Nationalism, Positivism and Catholicism
The Politics of Charles Maurras and French Catholics 1890–1914

This study of Maurrassian ideology and Catholic reactions to it explores a wide range of themes.

Michael Sutton (Author)

9780521893404, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 20 June 2002

348 pages
21.7 x 14.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.49 kg

At the time of the Dreyfus Affair and the start of the Action Française, Charles Maurras pressed forward the idea, borrowed from Auguste Comte, of an alliance between Positivists and Catholics. The compatibility of Maurras's own Positivist political ideas with Catholic principles was later questioned by Marc Sangnier, and the ensuing polemic between the two men was itself the origin of a lengthy controversy in which the two leading figures were the philosophers Maurice Blondel and Lucien Laberthonnière, both of whom strongly contested Catholic indulgence towards Maurras and the Action Française. This study of Maurrassian ideology and Catholic reactions to it explores a wide range of themes. They include the posterity of Comte's Positivism, anti-semitism at the turn of the twentieth century, the absolutism and romanticism of Maurras's nationalism, the crucial importance of the separation of Church and State for the somewhat fortuitous identification of the Action Française with the cause of Rome, and the confrontation of Maurras's idea of the Roman Church with the Christian ideals upheld by Blondel and Laberthonnière.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Maurras's appreciation of Comte
2. Individualism, the decline of France, and Maurras's proposed remedy
3. The time of the separation of Church and State
4. Blondel and Maurras
5. Laberthonnière's separation between politics and Christian faith
6. Orthodoxy and Rome
Epilogue
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]