Research Paper on:
Considerations on France by Joseph de Maistre

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people. He deplored the French Revolution and depicted the Reign of Terror as a justly deserved punishment for executing Louis XVI. Rather then seeing in the French Revolution, a  violent birth for the dawn of a new era, De Maistre saw the advent of anarchy over civilization; heresy over the fundamental precepts of religion. The following examination of Consideration  of France looks specifically at the role of custom in De Maistres political philosophy, from a conservative point of view. In describing the French Revolution, De Maistre pictures  the revolutionaries as not only disrupting the French monarchy, but implicates them in bringing down civilization as a whole. He writes that a "hideous regicide" has had all the "success  for which its perpetrators could have hoped. Monarchy is dormant all over Europe...The wicked are successful in everything" (Considerations...Maistre) Later in Considerations of France, , De Maistre addresses the  revolutionaries directly, "You feared the force of custom, the ascendancy of authority, the illusions of imagination: there is no longer any of that, no longer custom and no longer masters;  each mans mind is his own" (Considerations...Maistre). Then De Maistre goes on to argue that the ensuing result of each man controlling  his own mind is anarchy. "The churches are closed, or opened only for the noisy discussions and drunken revels of a frenzied people...altars are overthrown; filthy animals have been led  through the streets in bishops vestments..." (Considerations...Maistre). As this indicates, De Maistre saw tradition, custom, and -- above all-- the institution of the Catholic Church as the social "glue"  which holds together the social construct that is civilization. De Maistre does not deny that the French clergy were in dire need of reform, as they appear to have lived