Generative Principle of Political Constitutions

Taylor & Francis

The Generative Principle of Political ConstitutionsStudies on Sovereignty, Religion and Enlightenment\nAuthor(s): Joseph de Maistre\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Routledge\nISBN-13: 9781138535879, 978-1138535879\nSynopsis\nJoseph de Maistre had no doubt that the root causes of the French Revolution were intellectual and ideological. The degeneration of its first immense hopes into the Reign of Terror was not the result of a ruthless competition for power or of prospects of war. He echoed Voltaire's boast that \""books did it all.\"" The philosophers of the Enlightenment were the architects of the new regimes; and the shadow between revolutionary idea and social reality could be traced directly to a fatal flaw in their thought.\n\nDe Maistre asserts that society is the product, not of men's conscious decision, but of their instinctive makeup. Both history and primitive societies illustrate men's gravitation toward some form of communal .