George Anesi – January 24, 2006 History of European Civilization, Department of History, University of Chicago As you read these texts, think about differences and similarities between Burke’s argument and Maistre’s. What are their motivations? What do they find most threatening about events in France? After observing the events of the French Revolution unfold, Edmund Burke wrote his “Reflections on the Revolution in France” in 1790 as a conservative counterrevolutionary attack on the Revolution’s principles. The motivation behind his political writing was grounded in a profound respect for precedent and the teachings of history, and he seemed most concerned specifically with the revolutionaries’ lack of experience and arrogance in the face of tradition. Joseph de Maistre, a contemporary of Burke’s, was also a conservative but in his “Considerations on France,” presented a markedly different view of the sins of the revolution in France. Less concerned with national tradition, Maistre was most troubled by the Revolution’s godlessness. Maistre was a religious catholic, and was motivated to write his essay by what he saw as a neverbefore-seen “satanic” quality that the revolutionaries possessed. Edmund Burke saw the violent events of the French Revolution as a departure from what was previously a relatively peaceful France. “In the calling of the states general of France, the first thing which struck me, was a great departure from the ancient course.” (RWC, p435). On some level, he wanted nothing more than for the revolutionaries to realize they had set their country down the wrong path, and to bring stability back to France. Burke, an Englishman, notes that France had always influenced the “manners” of England, and that the current lapse in character could spill over the borders and affect all of Europe. Burke takes particular aim at the makeup of the Third Estate. He notes that experienced people were not elected and that those who were, “despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the rest, they have wrought under-ground a mine that will blow up at one grand explosion all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament.” (p438). In general, Burke viewed the lessons of history and established precedent as the most reliable source for present guidance, and believed firmly that any change should be rigorously debated and subtly applied.
Joseph de Maistre certainly agreed that the French Revolution was balking at the status quo, but for a different reason. He believed that there was a certain understood order to the world that was only interrupted by anomalies. If “miracles” were positive anomalies, revealing divine influence, the Revolution was an example of an anomaly at the other end of moral spectrum. Maistre’s catholic point of view saw that man’s influence has a distinctly finite reach, and that anything beyond that was destructive. The French Revolution far overstepped the line and was nothing short of “criminal.” At the root of Maistre’s concerns was the view that the revolution actually pitted Christianity against “philosphism,” a catch-all term for human reason. He believed that the revolutionaries’ pride, clearly in excess, had led them to play certain roles reserved only to God, and had in the process started something that they could not control. The revolution was leading the revolutionaries, not the other way around. Burke and Maistre can both be considered conservatives because they held the belief that the way things were before the revolution were morally superior to what they had witnessed since the revolution began. Their opinions diverge, however, when the question is asked why the status quo was superior. Burke believed that what had been arrived at over the course of centuries of history and experience was intellectually and politically superior to anything that could have been devised in the halls of the infant National Assembly. For Maistre, it is all about established religious practice and respect. God had laid out his plan a certain way, and the revolutionaries were defying that plan.