2 - Individualism, the decline of France, and Maurras's proposed remedy

Summary

Three key writings

There are three works of Maurras that hold an important place in his published writings and that, when taken together, indicate both the rôle in his political doctrine of his criticism of individualism and his notion of the desirability of a political alliance between Positivists and Catholics. All three were published at about the turn of the century, and, with another book, Le Dilemme de Marc Sangnier, they were to be the essential texts in the debate in which Blondel and Laberthonnière took part.

The three works are Trois idées politiques (1898), to which attention has already been drawn; the article ‘Idées françaises ou idées suisses’, published as part of ‘Les Monod’ in L'Action française of 15 October 1899; and the book L'Avenir de l'Intelligence (1905).

Trois idées politiques: Chateaubriand, Michelet, Sainte-Beuve, to give this small book of about eighty pages its full title, was a response to the public speeches and writings in 1898 occasioned by the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Chateaubriand, the centenary of the birth of Michelet, and the erection of a bust of Sainte-Beuve in the Luxembourg Gardens.