Background
Charles Maurras was born on April 20, 1868 in Martigues, Bouches-du-Rhône, France in an old Provencal family, and brought up by his mother and grandmother in a Catholic and monarchist environment. In his early teens he became deaf.
critic political theorist author poet
Charles Maurras was born on April 20, 1868 in Martigues, Bouches-du-Rhône, France in an old Provencal family, and brought up by his mother and grandmother in a Catholic and monarchist environment. In his early teens he became deaf.
Charles Maurras studied philosophy in Paris, where he was influenced by Auguste Comte, George Sorel, Henri Bergson, Maurice Barrès, and the racist journalist Édouard Drumont.
Moving spirit and principal spokesman of Action Française, Charles Maurras was an antidemocrat, racist, monarchist, and worshiper of tradition and of the organic nation-state.
Believing the liberal individualism of the Revolution had opened the floodgates to degrading foreign forces-especially Jews-Maurras was clearly racist.
Then, combining the classical ideals of order, hierarchy, and discipline with attitudes of authoritarianism and the spirit of romantic patriotism, he sought to lay the foundations of an effective political movement.
Application of the method, in his hands, indicated that a return to monarchy alone could save France.
This movement, too, was perhaps as much literary as political, despite Maurras's fanatic insistence upon the latter orientation.
In 1891, soon after his arrival in Paris, Maurras founded, with Jean Moréas, a group of young poets opposed to the Symbolists and later known as the école romane. The group favoured classical restraint and clarity over what they considered to be the vague, emotional character of Symbolist work. After the “Dreyfus affair, ” which polarized French opinion of the right and left, Maurras became an ardent monarchist. In June 1899 he was one of the founders of L’Action française, a review devoted to integral nationalism, which emphasized the supremacy of the state and the national interests of France; promoted the notion of a national community based on “blood and soil”; and opposed the French Revolutionary ideals of liberté, égalité, and fraternité (“liberty, ” “equality, ” and “fraternity”). In 1908, with the help of Léon Daudet, the review became a daily newspaper, the organ of the Royalist Party. Over a period of 40 years, its causes were often reinforced by public demonstrations and riots, spectacular lawsuits and trials.
Maurras also acquired a reputation as the author of Le Chemin de paradis (1895), philosophical short stories; Anthinea (1900), travel essays chiefly on Greece; and Les Amants de Venise (1900), dealing with the love affair of George Sand and Alfred de Musset. Enquête sur la monarchie (1900; “Enquiry Concerning Monarchy”) and L’Avenir de l’intelligence (1905; “The Future of Intelligence”) give a comprehensive view of his political ideas. After World War I, he was still admired in literary quarters as the poet of La Musique intérieure (1925), the critic of Barbarie et poésie (1925), and the memorialist of Au signe de Flore (1931). But he lost some of his political influence when on December 29, 1926, the Roman Catholic Church placed some of his books and L’Action française on the Index, thus depriving him of many sympathizers among the French clergy. The reason given for the ban was the movement’s subordination of religion to politics.
Maurras was received into the Académie Française in 1938. During the German occupation in World War II, he became a strong supporter of the Pétain government. He was arrested in September 1944 and the following January was sentenced to life imprisonment and excluded from the Académie. In 1952 he was released on grounds of health from the prison at Clairvaux and entered the St. Symphorien clinic in Tours. Reconciled with the Roman Catholic Church, he produced the poems of La Balance intérieure (1952) and a book on Pope Pius X, Le Bienheureux Pie X, sauveur de la France (1953).
Maurras' ideas greatly influenced National Catholicism and "nationalisme intégral". A major tenet of integral nationalism was stated by Maurras as "a true nationalist places his country above everything". A political theorist and a major intellectual influence in early 20th-century Europe, his views influenced several far-right ideologies; it also anticipated some of the ideas of fascism.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
Charles Maurras was brought up by his mother and grandmother in a Catholic and monarchist environment. However, some time during his youth, Maurras lost his faith and became an agnostic , but he assumed a position as the champion of the Catholic Church because it is the traditional religion of France.
Politically, Charles Maurras was monarchist, anti-parliamentarist, and counter-revolutionary.
The political writings of Maurras exhibit a comprehensive set of beliefs not uncommon on the far right. The basic assertions concern human nature. For Maurras human beings are primarily social, not individual. We are born into particular families and particular states, and so nationalism is in a profound sense the most natural of political sentiments. To claim, as Rousseau did, that we are individuals before we are members of society is to take the road to disaster. Believe this and we become, in his friend Barrès’s terms, déraciné or rootless. Further, nature is deeply incgalitarian: we are born unequal in ‘blood’, strength and looks, and this is entirely normal and healthy. Any attempt to deny this, to level differences, is foolish in the extreme, destructive of what Maurras calls the rich and inexhaustible fields of human difference. The good is the natural, and what is natural is authority, hierarchy, property, community, personal ties to the soil and hereditary ties of blood.
From this set of ideas Maurras deduces his main political recommendations. His negative views consist chiefly in a hatred of the ideals behind the French Revolution and of democratic forms of government, accompanied by an unrelenting anti-semitism. Human beings are neither all equal nor all
brothers, and to offer the masses political liberty encourages them to regard laws as révisable whims of those in power. Democratic states tend to become ever more centralized: if a party in power wishes to be reelected, it must constantly court and keep watch on the electorate, and to do this requires an ever greater network of officials. Further, the egalitarian aspects of modern democracies cause a general levelling down in all areas of human achievement: for example, more mediocrities are given power, inevitably make blunders, and are treated indulgently by their dimwitted peers when they do so.
Strong states are states whose political system reflects the order of nature. In the case of France, Maurras recommended the return of the monarchy and unwavering support for lamiliy ties and the Catholic Church. The function of leaders is to command, and if the power to command is attained only by electoral mandate it is not sufficiently respected and inefficiency follows. Not to make the most of inequality is madness: the gifted and powerful are indispensable to mankind. They are the energy, ornament and salvation of the world.
