From Maistre to Donoso Cortés: hermeneutics of the ineffable

Authors

  • Jesús M.ª Osés Gorraiz

Keywords:

Theocracy, providentialism, freedom, Christianity

Abstract

Donoso Cortés was a 19th-century Spanish political thinker deeply influenced by the Saboyan De Maistre. Both shared the need to construct an alternative narrative to the one provided by the French philosophes whose ideas were so important to the French revolution. Both started with Christian doctrine as the core of their thought. And both considered themselves interpreters of a message that humankind is unable to understand: that everything is pre-determined; that human acts are dictated by Providence; that the Pope is the only true representative of that Providence, and that Enlightenment ideals are universal destroyers of social and political cohesion. All revolutions are reduced to irreverent dreams of human pride.

Issue

Section

ARTICLES