La salvezza attraverso il sangue : tradizionalismo e modernità del pensiero di Joseph de Maistre

In the history of thought, there are a few thinkers whose interpretative fate seems to be bound to a stereotype that is almost impossible to destroy. One of those thinkers is, beyond any doubt, Joseph de Maistre. The name of this Savoyard count evokes, for the majority of people, the image of a traditionalist, a reactionary conservative, enemy of the French revolution and therefore, eo ipso, enemy of modernity. In the context of such a reading, to deal with Maistre's thought might seem an operation of mere "speculative archeology". Of course, Maistre was a traditionalist, as much as he was a conservative in politics, and he opposed the Enlightenment, which made possible the movements that culminated in the French revolution. However, he was also a good expert of the philosophy of his age, and a fine thinker; his thought presents a philosophical value that is too often neglected. In this paper, I will therefore overlook the political aspect of his thought, and I will rather focus on its theoretical core, which is constituted by his conception of sacrifice and to the doctrine of reversibility that is connected to it.