4 - Human Rights against the Rights of God

Summary

Bonald and Maistre, theorists of a monarchist and Catholic counter-revolution, represent the purest incarnation of a radical rejection of human rights in the name of a political theology. According to Bonald, 'the Revolution started with the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and can end only with the declaration of the Rights of God'. Both believe that the transcendence of the sovereign and the law precludes all juridical, social and political equality. In Bonald's writings, the theological critique of human rights takes the form of a sociological critique. God is society by another name: Bonald affirms that 'there is no being outside society'. 'Society is a being' ans must as such - as an 'ensemble of relations and relationships' constitute the object of a 'science' : 'in society, there are no rights, but only duties'. In Maistre's view, sovereign power is indissociable from the national identity that gives it its shape, historical legitimacy and 'mission'. The rights of man negates the 'law of nations' (jus gentium). With this, Maistre reaffirms the unreality of human rights. The fact that the French Revolution led directly into a 'civil war of the human race' was to, him, no coincidence.