C L I O 30:3 2001

SmoN Kow
Maistre and Hobbes on Providential
History and the English Civil War

According to Sir Isaiah Berlin, the Catholic thinker

Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) was a "terrifying" prophet of
fascism and totalitarianism.^ In a similar vein, Stephen
Holmes has characterized Maistre as a proponent of
"antiliberalism," that is, a dangerous and misguided reaction
against the Enlightenment and the rise of modern
liberalism.^ At present, observes Berlin, most of his
biographers and commentators have depicted Maistre as a
reactionary figure in the nineteenth century: despite the
Enlightenment and the Romantic response to it, these
authors contend, the exiled Savoyard thinker clung
fanatically to medieval conceptions of divine providence,
monarchy, and papal authority.^ In contrast, Berlin argues
that Maistre is "in certain respects ultra-modern, presaging
the future" (96). Maistre, like the fascists, stresses dark,
violent, and unconscious forces at work in the world,
especially the power ofthe supernatural at work in human
history and institutions (127 and 172). The triumph of

1. Isaiah Berlin, "Joseph de Maistre find the Origins of Fascism," in The

Crooked Timber ofHumanity, e. Henry Hardy (London: JohnMurray, 1990), 174.
2. Stephen Hohnes, The Anatomy ofAntiliberalism (Ctmibridge: Harvard UP,
1993), 13-36.
3. See Richard Lebrun, Throne and Altar: The Political and Religious Thought
of Joseph de Maistre (Ottawa: U of Ottawa P, 1965), 93 ff., and Owen Bradley, A
Modern Maistre: The Social and Political Thought of Joseph de Maistre (Lincoln:
U of Nebraska P, 1999), ix ff., for surveys ofthe generally received view of Maistre
as Catholic reactionary.
268 Maistre and Hobbes
history is one in which the individual is absorbed into the
state through worship of the state religion (126). Thus
religion, in Berlin's interpretation of Maistre, is revealed in
history as an effective totalizing instrument of the state.
It is worth asking, however, if, in their attempts to revise
our conceptions of Maistre to make his thought relevant to
contemporary concerns, Berlin and Holmes have not
distorted Maistre's views, particularly as pertaining to the
relation between religion, history, and politics. Is there an
alternative way of seeing Maistre such that he is not, on the
one hand, a mere Catholic reactionary, nor on the other
hand, a sinister progenitor of fascism or illiberalism? Does
Maistre's thought offer insights that can neither be
dismissed as medieval nor vilified as a deluded historicism
and an irrational attack on liberal politics?
We can explore this possibility by comparing Maistre with
the seventeenth-century English political philosopher,
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), on issues surrounding the
English Civil War of the 1640s and '50s. Both thinkers
considered this war to be of pivotal importance, but for very
different reasons. The most striking reference Maistre
makes to it is in his Considerations on France (1797). The
last chapter is a collage of quotations from David Hume's
History of England (1754-62), cited in Maistre's work as
being "from a History of the French Revolution by David
Hume" (CF, 106).* How could Hume, acknowledged
elsewhere by Maistre to be an atheist (SP, 251), be used to
show the ways of divine providence in the French
Revolution? Moreover, what is the relation between the
English Civil War and the French Revolution? Besides the
overthrow of two monarchies, the earlier event was arguably
on behalf of religion, whereas the latter event was in part an
attack on it.
The two questions are connected. If the overall theme of
Considerations on France is to show the ways of providence
in what was, to many observers, the downfall of the Gallican

4. Joseph de Maistre's works are cited in the following editions with these
abbreviations: CF: Considerations on France, trans, and ed. Richard Lebrun
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994). SP: Si. Petersburg Dialogues, trans, and ed.
Richard Lebnm (Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 1993). P: Du Pape, ed. Jacques
Lovies and Joannes Chetail (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1966). Quotations from Du
Pape are my translations.
Simon Kow 269
Church and the Frencb monarchy, then what more forceful
argument than demonstrating that even the atheist Hume
inadvertently shows us that the same miraculous
restoration will occur in France as in England two centuries
before? Hume is summoned as the unsuspecting witness of
tbe hand of God in human history. In otber words,
according to Maistre, the English Civil War presages the
French Revolution.
Hobbes provides an intriguing alternative account of the
English Civil War in the Behemoth (1679). Unlike Hume's
History, all of Behemoth is focused on this one event.
Moreover, just as the Frencb Revolution became tbe central
bistorical event in Maistre's life and thougbt, the English
Civil War can be said to have shaped or even motivated
Hobbes's political thought. Hobbes characterizes his
"Discourse of Civill and Ecclesiasticall Government,"
Leviathan (1651), as "occasioned by the disorders of the
present time" (L, 728).^ Thus, comparing Hobbes and
Maistre on issues surrounding tbe English Civil War sbeds
much light on their divergent views of the relation between
bistory, religion, and politics.
Based on these considerations, this essay will argue tbat,
despite Hobbes's insistence that the sovereign wield sword
and crosier, it is Maistre who is genuinely committed to
upholding ecclesiastical as well as civil power. Moreover,
Hobbes pursues temporal peace in tbe here and now,
whereas Maistre is a defender of divine politics in bistory, a
contrast demonstrable not only in their assessments of the
English Civil War, but also in Maistre's seemingly
Hobbesian justification of papal supremacy as tbe
culmination of divine providence.
Thus tbe interpretation of Maistre and Hobbes advanced
in this essay emphasizes botb the novelty of tbeir ideas in
the history of philosophy and the radical differences between
tbeir political and philosophical views. Most writers have
tended to regard Hobbes's position on tbe Civil War and
Maistre's stance on tbe Revolution as essentially royalist or

5. Thomas Hobbes's works are cited in the following editions with these
abbreviations: L: Leviathan, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books, 1968). B: Behemoth, ed. Ferdinand Tnnies (Chicago: U of Chicago P,
1990).
270 Maistre and Hobbes

reactionary. Certain scholars have challenged this

interpretation, including Berlin, Holmes, Richard Lebrun,
and Owen Bradley.^ My interpretation of Hobbes is in
agreement with that of Holmes, with some exceptions. In
regard to Maistre, however, the liberal sympathies of Berlin
and Holmes lead them to characterize Maistre's thought as
irrational, while the Maistrean sympathies of Lebrun and
Bradley lead them to downplay his illiberalism. This essay
is in accord with the shared insight of these writersthat
Maistre's ideas are an original and provocative contribution
to critiques of the Enlightenmentbut it seeks to find a
middle ground between vilification and emasculation of
Maistre's thought. The contrast with Hobbes will reveal
that Maistre's importance as a thinker does not lie in his
supposed protofascist sentiments but in, among other
things, his illuminating treatment of modern views of
religion and history in relation to politics.
The Behemoth consists of four dialogues on the English
Civil War. Oddly, the title is never explained in the book
itself. The subtitleor, the Long Parliamentdoes not
clarify the issue: why are the fomenters of sedition and civil
war named after a Biblical land monster? Carl Schmitt
suggests that Behemoth's significance can best be
understood in relation to the sea monster Leviathan. While
both represent the greatest powers on earth. Leviathan is
stronger than Behemoth.^ Indeed, in the Book of Job,
Behemoth is "chief of the ways of God" (Job 40:19), but of
Leviathan, God declares that "Upon earth there is not his
like, who is made without fear" (41:33). The title of
Behemoth may therefore be a reection of the tremendous

6. See, for exetmple, Royce MacGillivray, "Thomas Hobbes's History of the

English Civil War: A Study of Behemoth," Journal of the History of Ideas 31
(1970): 179-98; M. M. Goldsmith, "Hobbes's 'Mortall God': Is there a Fallacy in
Hobbes's Theory of Sovereignty?" History of Political Thought 1 (1980): 35-50;
Elisha Greifer, "Joseph de Maistre and the Reaction Against the Eighteenth
Century," American Political Science Review 55 (1961): 591-98; find note 3 above.
7. Berlin, "Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism"; Holmes, "Political
Psychology in Hobbes's Behemoth," in Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory, ed.
Mary G. Dietz (Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 1990), 120-52, and Anatomy of
Antiliberalism, 13-36; Lebrun, Throne and Altar; and Bradley, Modern Maistre.
8. Carl Schmitt, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes, trans.
George Schwab and Erna HiUstein (Westport: Greenwood P, 1996), 22 ind 27 n.
3.
Simon Kow 271

power of the incitors of civil war and anarchy, which is

nonetheless inferior to that of the Leviathan, "that Mortall
God to which we owe, under the Immortall God, our peace
and defence" (L, 227, original emphasis). It would appear,
however, that despite the possible allusion to the relative
powers of God's creatures Behemoth and Leviathan, Hobbes
departs from the Biblical text, in which both beasts are
symbols of God's power on earth. Instead, he contrasts the
humanly instituted peace-keeping Leviathan with the
seditious Behemoth.^
In the Behemoth, Hobbes examines the designs of
ambitious priests seeking worldly rule. The generally
virtuous rule of Charles I could not withstand the sedition
of a corrupt populace, and among the chief corrupters were
preachers of Catholicism, Presb5rterianism, Independancy,
and assorted fanatical creeds. The first dialogue of"
Behemoth deals with the specific claims ofthe major sects
and how the priests tricked the people into disobedience for
their own ends. Hobbes structures the discussion such that
historical commentary blends with political prescription,
and the reader is gradually led into deeper levels of analysis.
Hobbes targets various seditious doctrines involved in the
struggle over ecclesiastical authority. The papist distinction
between temporal and spiritual dominion, a pretext for the
church to interfere in the jurisdiction of earthly sovereigns,
underpinned the conflict between emperor and pope, king
and university for centuries (B, 9-17). Similarly, the
democratization of religion sought by the Presb3d;erians was
intended to break the monopoly on Scriptural interpretation
held by the state-sanctioned Church of England (B, 23). In
both cases. Scripture itself is problematic: on the one hand,
it may be "sealed up" in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, putting
Catholic doctors in a privileged position with respect to
God's word; on the other hand, it may be translated into
vernaculeir languages and opened up for any person or s3Tiod
to find in it pretexts for disobedience to the sovereign's
commands.^" Hobbes suggests an alternative to priestly
privilege and free-for-all scriptural interpretation: Sunday
sermons would teach subjects' duties to their sovereigns

9. See Tnnies's preface to B, xi.

10. See Holmes, "Political Psychology," 135-36.
272 Maistre and Hobbes

based on the more accessible sections of Scripture, which in

effect means that a simplified form of Hobbes's political
science would be taught in church (., 39).
In this way, Hobbes is highly critical ofthe philosophical
and theological disputations in the universities, which breed
corrupting preachers. Right and wrong, virtue and vice
should be judged according to the laws of the common-
wealth, not personal judgment or the absurd doctrines of
contemporary followers of Aristotle (B, 44-45). Religion, too,
falls within the scope of these laws. As Hobbes writes:
"Because men can never by their own wisdom come to the
knowledge of what God hath spoken and commanded to be
observed, nor be obliged to obey the laws whose author they
know not, they are to acquiesce in some human authority or
other" (B, 46).
. Thus there is no religion without a human intermediary,
and there will be no peace unless this intermediary is the
sovereign authority. Where does this leave the clergy? Even
Anglican ministers, Hobbes shows, have failed to uphold the
principle of the king's absolute sovereignty over religion.
The king's command, according to one author, may be
disobeyed if it is against God's word (B, 47-49). As a result,
Hobbes expresses dissatisfaction with all present forms of
priestly religion. If unnecessary sermonizing is corrosive of
peace, then the sermonizers themselves may have to be
eliminated. In two places in the Behemoth, Hobbes suggests
that the execution of a thousand Presbyterian ministers
would be a lesser evil than the death of the hundred
thousand who fell in the Civil War. It is a stark choice
between a powerful priesthood and a severely subordinated
one, but as the story of Ergamenes, King ofthe Ethiopians,
showed to Hobbes, the very life of the sovereign and hence
of the commonwealth may depend on putting down the
priests (B, 93-95). His view of religion in the Behemoth is
thus a negative one, as he emphasizes its abuses rather than
any positive uses.^^
For Maistre, too, the English Civil War is an event of
pivotal importance, but especially as it relates to the French

11. Cf. Holmes, "Political Psychology," 142-43. Hohnes's argument that divine
authorization of the sovereign can displace priestly amhition exaggerates the
religious meaning of "MortaU God": the sovereign representation of God is
different from a pretended emhodiment ofthe divine.
Simon Kow 273

Revolution. Maistre's use of Hume to link the two

upheavals as evidence of God's hand in history is rather
puzzling. After all, the English Civil War impressed upon
Hobbes the need to counteract the destructive power of
religion, whereas for Maistre, there is "a satanic quality to
the French Revolution," as he writes in a chapter entitled,
"The French Revolution Considered in its Antireligious
Character" (CF, 41). What does the Puritan rebellion have
to do with the later atheistic revolution?
Maistre's linkage of the two events is fundamental to his
critique of modernity. First, we must establish that the
Revolution was for him the climax, as it were, of the
Enlightenment. The Revolutionaries abolished all religious
institutions in France and set up in their place an altar to
the goddess of Reason. Instead of worshipping the
otherworldly God, they decreed that there be no worship
whatsoever. Essentially, they abolished the one thing that
upholds the principle of authority: religion. For Maistre,
there can be no social and political unity without a religious
establishment (CF, 41-43). Indeed, the political constitution
itself is not merely a product of human convention, but
originates in and is sustained by divine influences (CF, 49-
53). He predicts, for example, that those elements of the
American constitution that were the result of deliberation
will not survive the test of time (CF, 61). By attacking
religion, then, the French Revolutionaries attacked
authority itself, reveaUng the pedigree of the Revolution in
the Enlightenment. Thus Maistre depicts the Revolution as
a world-historical struggle to the death "between
Christianity and philosophism" (CF, 45). A society either
upholds religious authority and thereby ensures political
unity, or chooses Enlightenment reason and is led toward
anarchy; there are no other possibilities. A victory for the
Revolution and thus the downfall of authority would be a
victory for the Enlightenment, whose motto (according to
Kant) is "Sapere aude!"dare to know, to use one's reason
publicly to dispute authority. ^^
The Enlightenment, in turn, originated in Protestantism.
Maistre characterizes the sixteenth and seventeenth

12. Immanuel Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" in

Perpetual Peace and other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing, 1983), 41-48.
274 Maistre and Hobbes

centuries in Europe as premises of which the eigbteentb

century was the conclusion. Tbat is to say tbe
Enlightenment "seized upon the arms prepared for it by
Protestantism," despite the religious claims of tbe latter (P,
355). In fact. Protestantism for Maistre was essentially an
antireligious movement because it opposed tbe universal
church. It led to the negation of religion, as indicated by its
name: Protestantism defines itself by its "protest" against
unity (P, 315). The grounds for its protestecclesiastical
autbority^is prior to, and the basis of, Protestant
theology. ^^ Wbat has survived the Protestant reduction of
religion to civil supremacy and particular judgment is the
overturning of spiritual authority without the earlier
pretensions to religiosity (P, 304). We are in a position,
tben, to judge Maistre's remarks on the English Civil War:
"England in the last century presents almost tbe same
spectacle as France in ours. TTiere tbe fanaticism of liberty,
overexcited by tbat of religion, penetrated souls even more
deeply than it has in France, where the cult of liberty bas no
basis at all" (CF, 104). In otber words, despite the contrast
between tbe religious fanaticism of the Englisb Civil War
and the atheistic fanaticism of tbe Frencb Revolution, the
two events are almost the same because tbey are animated
by the same spirit of protest.
Maistre and Hobbes tberefore bave opposing
interpretations of Protestantism and tbe Englisb Civil War.
For Hobbes, the war was a result of tbe sedition spawned by
religion, whereas for Maistre, it presented the fatal
consequences of veering away from tbe true faitb. In
contrast to Maistre, Hobbes believes that the threat to peace
posed by priestly religion is a feature of botb Catbolicism
and Protestantism. In fact, Charles I faced a dilemma
similar to those faced by Henry VIII, Ergamenes, and indeed
sovereigns in all times and places. Paradoxically, although
we can surmise that Hobbes would be outraged by the
fanatical excesses of the French Revolution, tbe utter
irreligiosity of his philosophy as shown in Behemoth would
be, from a Maistrean point of view, a good example of tbe
poisonous doctrines tbat brougbt about the Revolution.

13. Lebrun writes that Maistre's neglect of much of Protestant theology besides
private judgment "stems from his great concern with the problem of authority"
(Throne and Altar, 140).
 Simon Kow 275

It cannot be argued, however, that Hobbes adopts a more

universahstic perspective on the English Civil War than
Maistre, who appears not to go further back than the
sixteenth century to identify the antagonists of the struggle
between Christianity and atheism. The Civil War and
Revolution are indeed unique and monumental events, but
they are also examples of the ways of divine providence in
human history. In this sense, they share a certain quality
in common with other devastating wars and upheavals in all
societies at almost all times. Maistre condemns the
"fanaticism of hbert/' of the Puritans and the Reign of
Terror, but he sees something miraculous and divine about
these events. He notes. that the actions of the
Revolutionaries were led, despite themselves, toward divine
ehds (CF, 5). Similarly, the English Restoration came about
as if by magic (CF, 105). It is not up to human free will to
determine the conduct of revolutions.
What ends could be served by such bloodshed? Maistre
lives up to his reputation among some present-day scholiirs
for bloodthirstiness, for his conception of divine providence
involves little or no beatification and a great deal of
punishment. Prior to the Revolution, France had become
corrupted by a century of philosophism, incapable of the
moral leadership in Europe for which it was (in Maistre's
eyes) originally destined. The Revolution was a horrible but
richly deserved punishment inflicted by the vilest products
of France's degeneration. In turn, the guillotine fell upon
the first perpetrators (CF, 13). For Maistre, there is in
history a perpetual cycle of punishment and regeneration
through bloodshed. As for the slaughter of innocents, one of
Maistre's responses is that innocence is impossible to
ascertain in others, and that because of original sin, there is
no innocent human being in the world anyway (SP, 101).
Based on this reasoning, he puts forward the idea that war
is "a great law of the spiritual world" (SP, 215). Man's
inherent sinfulness means that we are subject to unending
carnage, that is, punishment by the divine hand. From this
standpoint, the English Civil War and French Revolution
are for Maistre only the most recent manifestations of the
scourge of God that we bring upon ourselves over and over.
Thus the argument that Maistre saw the Revolution as
involving not only punishment but also "Christian hope for
276 Maistre Eind Hobbes

pardon and reconciliation"" is inconsistent with his view

that "mankind may be considered as a tree which an
invisible hand is continually pruning and which often profits
from the operation" (CF, 28).
It is Maistre's un-Christian obsession with punishment
rather than love and his cyclical conception of historysince
the Fall, we have suffered the unending cycle of destruction
and regeneration apparently without grace or future
redemptionthat leads Berlin to consider his religious
views as external to what is really a preoccupation with
violence and warfare. Berlin points out that the figure at
the centre of Maistre's thought is not the priest but the
executioner, who represents the terror of authority (116-18).
Maistre may consider punishment to be divine, but this
strikes Berlin as a view having more in common with
Fascism than with Christianity or any other religion.
If we examine Maistre's conception of the executioner
more closely, we see that his conception of providence,
though arguably unorthodox (contrary to the view of most
Maistre scholars),^^ is nonetheless consistent with a unique
religious vision of politics (contrary to the view of Berlin).
As Bradley persuasively argues, Maistrean providence
operates "without direct intervention; the sacred always
appears within a human (and often all too human) frame."^
Thus, Maistre's assertion that the executioner represents
the principle of political unity is situated within a discussion
of temporal providence, that is, the acts of God on earth.
Just as the sovereign authorizes the acts of the
executionerthe punishment of crimesGod as sovereign
is author of the divine punishment of all of us for our sins.
In this sense, the political order is a reflection of the divine
order (SP, 18-21). It is the corrosion of this political order by
Protestantism and philosophism and their outcomesthe
murders of Charles I and Louis XVIthat led to the torrents
of English and French blood which were shed in divine
retribution (CF, 11-13). The Enghsh in the seventeenth
century and the French in the eighteenth were punished by

14. Jeein-Louis Darcel, "Maistre and the French Revolution," in Afoistre Studies,
ed. Richard Lebrun (Lanham: UP of America, 1988), 187.
15. See Lebrun, Throne and Altar, 129.
16. Bradley, A Modern Maistre, 194.
 Simon Kow 277

God because ofthe degradation ofthe political order in their

respective countries. Thus, Maistre does not glorify war for
its own sake, but rather discerns in it the divine purposes of
a severe, punishing God. Maistre's bellicosity is more in
keeping with the spirit ofthe Crusades than of Lebensraum
(cf. P, 203 and 213). Like the Crusades, then, Maistre's
endorsement of war runs counter to the teaching of
universal love in the Gospels.^^ But in contrast to Berlin's
view that "Maistre attempts to turn against the new and
Satanic order that made the fatal revolution all the violence
and fanaticism they unloosed upon the world," we should
rather say that, for Maistre, providence uses the new and
Satanic order against itself ^^ Maistre does not stress, in
Berlin's phrase, "the darker forces below the level of
consciousness" as did the Fascists (172), but rather
emphasizes the terrible and divine power above human
beings and society.
Given the antireligious stance taken in Behemoth, what
is Hobbes's attitude toward providence in relation to the
English Civil War? Hobbes does not deal explicitly with the
ways of providence in human history, and it appears from
Behemoth that the lessons he drew from the war were
universal in scope rather than divine and historical.
Nevertheless, the issue of divine providence is of concern to
him. Like Maistre, Hobbes tackles the problem of Job, but
does not insist in the face ofthe suffering of the just and the
prosperity ofthe wicked that there must be a higher moral
order. According to Hobbes's exegesis of the Book of Job,
God settles the matter himself by justifying Job's afflictions
not on the basis of his sinfulness, but on the basis of God's
power. Hobbes further cites the case of Jesus and the blind
man, where Christ declares that the other's blindness is a
sign of God's works, not the man's sins (he conveniently cuts
off the citation just before Christ cures the blind man, which
would suggest divine justice and mercy). Finally, even if
Adam had not sinned, he and his descendants could have
been justly afflicted by God (L, 236-37). In contrast to

17. Lehrun's view that his remarks on the divinity of war are "literary
exaggeration" {Throne and Altar, 129) is at least questionable in light of his
enthusiasm for the hloody Revolution.
18. Berlin, "Joseph de Maistre eind the Origins of Fascism," 119, original
emphasis.
278 Maistre and Hobbes

Maistre, Hobbes denies that the doctrine of original sin is a

satisfactory explanation of Job's plight.
This understanding of providence is crucial to Hobbes's
thought. We are reminded of the sovereign power when God
reproves the arguments of Job's friends. Just as it is not up
to Job and his friends to question God's justice, the people do
not have the right to determine the justice of the sovereign's
acts, for justice is simply the performance of covenants
made, which is in civil society the same as obedience to the
laws of the sovereign (L, 201-2). Moreover, Job and his
friends are incapable of comprehending God's tremendous
power as manifested in, among other things. Behemoth and
Leviathan. Hobbes employs this imagery in his political
work not only to evoke the absolute power of the sovereign
(and the terrible power of seditious doctrines), but also to
reflect his teaching that the artificial Leviathan is to be
taken as a representative of God's power on earth^that is
to say, as the supreme power on earth under God and our
only link to the divine because of the fundamental
unknowability of God's ways. As opposed to Catholic,
Presbyterian, or other fanatical sects' claims to divinity,
Hobbes's interpretation of Job supports a view of the
sovereign as God's lieutenant and chief interpreter of God's
Word. Hobbes's engagement with the issue of divine
providence attacks the doctrines that gave rise to the Civil
War in England by justifying the total subordination of
public religion to the state.^^
Although Maistre does not examine the Book of Job in
detail, we can say that he is preoccupied with the problem
of Job. Indeed, the main theme of Maistre's Saint
Petersburg Dialogues (1821) is identical to that of Job.
Maistre is adamant that the suffering of innocents is not to
be used as an argument against divine justice. Voltaire,
according to Maistre, is correct to reject the immutable laws
of nature as a justification for the Lisbon earthquake, but
falls into error by posing Job's question with despair: "So
why do we suffer under a just master? / This is the fatal
knot that must be untangled" (qtd. in SP, 118). As

19. It should be noted in passing that Hobbes did defend privacy of thought and
intention in religion as well as in civil law. See Edward Andrew, "Hobbes on
Conscience Within the Law and Without," Canadian Journal of Political Science
32 (1999): 216-17.
Simon Kow 279

mentioned above, the problem is hardly insoluble for

Maistre. Because of the Fall of Man, no one is guiltless.
Those who perished in the earthquake deserved it.
Likewise, Job's friends were right to reason from his
affliction to his sins. As a human being and thus Adam's
descendant. Job could not but be inberently sinful (SP, 98-
102). Moreover, the afflictions and nally God's revelations
did serve to humble and perhaps chastise Job. Similarly,
tben, the victims of the English Civil War and French
Revolution were not guiltless. Holmes misconstrues
Maistre's thought when he argues that there is an
inconsistency here between Maistre's explicit teaching that
"worldly suffering is a form of divine retribution" and his
supposedly implicit teaching that there is no injustice in the
world, only misfortune.^" It is surely the explicit teaching
that is Maistre's, not the implicit one, for humgin
degradation entails that suffering is always just.
Nevertheless, this argument from original sin does not
exbaust Maistre's account of divine justice. After all, one
might counter that the degree of worldly suffering and
therefore divine punishment which are meted out are, in
Maistre's view, undiscriminating. For example, Charles I
and Louis XVI may have been sinful because they were
human, but it hardly seems just that they suffered the same
fate as the Puritans and atheists. How could God decree
that the two monarchs should receive the same temporal
punishment as the defenders of irreligion? A pious
Christian response might be that punishments and rewards
are justly distributed in the next world. But despite
Maistre's awareness that the explanation offered for the
Lisbon disaster is not entirely adequate (SP, 118-19), he is
not satisfied with otherworldly compensations for this-
worldly suffering. He suggests that failing to justify divine
providence in this world would be dangerous in light of the
human propensity to focus on this life: "every day we see
the most submissive believer risk the torments of the future
life for the most wretched pleasure" (SP, 9). Otherworldly
accounts of divine justice are clearly not to Maistre's taste.
The world to come is less important than the manifestation
of divine works in human history and institutions.

20. Holmes, Anatomy of Antiliberalism, 34.

280 Maistre and Hobbes

Ultimately, Maistre's account of divine justice rests on the

idea that the innocent suffer for the sake of the guilty,
indicating his affinity in this regard more with the religious
spirit in general than with orthodox versions of Christianity
in particular. In his "Elucidation on Sacrifices" and the
Considerations on France, Maistre traces this mysterious
doctrine back to antiquity. It has been taught by all
religions that the sacrifice of innocentssometimes self-
sacrificecan expiate the sins of the guilty, as if on a divine
balance sheet, in order to save the whole society from God's
wrath. Original sin intensifies this need for sacrifice. As a
result of our sinful nature, humanity has somehow
corrupted the universe: "All creation groans, and tends with
pain and effort towards another order of things" (CF, 30-31,
original emphasis). Maistre interprets the crucifixion of
Christ as the ultimate sacrifice of history, where God
himself became flesh so that a blood sacrifice would be made
to "console all creation" (SP, 382-85).
Despite the apparent centrality of Christ in Maistre's
conception, the significance of the crucifixion is in a key
respect un-Christian, or at least heretical. Christ may be
the most important sacrifice of all time, but he is no more
than a sacrifice. There is little sense in Maistre's works of
Christ as redeemer, that is, the Son of God who died so that
we might be saved. Maistre's Christ does not seem to have
accomplished much in terms of abating the divine
punishment that continues to be delivered upon us, again
and again. We may have the benefit of God's revealed Word,
as compared with the pagans. But the terrible law of war as
"the habitual state of mankind" has remained unchanged
throughout the pre- and post-Christian eras.^^
Overall, we can draw two conclusions from these
considerations on Maistre's understanding of providence.
First, Maistre's thought centers above all on divine justice;
and second, his conception of it precludes any real interest
in peace. Now, Berlin denies the first point. He argues that

21. Bradley argues that for Maistre, Christ's sacrice only initiated our
redemption, and that the Eucharist "perpetuates the redeeming sacrice until the
total accomplishment of its work" (A Modern Maistre, 49). But he acknowledges
that Maistre cited such heretics as Origen and Chrysostom as authorities.
Moreover, when or if there will be this "total accomplishment" is not apparent in
Maistre, nor does Bradley substantiate his assertion.
Simon Kow 281

life for Maistre is not a struggle between good and evil, light
and darkness, but rather only "the blind confusion of the
permanent battlefield, in which men fight under God's
mysterious decree."^^ Although Berlin correctly recognizes
the predominance of conflict in Maistre's world, the nature
of this conflict is surely not inscrutable. Maistre clearly
identifies the antagonists of, for example, the English Civil
War and the French Revolution, and thinks that the ways of
providence in these events are discernible. How exactly the
sacrifice of innocents for the sake ofthe guilty works may be
mysterious, but the reason for, and means of, the deaths of
English Puritans and French atheists are not. He sees life
as a grand ind bloody moral drama.
But it is arguably not a Christian drama, which leads us
to the second point. Maistre's Christ, we have seen, was
sacrificed without redemptive ends. Thus when he depicts
Louis XVI as a Christ-like figure (the murder of Charles I
may have been an "unspeakable crime," but he, unlike Louis
XVI, "merited some blame and reproach" [CF, 11]), the
sacrifice of the sovereign is not the bloody deed that brings
about God's final punishment or judgment. The Revolution
is a life-and-death struggle for Christianity, but it is not the
final act because there is no mention of a final act in
Maistre's account of human history. Even if Maistre
accepted the doctrine of the second coming (which is not
given much consideration even by scholars trying to present
his views as orthodox), the nature and deeds of human
beings are such that the emplojrment of that terrible
instrument of providence, war, will not cease in the
foreseeable future. Unlike Hobbes, whose overriding
concern is peace, Maistre proclaims the divine justice of war.
If Maistre's conception of divine justice is, as I have
argued, in many respects a non-Christian one, what are we
to make of his explicit defence of papal authority, at least in
his later thought? After all, it is the political order, headed
by a sovereign who authorizes the executioner's acts, that
reflects God's reign over the whole world. There is surely no
need for an intermediary between the sovereign and God,
nor for a spiritual head to excommunicate sovereigns when
they have acted or spoken against the faith. Divine

22. Berlin, "Joseph de Maistre ind the Origins of Fascism," 140.

282 Maistre and Hobbes
punishment is meted out in history through war, not
excommunication.
Maistre's papism is quite different from traditional
Catholic accounts. One could argue, in fact, that Maistre
justifies papal authority on Hobbesian premises.
Notwithstanding what has been argued in the sections
above, is there some level of agreement between Maistre and
Hobbes? Indeed, in his chief work on the papacy, Maistre's
single reference to Hobbes is his suggestion that the ideas of
Hobbes, of the ultramontanist Bellarmine (whose views
Hobbes systematically criticizes in chapter 42 of Leviathan),
and of the Protestant Leibniz may be in agreement on the
issue of pontifical supremacy (P, 189 and n. 1). Ultimately,
however, we shall see that Maistre's papism is contrary to
Hobbes's teaching on religion and politics, especially with
respect to the centrality of the Catholic Church to
providential history.
The case for characterizing Maistre as a kind of
Hobbesian papist would be based on his conception of the
grounds and consequences of sovereigntyin particular, the
so-called spiritual sovereignty of the Pope. Maistre's views
are in accord with the Augustinian doctrine of the will
divided against itself. Within a single human being are
morality and corruption, justice and perversion, and
sociability and unsociability. For this reason, humanity
must be governed for its own sake. Sovereignty in this
account serves to check the destructive passions. The nation
"owes its social existence and the goods resulting from it to
the sovereign," whereas the sovereign attains but a "vain
brilliance"; in this sense, the nation has more of a duty to
the sovereign than he to it (P, 129-30). Although Hobbes
refuses to characterize humans as sinful or evil outside the
commonwealth, the "war of . . . every man against every
man" resulting from their natural contentiousness is the
reason for instituting a commonwealth (L, 185-86).
Maistre's emphasis on the nation's duty rather than the
sovereign's also agrees with Hobbes's emphasis on the
absolute rights of sovereignty (as opposed to the rights of
subjects) (L, 229),^^ and with his argument that the

23. Of course, subjects do retain certain rights in a Hobbesiiin commonwealth

(L, 192); but they are limited by the laws ofthe sovereign.
Simon Kow 283

sovereign's duty to the peoplenamely, ensuring their

safetyconsists in not relinquishing these rights (L,376-77).
Moreover, Maistre defends papal infallibility by arguing
that it is synonymous with the supremacy of temporal
sovereign power. Infallibility is essential to sovereignty:
when the sovereign can be resisted on the pretext of error or
injustice, the government falls apart. Just as society is
preserved by the rule of an infallible sovereign, so too the
head of the universal church must be supposed infallible.
The Pope is the spiritual sovereign of the world. As such, he
must enjoy all the rights of sovereignty within the
jurisdiction of the Catholic Church. To question his judg-
ment, then, is an act of disobedience. Hence, Protestantism
is literally a rebellion against the spiritual sovereign (P, 27-
32). Heresy is as dangerous to the spiritual order as
revolution is to the temporal order (P, 79). Hobbes denies
that temporal and spiritual sovereignty can be separate, but
Maistre seems Hobbesian in deriving the rights of spiritual
sovereignty from those of the temporal authority. Hobbes's
sovereign cannot be justly accused by a subject, and is the
judge of, among other things, what doctrines may be taught
(L, 233). Furthermore, as we have seen, the sovereign must
be the head of the church and chief interpreter of Scripture.
Maistre agrees with Hobbes insofar as the temporal and
spiritual sovereign(s) .cannot be questioned, so that
governance may be effective.
Why, then, is a separate spiritual sovereign necessary? If
Maistre were truly Hobbesian, why not combine temporal
and spiritual sovereignty in one, since the grounds and
consequences of sovereignty are the same in both spheres?
The answers to these questions reveal the un-Hobbesian
elements of Maistre's papism. Maistre distinguishes the
infallibility of the temporal sovereign from the infallibility
of the spiritual sovereign. Though both kinds of sovereign
are judges of right and wrong, the infallibility of the former
is "humanly supposed," whereas that of the latter is
"divinely promised" (P, 123). This difference is manifested
in their respective jurisdictions. Although subjects are not
to judge their sovereigns because (with respect to human
affairs) the temporal sovereign is infallible, the Pope can
and should judge them on spiritual matters. This spiritual
power may have temporal consequences, but its exercise is
no less legitimate for this possibility (P, 178-79). Even papal
284 Maistre and Hobbes

dispensation of subjects' oaths of fidelity to their sovereigns

is not contrary to the divinity of the sovereign (as the
temporal counterpart of the divine punisher, God), because
it means that only a superior divine power may control the
divine authority of the temporal sovereign. Maistre insists
that sovereignty is unlimited, but only, he says, in its
legitiniate exercise (P, 135-37).
Thus the spiritual sovereign acts as a legitimate check on
the divine and infallible temporal sovereign. For example,
the Sovereign Pontiff has legitimately "reprimand [ed] the
anti-conjugal license of princes" because a terrible passion
is thereby checked that would make them ferocious and
cruel. Moreover, the sanctity of marriages preserves royal
families and blood-lines of succession (P, 158-62). Maistre
can maintain this paradoxical doctrine of an unlimited
temporal sovereignty which can nevertheless be limited
because he distinguishes absolute sovereignty among human
beings from tbe sovereignty of an even higher spiritual
representative on earth.
In contrast, Hobbes denies tbat this "divine check" is
consistent with sovereignty, because he sees the papacy as
a human power ambitious for temporal power without
having to take the responsibility of governance. The
marriage laws of the Catholic Church, for example, were
merely another instrimient for aggrandizing power. It
became accepted doctrine that priests cannot marry:
therefore, if kings wished to become priests, their heirs
would be deprived of the throne. The result is that kings
were prevented from being high-priests, i.e., heads of the
church (B, 9-13). Henry VIII took the best course of action
in resisting these marriage laws and abolishing the papal
power in England, unsuccessful though the latter act turned
out to be.
The papacy for Maistre not only serves to moderate the
temporal sovereign when necessary, but is actually
necessary for the latter's existence. Modern history
demonstrates their mutual dependence. It is no coincidence
that the waning of papal influence and the attack on the
divinity of the sovereign office occurred at the same time.
By opposing the universal church. Protestantism weakened
the spiritual basis of sovereignty. Furthermore, the papal
check ideally ensures peaceful limitations on the sovereign
when they are absolutely necessary. Even the deposing of a
Simon Kow 285

temporal ruler by the Pope would be the sime as if the ruler

had died naturally, for the action would be conducted
according to rules and to the prudence of the Pontiff. In
contrast. Protestantism had, among other things, given
license to subjects' resistance based on individual
conscience. The result had been insurrection (P, 138-43).
The Reformation may have had the support of many
temporal princes, but the latter, in Maistre's view, had been
hoisted on their own petards. The struggle against what
was seen as ecclesiastical despotism led to upheavals like
the English Civil War. In contrast, although Hobbes, too,
feared the consequences of acting against laws on the basis
of individual conscience, he did not conclude that the papal
power was necessary to ensure temporal peace. Radical
Protestantism was yet another outbreak of the struggle
between church and state that had taken place under papal
dominance as well as in the present day.
There is, however, a more fundamental reason why papal
supremacy upholds temporal sovereignty. Maistre presents
a stark choice between slavery or divinity. Without either,
the people themselves becomefierceand unruly. When most
of the people are held in servitude to a certain few, there are
consequently fewer wills jostling with each other in the
state. The alternative, which augments human liberty, is
the moderating power of religion.^^ In a religious state, the
government need not supervise the people. The citizens
engage peacefully in work, prayer, and study, with few
demands made of the sovereign. This religious state is not
possible without ties to the universal church, since the
alternative to the Catholic faith is, as we have seen, the
negation of religion (P, 235-37). Thus despite the superficial
agreement between Hobbes and Maistre on the necessity of
pursuing stability through absolute sovereignty, the status
of religion is radically different for the two thinkers. The
conclusion of Behemoth is that religion is deeply
problematic, as it is a leading cause of sedition. Maistre
makes the opposite point: religion prevents insurrection.
But one might wonder how it is that the connection
Maistre makes between Papal supremacy and temporal
peace in Du Pape (1817) can be consistent with the divine

24. As Lebrun writes, "Maistre believes that it was Christianity that brought an
end to slavery in Europe" (Throne and Altar, 124).
286 Maistre and Hobbes

justice of war posited in such works as the Saint Petersburg

Dialogues and the Considerations on France. In fact, papal
supremacy serves divine providence in its own way, as had
the English Civil War and French Revolution in theirs.
Indeed, if the wars of religion were the premises of which
the Revolution was one conclusion, then we may
characterize both events as the premises of which the need
for religious unity is another such conclusion. Maistre's
discussion of papal supremacy is not, as we shall see, a
nostalgic defense of a now-defunct institution. The
institution of the papacy is, in his view, of world-historical
importance in the time to come.
The future of Christianity is, Maistre argues, inseparable
from the future of the papacy. As such, the victory of
Christianity over philosophism requires the ascendance of
the pontifical power. Only through the Catholic Church can
the "evangelical light" be brought to nations around the
world, because of its universality (P, 221). But the
instigators of the Reformation and of its outcome, the
Revolution, had sought to destroy the universal church and
the monarchy (since spiritual and political unity imply each
other). It must follow that, on the basis of divine justice,
throne and altar will be glorified (CF, 80). The life-and-
death struggle between Christianity and philosophism must
result in the rejuvenation of the one, true church which
guarantees the divinity of the monarchy. Maistre predicts
that the Revolution was only the preliminary stage of a
grander movement, a return of the separated churches to
the universal faith headed by the common father, the Pope
(P, 344). The climax of the eighteenth century in Europe
was a terrible punishment for centuries of Protestantism
and Enlightenment philosophism, and this punishment was
inflicted for the sake of purifying Christianity to prepare the
world for spiritual unity. Although this future stage is not
apocalypticMiiistre does not suggest that the Second
Coming will take place at that time, nor that the just and
the wicked will be finally judgedthe event is significant
enough that Europe has had to pass through the extremity
of irreligion before this grand reunification can take place.
How will this movement occur? Maistre suggests that the
return ofthe separated churches will be led by the English,
who are at the same time furthest from, and closest to, the
truth. The Anglican Church is the most opposed to
Simon Kow 287

universality, mainly because among the Protestant faiths,

Anglicanism most explicitly centers on the civil and local
establishment. "Either the religion is false, or God is
incarnate for the English," Maistre remarks sarcastically (P,
346). Yet because the English were the first to renounce
Catholicism, they were less affected by the "torrent" of more
extreme Protestant views in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Anglican dogma accordingly retained elements
from Catholicism. Thus as the nations of Europe recovered
from the atheistic excesses of the Revolution, the Anglican
Church could make the easiest transition to absorption into
the universal church (P, 346-49). Hobbes may have
preferred the Church of England among the established
religions because of its ties to the civil establishment,^^ and
yet remained deeply critical of it for not being truly
subordinated to the state; but Maistre sees hope for
Anglicanism precisely because it had retained elements of
traditional priestly supremacy.
Nowhere in Du Pape is Maistre's thought more anti-
Hobbesian than in these prognostications. The grand
project of spiritual unity is very much linked to his
assessments ofthe Reformation and the French Revolution.
The future ascendance of the papacy is as much part of
divine providence as were the terrible punishments of the
preceding centuries. Maistre's justification of papal
infallibility may be based on the absolute power of temporal
sovereigns required to restrain the unsociable passions, but
the raison d'tre of the papacy is, above all, to serve divine
justice. The victory of Christianity depends on the
prosperity of the Holy See. The Hobbesian sovereign, in
contrast, does not pursue elevated ends like the triumph of
God in history. Rather, this figure is concerned with the
very down-to-earth problem of establishing and maintaining
peace in the commonwealth. Upon close examination,
therefore, Maistre's papism is consistent with his deep, anti-
Hobbesian commitment to divine providence.
Ironically, the one point upon which Hobbes and Maistre
are most fundamentally in agreement indicates where they
most fundamentally disagree. In his discussion of the
irreligious character of Protestant ministries, Maistre

25. Cf John Aubrey, Brie/"Liues,ed. Andrew Clark (Oxford: ClarendonP, 1898),

353.
288 Maistre and Hobbes

remarks that "there is no middle ground between the

Catholic hierarchy and civil supremacy (P, 264 n. 2). Either
the ecclesiastical authority is supreme or the civil authority
is. A church separate from the universal church has no
authority as an ecclesiastical body. From a Hobbesian
perspective, too, there is something about this statement
that rings true: unless one is willing to concede power to the
priesthood (though not necessarily the Catholic priesthood),
the civil sovereign must be supreme, especially over the
priests. Now, Hobbesians would choose civil supremacy over
the Catholic hierarchy, because the choice offered would be
in their view between peace and rebellionthat is, between
Leviathan and Behemoth. For Maistreans, however, there
is no need to choose: if one rejects Catholicism, one is
eventually punished through war. Divine justice prevails.
By comparing Hobbes and Maistre, then, we see that the
attempt to make Maistre relevant by depicting his thought
as a forerunner to fascism or as a confused antiliberalism
runs into serious obstacles, as does the view of Maistre as
conservative and moderate. Maistre should engage our
interest because he offers a profound critique of such
modern attempts to tame or neutralize religion as Hobbes's
treatment of the English Civil War. In other words,
Maistre's vision of providential historyin which religion,
politics, and war are divinized at the same timeis deeply
religious and innovative. Maistre's thought is neither a
conservative defense of religion nor an ultra-modern
doctrine of irrationalism, but nevertheless challenges root-
and-branch the secular politics of modernity on the basis of
its unique conception of divine providence in history.^

University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

26. The author wishes to thank Ronald Beiner, Michael Kchin, and Richard
Lebrun for their helpful comments and suggestions.