old memories, traditions with ideals of the ancien régime, so, in dressing the monarchic Restoration in Catholic trappings, he sought to the Bourbon Régime's stability via the people's devotion. Moreover, Chateaubriand wrote Christian-themed novels, such as Atala and Genie du Christianisme (The Genius of Christianity).

## Support for a conservative social order

[edit]

Politically, they saw the Church as essential in maintaining a conservative social order and the Monarchy.

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Middleton, Niamh (2005). "Aquinas, the Enlightenment and Darwin". New Blackfriars. 86 (1004): 437–449\. doi:10.1111/j.0028-4289.2005.00097.x. ISSN 0028-4289. JSTOR 43250951. "...Italian thinkers rediscovered classical Greek and Roman learning and began to construct a glorious vision of 'man' that contrasted noticeably with the struggling, sinful pilgrim portrayed in the writings of clerical philosophers and theologians."

* v
* t
* e

Joseph de Maistre

Works|

* Considerations on France (1796)
* The Pope (1819)
* St Petersburg Dialogues (1821)
* An Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon (1836)

Schools|

* Clerical philosophy
* Conservatism
* Counter-Enlightenment
* French royalism
* Neo-medievalism
* Neo-ultramontanism

Family|

* Baronne Almaury de Maistre (niece)
* Rodolphe de Maistre (son)
* Xavier de Maistre (brother)

Analysis|

| Scholars|

* Carolina Armenteros
* Richard Lebrun
* Larry Siedentop

|

Works|

* The Hedgehog and the Fox (1953)
* Enemies of the Enlightenment (2001)
* Joseph de Maistre's Life, Thought, and Influence (2001)
* The Headless Republic (2005)
* Les antimodernes (2005)
* The Reactionary Mind (2011)

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template