Very based book.

Not familiar with Maistre

Who dat

I felt that parts of it echoed what Endeavour talks about in his *Lies of the Enlightenment* series.

@Norik French philisophe who was vehemently against the growing liberalism in France circa the French Revolution and wrote a lot of very good essays on his thoughts against liberalism and traditional conservative values.

Ah

Honestly not that familiar with frenchies from that time

Besides the meme ones like Voltaire or Tocqueville

He is one of the many from France who established the intellectual attack on liberalism, believing its faults to be ideological and intellectual rather than simply the roots of a ruthless constitution or war.

@Norik Reading anything from anyone reven remotely associated to the Enlightenment is a big risk imo. There's too much bullshit.

Eh

The Social Contract which Endeavour talks about in his series is one such example I've come to dislike.

It’s overrated by the general population but there’s certainly value to certain ideas

Like property rights

Hobbes’ description of government as the natural order arising from the nature of man is probably right at its core

Why don’t you read siege

@Norik That presupposes that man was able to create civilization out of their want. And to presuppose such a thing is to fall into the trap of liberalism again. We know what Hobbes and Locke didn't back then now, that our ancestors worked in communities and not simply the perfect anarcho-primitivist wet dream. We formed civilizations and became social beings out of a need to survive, not out of a rational intellect. That is simply the divine order of God.

That’s literally Hobbes’ argument in the Leviathan lmao

He argues for monarchy with exactly that framework

Haven't read the Leviathan. If that's the case, Maistre and Hobbes are more similar than they'd comfortably like to believe.

Oh.

I misread your message.

Bruh moment.

I don’t think I’m a liberal, but I do think they’re at least partially right

@EYEFORKNOWLEDGE156 What is siege?

Where Hobbes and his successors went wrong IMO is assuming the equality of men

Which ironically is their only truly Christian opinion

Of course, just because all lives have value and all humans have dignity does not mean they are equal in their abilities

@Pictures At An Exhibition a really bad book that’s basically a meme

It’s a book written by a wignat about how he thinks things should be

Which may in itself be a strawman, “all men are created equal” is more an argument against the divine right of kings than a commentary on the abilities of men

Ngl I kinda want to get it for the meme

A reassessment and reframing of the enlightenment is probably a better strategy for taking over conservatism than an actual rejection of it TBH

But I’m not read well enough to properly formulate such a reframing

It is, after all, part of our heritage (and thus, worth defending)

In much the same way that Aquinas and the rest synthesized Greek and Roman thought, it may fall on us to synthesize the property rights and representative government with more traditional Christian thought

I can't disagree with you on anything you've said. It's pretty much things I'd nod to. After all, any serious form of community has to abide by hierarchy.

I don't know how well a catholic reframing will go over in the US

I do fundamentally believe in the sovereignty and self determination of the European people, a line of thought that would only be possible after the enlightenment

I think most people here would agree

You can learn from and adapt the useful parts of liberalism