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Scepticism and Sovereignty: The Significance of Lamennais

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

David Nicholls
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Scepticism has frequently been associated with authoritarianism both in politics and in religion. Those who have emphasised the limitations and fragility of human reason have needed to look elsewhere for a basis for certitude—some solid foundation to support a viable political or religious system. Few sceptics have been prepared to accept the view that knowledge and certitude are impossible; there is indeed something paradoxical about the very assertion. Although I shall refer to Lamennais as a sceptic, he firmly rejected pyrrhonism—for he believed that certitude is possible at least in some matters. Nor did he say that reason, or empirical knowledge (arrived at through sense experience) is useless, though he did emphasise the limits of these human faculties, stressing their dependence upon faith and authority.

Lamennais’s life and writings raise questions of perennial importance both for theology and for political philosophy. What is the nature of authority? How are claims to authority legitimated? Are there any independent criteria by which to judge the decisions of political or religious authorities, if so how are they constituted? If custom and tradition are ultimate, does this imply ethical relativism? Can one ethnic group or religious party which happens to wield power (for example the British in nineteenth-century India, or Calvinists in sixteenth-century Geneva) justifiably impose its ideas of right and wrong on those of a different tradition.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 77 , Issue 903 , April 1996 , pp. 190 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 In the latter part of his life he spelled his name Lamennais, thus removing the aristocratic flavour of the original spelling.

2 For the reception of his writings in England see Roe, W.G., Lamennais and England (London 1966)Google Scholar, for his influence in South America see Spindler, F.M., ‘Lamennais and Montalvo: a European Influence upon Latin American Political Thought’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XXXVII, 1976, pp. 137fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 W.E. Gladstone, Contemporary Review, October 1875, p. 447. For biographical details see Marechal, Christian, La famille de La Mennais (Paris, 1913)Google Scholar and La jeunesse de La Mennais (Paris, 1913)Google Scholar, also Vidler, Alec, Prophesy and Papacy: a Study of Lamennais, the Church and the Revolution (London, 1954)Google Scholar.

4 Quoted in Vidler, Prophesy, p 37.

5 British Critic, 19, 1836, p. 306.

6 Works of Lamennais frequently quoted in the text:

7 Also ‘Le seul moyen de verification qui soil en notre pouvoir…consiste a comparer nos perceptions, nos pensees, nos jugements, avec les jugements, les pensees, les perceptions des etres de meme nature que nous, et des raisons du meme ordre.’ Lamennais, Essai ?un systeme, p 6.

8 See Bonald, Louis de, Recherches philosophiques, in Oeuvres de Bonald (Paris, 1858)Google Scholar, pp. 61f, also Gritti, Jules, ‘Influence de Bonald sur les premiers écrits de La Mennais’, Revue de Rouergue, no. 65, 1963, pp. 25‐6.Google Scholar

9 This position was later adopted by Isaac Williams and other fathers of the Oxford Movement.

10 See The Limits of Religious Thought, London, 1858Google Scholar.

11 ‘Lettres a un anglais sur le protestantism’ (1815), Oeuvres inédites de Lamennais, F., Paris, 1866, n, p 277Google Scholar.

12 See David Nicholls, ‘Conscience and Authority in the Thought of W.G. Ward’, Heythrop Journal, October 1985.

13 Pensées de Pascal (Brunschvicg text) fragment 294 (p. 151), and Essai, O.C, I, p. 272 (E.T. p 184). Lamennais's quotation omits some words of Pascal in the Brunschvicg text.

14 On Donne see Nicholls, David, “The Political Theology of John Donne', Theological Studies, 49:1, 1988, p. 53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.