Bonald, Louis-Gabriel-Ambroise, vicomte de

▪ French philosopher and statesman

born Oct. 2, 1754, Le Monna, near Millau, Fr.

died Nov. 23, 1840, Le Monna

      political philosopher and statesman who, with the French Roman Catholic thinker Joseph de Maistre, was a leading apologist for Legitimism, a position contrary to the values of the French Revolution and favouring monarchical and ecclesiastical authority.

      Mayor of Millau from 1785 to 1789, Bonald became president of the district of Aveyron's administration in 1790 but resigned the next year in protest against the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Passed by the new Constituent Assembly of the nation, that reform was rejected by the pope, most of the French clergy, and King Louis XVI for the restraints that it put upon the Roman Catholic church in France. Emigrating to Heidelberg, Bonald was soon condemned by the revolutionary Directory for his highly royalist Théorie du pouvoir politique et religieux (1796; “Theory of Political and Religious Power”). In 1797 he returned to France, where he wrote his Essai analytique sur les lois naturelles de l'ordre social (1800; “Analytical Essay on the Natural Laws of Social Order”); Du divorce (1801); and Législation primitive considérée . . . par les seules lumières de la raison, 3 vol. (1802; “Primitive Legislation Considered . . . by the Light of Reason Alone”).

      After the exile of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814, Bonald became a member of the council of public instruction (1814), was nominated to the Académie Française (1816), and was created vicomte (1821) and peer (1823). During these years he wrote Réflexions sur l'intérêt général de l'Europe (1815; “Reflections on the General Interest of Europe”) and Démonstration philosophique du principe constitutif de la société (1830; “Philosophical Demonstration of the Formative Principle of Society”). With the advent of the July Revolution of 1830, Bonald resigned his peerage and retired to spend the last years of his life at the château Le Monna.

Additional Reading

Mary H. Quinlan, The Historical Thought of the Vicomte de Bonald (1953).

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