The Works of Joseph de Maistre
by: Joseph de Maistre

Softcover. NY, Schocken Books , 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 303 pages. This work introduces one to the salient perspectives and key ideas of this eminent Savoyard nobleman, political thinker and theosophe. His work constitutes a truly brilliant and formidable refutal of the emerging Enlightenment dogmas (upon which the mindset of the modern world is founded) and his critiques are incisive and truly devastating: Rousseau's naive concept of the 'noble savage' is given short shrift and Locke's 'tabula rasa' (so integral to contemporary educational theory and social engineering) consigned to the midden-heap as De Maistre expounds the concept of the 'innate ideas' existent within each individual from birth. Where the Enlightenment extolled the 'natural state' of man as good and benign, De Maistre advances the sobering truth about humankind's debased and fallen state - once pure in the spiritual dignity of his pre-lapsarian estate, now: 'Man is evil, horribly evil.' Clean, bright copy.