Carolina Armenteros
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449437
- eISBN:
- 9780801462597
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449437.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter describes the genesis of Maistrian historical thought in De l'état de nature and De la souveraineté du people (1794–96), two essays that refute Jean-Jacques Rousseau and contain most of ...
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This chapter describes the genesis of Maistrian historical thought in De l'état de nature and De la souveraineté du people (1794–96), two essays that refute Jean-Jacques Rousseau and contain most of Maistre's historical thought in potentia. It was in refuting Rousseau that Maistre redefined nature as a mysterious divine agent and a source of reason; he insisted that will and perfectibility are history's main agents and society's foundations; and developed the ideas on probability and moral conscience that were so important for his realist conservatism and his philosophy of history. Indeed, the essays include a sophisticated model of historical causation that constitutes an early example of moral statistical theory.Less
This chapter describes the genesis of Maistrian historical thought in De l'état de nature and De la souveraineté du people (1794–96), two essays that refute Jean-Jacques Rousseau and contain most of Maistre's historical thought in potentia. It was in refuting Rousseau that Maistre redefined nature as a mysterious divine agent and a source of reason; he insisted that will and perfectibility are history's main agents and society's foundations; and developed the ideas on probability and moral conscience that were so important for his realist conservatism and his philosophy of history. Indeed, the essays include a sophisticated model of historical causation that constitutes an early example of moral statistical theory.
