Against Rousseau: "On the State of Nature" and "On the Sovereignty of the People"

Leonard Adams is a professor of French Studies at the University of
Guelph.

This volume marks the third major translation of Joseph de Maistre’s
work that Professor Lebrun has undertaken, and the first dedicated to
Maistre’s critique of essays by Jean-Jacques Rousseau on political
theory. Some leaders of the French Revolution used the dissertations in
question to form their ideology and legitimize their sociopolitical
reforms. The original version of Maistre’s rebuttal appeared in 1879,
some 75 years after its composition, and hence had no effect on
democratic thinking at the end of the 18th century.

Lebrun’s enlightening introduction to the book makes a solid case for
his attempt to bring Maistre once more to the attention of the scholarly
community and to make his ideas more accessible. It is noteworthy that
more than 200 years after Maistre wrote this work, the issues he
discussed remain topical. Lebrun’s highly readable translation
captures the forcefulness of Maistre’s argument, the logic of his
reasoning, and the emotion and virulence of his attacks on Rousseau. The
Genevan philosopher’s pronouncements in favor of shared sovereignty

come in for sustained criticism, if not outright condemnation.

As in his previous translation work, Lebrun shows a keenness for
providing detail without being pedantic. It is not always absolutely
clear from the footnotes whether the oversights that the reader
encounters in the work are attributable to Maistre or to Lebrun, and
there are places where the translation could be improved idiomatically.
However, these instances are not sufficiently frequent to distract us
from the central questions that constitute the basis for Maistre’s
thought. Footnotes, used with discretion, complement Maistre’s
annotation, and a critical bibliography enhances the usefulness of this
book.