Louis Gabriel Ambroise de Bonald

Louis de Bonald
Louis de Bonald, by Julien-Léopold Boilly.
Born	Louis Gabriel Ambroise de Bonald (1754-10-02)2 October 1754 Millau
Died	23 November 1840(1840-11-23) (aged 86) Millau
Era	18th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Conservatism Counter-Enlightenment Ultramontanism Traditionalism Royalism
Notable ideas	Social fact Pre-sociology
Influences Plato Tacitus Pascal Bossuet Malebranche Leibniz
Influenced Joseph de Maistre Chateaubriand Juan Donoso Cortés Lamennais Charles Maurras Carl Schmitt Julius Evola

Part of a series on
Conservatism
Variants Cultural Fiscal Green Liberal Libertarian National Neo- New Right Old Right (United States) One-nation Religious Social Southern Agrarians Traditionalist
Concepts Conformity Tradition Social norm Family values Social order Patriotism Social hierarchy Statutory law Private property Protectionism
People Edmund Burke Joseph de Maistre Louis de Bonald Adam Müller François de Chateaubriand Antoine de Rivarol Klemens von Metternich Leopold von Ranke Nikolay Karamzin Samuel Taylor Coleridge Juan Donoso Cortés Jaime Balmes John C. Calhoun Benjamin Disraeli Hippolyte Taine Alexis de Tocqueville Orestes Brownson Louis Veuillot Frédéric le Play Juan Vázquez de Mella Heinrich von Treitschke Konstantin Leontiev Maurice Barrès Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo William Hurrell Mallock John Henry Newman Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer Antoine Blanc de Saint-Bonnet Konstantin Pobedonostsev George Santayana Othmar Spann Charles Maurras Keith Joseph Julius Evola Ivan Ilyin Edgar Julius Jung Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly Léon Bloy John Howard John A. Macdonald Henri Massis Robert A. Taft Samuel P. Huntington William F. Buckley, Jr. Ronald Reagan Margaret Thatcher Carl Schmitt Ramiro de Maeztu T. E. Hulme Víctor Pradera Larumbe Winston Churchill Eric Voegelin Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn Michael Oakeshott G. K. Chesterton Robert Bork C. S. Lewis Francisco Elías de Tejada y Spínola Richard M. Weaver Leo Strauss Peter Viereck Russell Kirk Thomas Molnar Christopher Dawson Álvaro d'Ors Nicolás Gómez Dávila Robert Nisbet Roger Scruton Ferdinand Marcos
Organizations American Center for Law & Justice International Democrat Union International Young Democrat Union Asia Pacific Democrat Union European People's Party European Democrats Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR) List of conservative parties
Religious Christian right Conservative Christianity Conservative Islam High Church Anglicanism Traditionalist Catholics
National variants Australia Britain (UK) Canada China (PRC) Colombia Germany South Korea Serbia Turkey United States
Related topics Agrarianism Aristocracy Capitalism Carlism Center-right Corporatism Conservative Revolution Counter-revolutionary Monarchism Neo-liberalism New Right Radical centrism Reactionary Reaganism Right-wing politics Small government Thatcherism Toryism
Conservatism portal Politics portal

Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald (2 October 1754, Le Monna (part of Millau), Rouergue (now Aveyron) – 23 November 1840, Le Monna), was a French counter-revolutionary philosopher and politician. Mainly, he is remembered for developing a set of social theories that exercised a powerful influence in shaping the ontological framework from which French sociology would emerge.

Life

Bonald came from an ancient noble family of Provence. He was educated at the Oratorian college at Juilly, and after serving with the Artillery, he held a post in the local administration of his native province. Elected to the States General of 1789 as a deputy for Aveyron, he strongly opposed the new legislation on the civil status of the clergy and emigrated in 1791. There he joined the army of the Prince of Condé, soon settling in Heidelberg. There he wrote his first important work, the highly conservative Theorie du Pouvoir Politique et Religieux dans la Societe Civile Demontree par le Raisonnement et l'Histoire (3 vols., 1796; new ed., Paris, 1854, 2 vols.), which the Directory condemned.

Upon returning to France, he found himself an object of suspicion and at first lived in retirement. In 1806, he, along with Chateaubriand and Joseph Fiévée, edited the Mercure de France. Two years later, he was appointed counsellor of the Imperial University, which he had often attacked previously. After the Bourbon Restoration he was a member of the council of public instruction and, from 1816, of the Académie française. From 1815 to 1822, de Bonald served as a deputy in the French National Assembly. His speeches were extremely conservative and he advocated literary censorship. In 1825, he argued strongly in favor of the Anti-Sacrilege Act, including its prescription of the death penalty under certain conditions.

In 1822, de Bonald was made Minister of State, and presided over the censorship commission. In the following year, he was made a peer, a dignity which he had lost by refusing to take the required oath in 1803. In 1816, he was appointed to the Académie française. In 1830, he retired from public life and spent the remainder of his days on his estate at Le Monna.

De Bonald had four sons, two of whom, Victor and Louis, led lives of some note.

Ideas

Bonald was one of the leading writers of the theocratic or traditionalist school, which included de Maistre, Lamennais, Ballanche and baron Ferdinand d'Eckstein. His writings are mainly on social and political philosophy, and are based ultimately on one great principle, the divine origin of language. In his own words, "L'homme pense sa parole avant de parler sa pensée" (man thinks his speech before saying his thought); the first language contained the essence of all truth. From this he deduces the existence of God, the divine origin and consequent supreme authority of the Holy Scriptures, and the infallibility of the Catholic Church.

While this thought lies at the root of all his speculations, there is a formula of constant application. All relations may be stated as the triad of cause, means and effect, which he sees repeated throughout nature. Thus, in the universe, he finds the first cause as mover, movement as the means, and bodies as the result; in the state, power as the cause, ministers as the means, and subjects as the effects; in the family, the same relation is exemplified by father, mother and children. These three terms bear specific relations to one another; the first is to the second as the second to the third. Thus, in the great triad of the religious world—God, the Mediator, and Man—God is to the God-Man as the God-Man is to Man. On this basis, he constructed a system of political absolutism.

Quotes

• "Monarchy considers man in his ties with society; a republic considers man independently of his relations to society."
• "There was geometry in the world before Newton, and philosophy before Descartes, but before language there was absolutely nothing but bodies and their images, because language is the necessary instrument of every intellectual operation — nay, the means of every moral existence."
• "Man thinks his word before he speaks his thought, or, in other words, man cannot speak his thought without thinking his word."
• "The deist is a man who in his short existence has not had time to become an atheist."

Works

• 1796: Théorie du Pouvoir Politique et Religieux.
• 1800: Essai Analytique sur les Lois Naturelles de l’Ordre Social.
• 1801: Du Divorce: Considéré au XIX^e, Impr. d'A. Le Clere.
• 1802: Législation Primitive (3 volumes).
• 1817: Pensées sur Divers Sujets.
• 1818: Recherches Philosophiques sur les Premiers Objets des Connaissances Morales.
• 1815: Réflexions sur l’Intérêt Général de l’Europe.
• 1818: Observations sur un Ouvrage de Madame de Staël.
• 1819: Mélanges Littéraires, Politiques et Philosophiques.
• 1830: Démonstration Philosophique du Principe Constitutif de la Société.
• 1821: Opinion sur la Loi Relative à la Censure des Journaux.
• 1825: De la Chrétienté et du Christianisme.
• 1826: De la Famille Agricole et de la Famille Industrielle.
• 1834: Discours sur la Vie de Jésus-Christ.

Complete Works

• Œuvres de M. de Bonald, 1817-1843 (A. Le Clere, 14 vols. in-8°).
• Œuvres de M. de Bonald, 1847-1859 (A. Le Clere, 7 vols. in-8° gr.).
• Œuvres Complètes de M. de Bonald, 1858 (Jacques-Paul Migne, 3 vols. in-4°).
• Œuvres Complètes, Archives Karéline, 2010 (facsimile of the Migne edition).

Writings in English translation

• In Menczer, Béla, 1962. Catholic Political Thought, 1789-1848, University of Notre Dame Press.
  • "The Unity of Europe," pp. 79–89.
  • "On Domestic Society," pp. 89–95.
• On Divorce, Transaction Publishers, 1992.
• In Blum, Christopher Olaf, editor and translator, 2004. Critics of the Enlightenment. Wilmington DE: ISI Books.
  • 1815: "On Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux," pp. 43–70.
  • 1817: "Thoughts on Various Subjects," pp. 71–80.
  • 1818: "Observations on Madame de Stael's Considerations on the Principle Events of the French Revolution," pp. 81–106.
  • 1826: "On the Agricultural Family, the Industrial Family, and the Right of Primogeniture," pp. 107–32.
• The True and Only Wealth of Nations: Essays on Family, Society and Economy, trans. by Christopher Blum. Ave Maria University Press, 2006. ISBN 1-932589-31-7

See also

• Anti-Sacrilege Act of 1825.
• Antoine Blanc de Saint-Bonnet
• Paternalism

References

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bonald, Louis Gabriel Ambroise". Encyclopædia Britannica 4 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Louis-Gabriel-Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald". Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company. 

Further reading

• Barbey D'Aurevilly, Jules (1880). "De Bonald". In: Les Prophètes du Passé. Paris: Victor Palmé, pp. 83–118.
• Beik, Paul H. (1970). The French Revolution Seen from the Right: Social Theories in Motion, 1789–1799. New York: Howard Fertig.
• Berlin, Isaiah (1973). "The Counter-Enlightenment." In: Philip P. Wiener (ed.), Dictionary of the History of Ideas , vol. 2. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sonspp, 100–112.
• Bertran de Balanda, Flavien (2009). Bonald, la Réaction en Action. Lambesc: Éd. Prolégomènes.
• Bertran de Balanda, Flavien (2010). Louis de Bonald Publiciste Ultra. Aix-en-Provence: Champ d'Azur.
• Blamires, Cyprian P. (1985). Three Critiques of the French Revolution: Maistre, Bonald and Saint-Simon. Oxford: Oxford University Doctoral Thesis.
• Bonald, Henri de (1841). Notice sur M. le Vicomte de Bonald. Paris: Adrien Le Clère.
• Bourget, Paul (1905). Bonald. Paris: Librairie Bloud.
• Brandes, George (1906). "Bonald." In: Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature. Vol. III: The Reaction in France. New York: The Macmillan Company, pp. 113–134.
• Devlin, F. Roger (2010). "Louis de Bonald: Neglected Antimodern," The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. X, No. 2.
• Fitzgibbon, George F. (1940). "De Bonald and De Maistre," The American Catholic Sociological Review, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 116–124.
• Klinck, David (1978). "The Impact of Eighteenth-century Naturalism upon the Religious Thought of Louis de Bonald," Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Meeting for the Western Society for French History, Vol. 5, pp. 173–180.
• Klinck, David (1992). "Louis de Bonald: The Foreshadowing of the Integral Nationalism of Charles Maurras and the Action Française in the Thought of the French Counterrevolution," History of European Ideas, Vol. 15, No. 1–3, pp. 327–332.
• Klinck, David (1996). The French Counterrevolutionary Theorist, Louis de Bonald (1754-1840). New York: Peter Lang Pub.
• Koyré, Alexandre (1946). "Louis De Bonald," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 56–63.
• Cohen, D.K. (1969). "The Vicomte de Bonald's Critique of Industrialism," The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 475–484.
• Ferret, Olivier (2007). La Fureur de Nuire: Échanges Pamphlétaires entre Philosophes et Antiphilosophes, 1750-1770. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.
• Laski, Harold Joseph (1919). "Bonald." In: Authority in the Modern State. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 123–188.
• Mazlish, Bruce (1955). Burke, Bonald and de Maistre. A Study in Conservatism. New York: Columbia University Doctoral Thesis.
• McCalla, Arthur (2004). "Louis de Bonald's Traditionalist Science of Society and Early Nineteenth-Century Biological Thought," Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques, Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 337–357.
• McMahon, Darrin M. (2002). Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity. Oxford University Press.
• Montesquiou, Léon de (1916). Le Réalisme de Bonald. Paris: Nouvelle Librairie Nationale.
• Moulinié, Henri (1916). De Bonald. Paris: Librairie Felix Alcan.
• Muret, Charlotte Touzalin (1933). French Royalist Doctrines since the Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Pranchere, Jean-Yves (2001). "The Social Bond in Maistre and Bonald." In: Richard A. Lebrun, ed., Joseph de Maistre’s Life, Thought and Influence: Selected Studies. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, pp. 190–219.
• Reedy, W. Jay (1981). "Burke and Bonald: Paradigms of Late Eighteenth-Century Conservatism," Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 69–93.
• Reedy, W. Jay (1983). "Language, Counter-Revolution and the 'Two Cultures': Bonald's Traditionalist Scientism," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 579–597.
• Reedy, W. Jay (1986). "Art for Society's Sake: Louis de Bonald's Sociology of Aesthetics and the Theocratic Ideology," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 130, No. 1, pp. 101–129.
• Smith, Horatio E. (1924). "Relativism in Bonald's Literary Doctrine," Modern Philology, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 193–210.
• Soltau, Roger Henry (1959). French Political Thought in the 19th Century. New York: Russell & Russell.
• Thorup, Mikkel (2005). "'A World Without Substance': Carl Schmitt and the Counter-Enlightenment," Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 19–39.
• Toda, Michel (1997). Louis de Bonald, Théoricien de la Contre-Révolution. Étampes: Éd. Clovis.
• Wieland, Georg (2013). "Bonald, Louis Gabriel Ambroise," Religion Past and Present. Brill Online.

External links

• Works by Louis de Bonald, at Gallica
• Works by or about Louis Gabriel Ambroise de Bonald at Internet Archive
• Works by Louis de Bonald, at Hathi Trust
• Louis-Ambroise Vicomte de Bonald (1754-1840)
• Louis de Bonald's Univocity of Being: The Mythos of the Fait Sociale and the Rise of French Sociology

Cultural offices
Preceded by Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès	Seat 30 Académie française 1816-1840	Succeeded by Jacques-François Ancelot