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
By analyzing the Kantian response to the query What is Enlightenment?, esotericism, and, more specifically, Freemasonry as a spiritual search, this study offers a re-interpretation of the eighteenth century, one in which Enlightenment, as the predominance of rationalism, and Illuminisme are viewed as complementary rather than antithetical. By focusing on the history and nature of continental Freemasonry and the Masonic affiliation of two French authors as expressed in their work--Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and Dominique Vivant Denon--this study addresses issues of importance today. Links between material possessions, human self-realization, and regeneration, which were exploited by these writers, call for a new look at the esoteric origins of and component in psychoanalysis, spirituality, sexuality, and power, and, ultimately, cause us to view our modern society as, in part, the inheritor of a spiritual legacy from the eighteenth century