Volume 37, Number 15 · October 11, 1990
Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism: II
By Isaiah Berlin
A strong historical reaction against the central position of the classicism and the Enlightenment of Paris began to develop in the early years of the eighteenth century. It grew among Neapolitan jurists (influenced by Vico's philosophy of history), Swiss scholars who resurrected early medieval lays and sagas, and among Homeric and biblical critics in England and elsewhere. This trend was powerfully reinforced by such German thinkers as Hamann, Herder, and Jacobi (the last of whom, as A.O. Lovejoy once reminded us, was highly influential in his day) as well as the imaginative writers known as the Sturm und Drang. The climax of this movement was naturally reached in the violent opposition to the French Revolution: its most celebrated and gifted spokesman was Edmund Burke. But in sharpness of mind and brilliance as a polemicist, Joseph de Maistre often outdid the master himself.
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