Clerical philosophers

Clerical philosophers^[1] is the name given to a group of Catholic intellectuals, namely the Savoyard Joseph de Maistre, and the French Louis de Bonald and François-René de Chateaubriand, who sought to undermine the intellectual foundations of the French Revolution in reaction to what they perceived as its overt anti-religious and destructive character.

In the Revolution's aftermath, France was continually wracked with the quarrels between the right-wing Bourbonist restorationists and left-wing Revolutionaries; herein arose the clerical philosophers whose answer was restoring monarchy and reinstalling the Roman Catholic Church as the official State Church of France.

Since then, France's history features said recurrent patterns of political thought, with reactionaries longing for an erstwhile pre-Revolutionary Golden Age, by repudiating two centuries of progress since the Revolution in 1789. (see Action Française)

Joseph de Maistre, even though not a French citizen (being a magistrate and diplomat of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia), is the Bourbon Restoration's philosopher of reaction; his writings are authoritative sources of reactionary ideas advocating authoritarian government of a society classified according to a divinely-established "natural inequality". A pessimist about Man's nature, he repudiated the Revolution's humanist principles and socio-political institutions, because they originated in the anti-Christian Enlightenment, saying it was God who created the State, not a humansocial contract; societal order and stability are paramount, yet feasible only via obedience to a Church-anointed absolute monarch; and that civil law expressed custom and tradition, not the fickle opinion of the people. In the book, Examen de la philosophie de Bacon (An Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon), he attacked Francis Bacon's materialism.

Louis de Bonald compartía la misma ideología que De Maistre. Reforzó las convicciones de los reaccionarios ya convencidos; atacó la Revolución por fomentar el individualismo y la centralización del gobierno; defendió la monarquía absoluta y la Iglesia como el único medio para garantizar la tranquilidad interna. Propuso restaurar el sistema gremial medieval para asegurar los derechos (y obligaciones) de todas las clases sociales francesas.

François-René de Chateaubriand fue un escritor elocuente, descrito como un Rousseau vestido de negro (o católico), y es considerado el primer escritor romántico . Si bien no era reaccionario en sí mismo , aceptó el cambio revolucionario, pero no sus principios sociales . Mezcló nuevas instituciones con viejos recuerdos, tradiciones con ideales del Antiguo Régimen , de modo que, al revestir la Restauración monárquica con la indumentaria católica, buscó la estabilidad del régimen borbónico a través de la devoción popular. Además, Chateaubriand escribió novelas de temática cristiana, como Atala y El genio del cristianismo .

Políticamente, consideraban que la Iglesia era esencial para mantener un orden social conservador y la monarquía.