Maistre, Donoso Cortes, and the Legacy of Catholic Authoritarianism

Abstract

According to the late Isaiah Berlin, the origins of fascism can be found in Joseph de Maistre's political thought.' This well-known thesis was anticipated by Carl Schmitt, a conservative Catholic intellectual who served as one of the most prominent jurists of the Third Reich. He rescued the intellectual contributions of Joseph de Maistre and Donoso Cortes from obscurity by identifying them as the forerunners of his own theories of dictatorship. I suggest that by advancing such a claim Carl Schmitt paved the way toward a theoretical understanding of the notion of political authoritarianism characterized by what he defined as non-normative decisionism. By interpreting Maistre and Cort6s in this way, Schmitt was preparing his own political shift away from Catholic conservatism towards political authoritarianism, fascism, and National Socialism. At the same time, by removing the legitimacy of political decisionism embedded in traditionalist political thought, he eliminated the possibility of that middle road between fascism and liberalism known as traditionalist authoritarianism.