Joseph de Maistre

Joseph de Maistre

Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre (French: [də mɛstʁ]; 1 April 1753 – 26 February 1821) was a Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer and diplomat who advocated social hierarchy and monarchy in the period immediately following the French Revolution. Despite his close personal and intellectual ties with France, Maistre was throughout his life a subject of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which he served as a member of the Savoy Senate (1787–1792), ambassador to Russia (1803–1817) and minister of state to the court in Turin (1817–1821).A key figure of the Counter-Enlightenment, Maistre regarded monarchy both as a divinely sanctioned institution and as the only stable form of government. He called for the restoration of the House of Bourbon to the throne of France and for the ultimate authority of the Pope in temporal matters. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Joseph de Maistre has received more than 471,202 page views. His biography is available in 39 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 34 in 2019). Joseph de Maistre is the 222nd most popular philosopher (up from 237th in 2019), the 512th most popular biography from France (up from 575th in 2019) and the 31st most popular French Philosopher.

Joseph de Maistre is most famous for his essay "Considerations on France." In this essay, he argues that the French Revolution was the result of the philosophy of the Enlightenment.