The French Counterrevolutionary Theorist Louis de Bonald (1754-1840) by David Klinck

Abstract

The French Counterrevolutionary Theorist Louis de Bonald (1754-1840). By David Klinck. [Studies in Modern European History, Vol. 18.] (New York: Peter Lang Publishing. 1996. Pp. viii, 301. $53.95.) Until now there has not been a full-length treatment of Louis de Bonald's career and thought in English. This seems strange. Bonald, a minor nobleman raised in the Rouergue and educated by the Oratorians at Juilly, was the foremost ideologist of reaction in post-Revolutionary France (Joseph de Maistre was actually a Savoyard). Returning to France under Napoleon, he served as both a Deputy and a Peer during the years of the Bourbon Restoration. But his ideas, though at war with a good deal of modernity, exerted considerable influence long after his death. In fact, Bonald's weighty treatises and polemical essays were not only admired by diehard Legitimists. They also came to be selectively appreciated by minds more modern-by the founder of sociological positivism, Auguste Comte, by one of the first practitioners of survey-based sociology, Frederic Le Play, and by the leader of the fascistic Action Francaise, Charles Maurras. In short, Bonald was not only a royalist and a theocrat but a thinker whose condemnation of the deracinating effects of individualism anticipated Emile Durkheirn's notion of anomie.The inherently social character of the self, of language, and of civilization's greatest achievements are stressed in his writings. The unyielding champion of a somewhat imaginary Old Regime, he was much impressed by the kind of Christian rationalism associated with Malebranche and Leibniz. At the same time, Bonald was a Cassandra, a prophet not only of a virtuous past but of the tumultuous change whose pace would only accelerate as the twentieth century approached. He made dire, often germane, predictions about Europe's social ills apres le deluge, including the poverty exacerbated by laissez-faire economics, the blight spread by rapid urbanization and industrialism, the rising incidence of divorce, and the weakening of traditional family patterns. On a theoretical level, he advanced criticisms of empiricist epistemology and democratic politics that on occasion scored direct hits. His obvious bias notwithstanding, Bonald articulated fears and insights about the modern world that are as much akin to radical as to conservative perspectives. Klinck's monograph is most welcome, therefore. Based on archival research in family papers and archives in Paris and the Midi, its evidence adds to what is known about Bonald's background and reading and about his mayoral policies in Millau before 1793. It is perhaps less impressive in its analyses of the structure, nuances, and relevance of Bonald's thought than in its fresh information concerning his life, relationships, and political activities. Yet even Klinck's labors have not uncovered a complete explanation for why the moderate, semienlightened Bonald turned sharply against the Revolution and emigrated. …