Maurrassism

Doctrines of the maurrassism

A report of decline

The maurrassism has as an ambition to be doctrines counter-revolutionary, ensuring the cohesion of the France and its size. It starts from a watchword, “Policy initially”, of a postulate, the Patriotisme, that the Revolution would have erased with the profit of the Nationalisme and a report: for Maurras, the French company of the end of the 19th century is mined by the decline and corruption. According to him, these evils go up mainly with the French revolution, and reach their paroxysm in the Affaire Dreyfus. The philosophical influences of Charles Maurras go from Plato and Aristote to Joseph de Maistre while passing by Dante and Thomas d' Aquin. Its historical influences go from Holy-Beuve to Fustel de Coulanges while passing by Taine and Ernest Renan.

For Maurras, the culprit is the revolutionary spirit and Romantique, conveyed by the liberal forces which according to him at that time the four “confederated States were” that it had defined in 1949 in For a young French , namely: the Juifs, the Protestants, the freemasons, and foreigners (that Maurras called " Wogs "). These confederated states represent anti-France, they cannot in no case to belong to the French nation.

The solution maurrassienne: order, reason, classicism

The maurrassism seems to be born from a desire of order at the young Charles Maurras, allotted by some to its deafness.

On the philosophical level, this desire involves an unconditional attachment with the Raison.
On the artistic plan, the defense of the Classicism against the " débordements" directions of the Romanticism.
On the political plan, it implies the search for a mode of authority. But at Maurras, Regionalistic Poet of Provence, the authority must be reconciled with the respect of local freedoms. An equation which finds according to him its resolution only in the monarchical system. Maurras thus becomes a royalist of reason in 1896.

More precisely, on the political plan, to ensure national cohesion, the maurrassism thus rests on:

the exclusion of the nation of the four “confederated States” and the exaltation of the national interest (" France seule"),
On the political plan, the installation of institutions having simultaneously to guarantee freedoms local of the " country réel" and the maintenance of the national unit, i.e. for him the Monarchy.
On the moral plan, magistère of the Catholic church as a unifying Cement, factor and model of order.

A political model based on the " country réel"

In the line of the Positivism, Charles Maurras considers that the organization and the institutions of the company must be the fruit of the selection operated by the centuries, " empiricism organisateur" being regarded as more effective, because adapted to each national situation, that the application of idealistic theories. Monarchy belongs to these institutions, necessary in particular to slow down the Franco-French competitions.

The confidence put in the institutions forged by time leads Charles Maurras to distinguish the " country réel" , enraciné in realities of the life (the area, work, trades, the parish, the family) of the " country légal" (republican institutions), according to him artificially superimposed with the " country réel". A concept which also takes again the topics Organiciste S of the catholic political tradition.

The institutional reflection of Maurras must also much with its original Fédéralisme and its membership of the regionalistic movement of Provence of the Félibrige of Mistral. He saw in monarchy the keystone of the Décentralisation. He estimated that the direct attachment of the people to the authority symbolic system of the sovereign and moral cement of the Catholic church were sufficient unifying forces to ensure the national unit in a largely decentralized political system, while, for its part, the Republic was forced to have recourse to the " corset of fer" Napoleonean administration centralized to arrive at the same end. A political vision synthesized by the formula: " authority in top, freedoms in bas".

Let us note that it would be by pragmatism and obsession of the civil war that Maurras remained faithful, in 1914 as in 1940, with its principle of the nationalist compromise, i.e. of the National union in the event of crisis, and by supporting Clemenceau then Pétain.

Place in the history of the political ideas

A new political synthesis

On the plan of the political institutions, legitimist in his youth then republican federalist, Maurras became again royalist (but from now on in favor of the Orleans) in 1896 per political reasoning: the kings made France, it demolishes themselves since 1789. Partisan consequently of the duke of Orleans then of his heirs (the “duke of Own way” then the “count de Paris”), it endeavoured to convert the French Action incipient, and created by nationalist republicans, with the royal idea and to gather in his center the remainders of the French traditional royalism, illustrated in particular by the marquis of the Tower of the Pine or the general of Cart.

The synthesis between the ideas counter-revolutionaries and nationalism (but also positivism), initiated by the moral shock of the War of 1870 (which converts part of the forces traditionalists to the national idea) and largely operated by the Affaire Dreyfus (as from 1898), will find its result doctrinal in the maurrassism. If there will remain nationalist political currents not maurrassien (such various expressions of nationalism Jacobin, nationalism universalist with the Péguy), the political current counter-revolutionary will for its part completely be converted with the maurrassism after the rallyings of the traditional royalists (about 1911).

The maurrassism will have given a second breath to the ideas counter-revolutionaries, declining in the middle of the years 1893 after the rallying of the catholics to the Republic, which it will have diffused well beyond its traditional mediums (certain area of tradition counter-revolutionary, the catholic mediums, aristocracy).

Personally agnostic until the last years of its life (it converts then with the Catholicisme), Maurras appreciated the social role and history of the Catholic religion in the French company, in particular for its federator role. Its vision " utilitariste" Catholic church, as an institution serving the interests of national cohesion, facilitated convergence between enthusiastic catholics and men further away from the Church.

A major influence on first half of the XXe century

The synthesis maurrassienne will make school in France and will be diffused abroad. In France, she will exert a major influence on the intellectual and student middle (Faculty of Law, medicine, etc) of the years 1910 and 1920 to reach certain an apogee in 1926, before the pontifical judgment. As example, the current maurrassien exerts " thus; its attraction on the most various spirits: of Bernanos to Jacques Lacan, of T.S. Eliot with Georges Dumézil, of Jacques Maritain with Jacques Laurent, of Thierry Maulnier with Gustave Thibon, until De Gaulle " .

The maurassism caused in particular inspiration of the national Révolution of the Régime of Vichy (period 1940-1941), of the mode of Salazar to the Portugal or of the Franquisme in Spain.

The references of the modes of the Pétain marshal, of the general Free and Salazar, the big role of Anti-semitism among the militants maurrassiens, the positions of some maurrassiens at the time of the Second world war, led to the discredit of this current of thought which does not exist any more but in a very minority state since 1945. In France, its filiation mainly could be traced within groups of officers opposed to the Décolonisation, in Indo-China as in Algeria.

Random links:

Louise-happiness of Kéralio | Akira Higashi | Interstate 25 | Alix de Konopka | House (horse-drawn)