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Scepticism and Sovereignty: The significance of Lamennais

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

David Nicholls
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Extract

The changes in Lamennais’s thinking after the papal condemnation of 1832 were in many ways anticipated in earlier works. In adopting a populist stance in his political writings, he was but extending into the social and political field the epistemological principal of le sens commun, as the final authority to which individual reason must submit. In an appendix to Des progrès de la révolution, published in 1829, he drew an analogy between his belief in the superiority of faith to individual reason in intellectual matters and the superior claim of social duty to individual liberty in the political world. I shall now outline how his thinking on religion and politics developed in the years following his break with the church.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 77 , Issue 904 , May 1996 , pp. 224 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 W. G. Roe, Lamennais and England, p 19.

2 On the theme of social solidarity and consensus in Lamennais, see Hayward, J.E. S., ‘Lamennais and the Religion of Social Consensus’, Archives de Sociologie des Religions, no 21,1966, pp. 37fCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also J. Paul‐Boncour, ed., Lamennais, Paris 1928

3 “'A terre, a terre, devant l'image de Dieu!” Qui dit célà? Le Prétre. Pauvre peuple, le voilà prosiernc. Lui, le roi, comme ils appellem, met le pied dessus. C'est bien! La société est desormais fondée'. [O.P., IV, p.] 83]. Though, as noted in the text, he spoke of God as ‘master’ as late as 1838.

4 Vidler, Prophesy and Papacy, p 114.

5 See Nicholls, David, ‘God, Totalitarianism and the Bugbear of “Society”’, in Deity and Domination (London, 1989), pp. 127fGoogle Scholar.

6 ‘Passive resistance is the resistance of the neck to the axe which falls on it’. ‘Discussions critiques’, O.P., IV, p. 177; and O.P., IV, p. 212.

7 ‘Analogies entre la réligion et la politique’, Le Defenseur, novembre 1820.

8 In his Defense de Ǐessais sur ľindifférence' he wrote ‘Dieu est un, et tout, dans ľordre qu'il etabli, porte ce grand caractére ?unité que lui est propre’, [O.C., IV, p. 299].

9 For a critique of this conception of authority see David Nicholls, The Pluralist Slate (London, 1994), especially ch. 7.

10 Lamennais to Mazzini, 18 août 1841, (Blaize ed. Correspondance de Lamennais, Oeuvres inédites, D, pp. 172 and 175.

11 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, London, 1651, HI, 32Google Scholar.