Long known solely as fascism’s precursor, Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) re-emerges in this volume as a versatile thinker with a colossally diverse posterity whose continuing relevance in Europe is ensured by his theorization of the encounter between tradition and modernity.

Following the publication of Isaiah Berlin's essay on Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), the Savoyard philosopher has been known primarily in the English-speaking world as a precursor of fascism. The essays in this volume challenge this view. Disclosing the inaccuracies and limitations of Berlin's account, they illustrate Maistre's colossally diverse European posterity. Far from an inflexible ideologist, Maistre was a versatile and deeply modern thinker who attracted interpreters across the political spectrum. Through the centuries, Maistre's passionate Europeanism has contributed to his popularity from Madrid to Moscow. And in our times, when religion is re-asserting itself as a source of public reason, his theorization of the encounter between tradition and modernity is lending his work ever more urgent relevance. Cover illustration by Matthieu Manche

Maistre emerges from this deeply learned book as the crucial bridge between the Enlightenment and the historicized thought of the nineteenth century.

Joseph de Maistre's Considerations on France is the best known French equivalent of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. This new edition of Richard Lebrun's 1974 translation is introduced by Isaiah Berlin, with a bibliography and chronology by the translator. Published in 1797, the work of the self-exiled Maistre presents a providential interpretation of the French Revolution and argues for a new alliance of throne and altar under a restored Bourbon monarchy. Although the Directory and then Napoleon delayed Maistre's influence within France until the Restoration, he is now acknowledged as the most eloquent spokesperson for continental conservatism. Considerations on France was a shrewd piece of propaganda, but, as Isaiah Berlin contends, by arguing his case in broad historical, philosophical and religious terms, Maistre raises issues of enduring importance.

Written and set on the banks of the Neva, St Petersburg Dialogues is a startlingly relevant analysis of the human prospect in the twenty-first century. As the literary critic George Steiner has remarked, "the age of the Gulag and of Auschwitz, of famine and ubiquitous torture ... nuclear threat, the ecological laying waste of our planet, the leap of endemic, possibly pandemic, illness out of the very matrix of libertarian progress" is exactly what Joseph de Maistre foretold. In the Dialogues Maistre addressed a number of topics that are discussed briefly or not at all in his other works already available in English. These include an apologetic for traditional Christian beliefs about providence, reflections on the social role of the public executioner and the "divinity" of war, a critique of John Locke's sensationalist psychology, meditations on prayer and sacrifice, and a mini-course on "illuminism." The literary form is that of the "philosophical conversation" – one that allowed Maistre to be deliberately provocative and to indulge his taste for paradox, a "methodical extravagance" that he judged particularly appropriate for the eighteenth-century salon. Translator and editor Richard Lebrun provides a full scholarly edition of this classic work, complete with an introduction, chronology, critical bibliography, and generous explanatory notes. The Dialogues will be of interest to scholars of literary history as well as the history of ideas.

Since 1789, the far right has been an important factor in French political life and in different eras has taken on a range of different guises. This work surveys the history of this contentious political and intellectual tradition.