Monday, December 6, 2010

Joseph de Maistre

Rob Edwards

Joseph de Maistre: “Essay on the Generative Principle f Political Constitutions”

Thesis: Joseph de Maistre critiqued the phiposophes, the French Revolution, and manufactured constitutions by claiming that constitutional law can only be the development or sanction of a pre-existing and unwritten law.

  • It was erroneous to believe that a political constitution could be created and written where reason and experience unite in proving that a constitution is a divine work and that precisely the most fundamental and essentially constitutional of a nation's laws could not possibly be written

  • The fundamental principles of political constitutions exist prior to all written law

  • constitutional law can only be the development or sanction of a pre-existing law

  • it is foolish to think that law can be created just with a pen and paper

  • Without Christianity, people become brutalized, and civilization degenerates into anarchy

  • Religion alone civilizes nations. No other known force can influence the savage

  • Science will brutalize humanity

  • Man cannot create a constitution, and no legitimate constitution can be written

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