Dec 5, 2009

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Bonald’s Economic Thought

The French Age of Enlightenment witnessed and celebrated an economic revolution: the rapid growth of speculation and a money economy, and a corresponding diminution in the importance of landed wealth. Bonald believed that the change had been brought about by the practice of usury. He did not condemn all lending at interest as usury, but distinguished between the cases of lending...

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Dec 4, 2009

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Bonald’s Theory of the Nobility

Unlike Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald devoted little space to analyzing the French Revolution itself. His focus instead was on understanding the traditional society which had been swept away. His review of Mme. de Staël’s Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution, e.g., ends up turning into a theory of the nobility and its function....

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Nov 1, 2009

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Louis de Bonald, On Divorce, Part II

Read Part 1 here.DivorceThe reader may be forgiven for wondering why the foregoing matters are discussed at length in a treatise called On Divorce. Today we are inclined to view marriage as a “personal matter.” But it is not. Most obviously, it also concerns the interests of the children it produces:Public power is the guarantor of the commitment of the two spouses to form a...

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Oct 31, 2009

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Louis de Bonald, On Divorce, Part I

On Divorce Louis de BonaldTranslated and edited by Nicholas DavidsonNew Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1992On the European continent, Louis de Bonald has long been named alongside Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre as a foremost first generation critic of the French Revolution and founder of modern conservatism. De Maistre himself, late in life, wrote to Bonald: “I have...

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Oct 13, 2009

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Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald

The French statesman, writer, and philosopher, Louis Vicomte de Bonald belongs to the theologist school of the Traditionalists. Bonald was born on October 2nd, 1754 at Monna, near Millau a town in the Rouergue region (Aveyron) of southern France, into an aristocratic family. He studied at the Oratorian Collège de Juilly. As an aristocrat, military service was expected, so in 1773...

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