Tell me about Maurice Barres (and how you feel about him)

[FieldHound]

He seems like a bit of an early syncretist from the little that I know, or at least somebody not so easy to box. From what I can tell he was a nationalist and perhaps somebody that personified/romanticised the idea of a country or state, but also a staunch egoist/individualist - perhaps libertine? I think he is often considered important amongst traditionalist and monarchist circles but apparently his publication also lent its pages to some anarchist writers and I think I read somewhere that he had an influence on Leon Blum? Is there anything an anarchist or leftist in general can take from 'The Cult of the Self' or any of his other writings?

[PhoenixAsh]

Well...he was an ultra-nationalist, anti-parliamentarist...and throughout much of his life a rabid anti-semite (though he later recanted it to mere anti-semitism by saying some nice things about Jews).

I believe he dabbled in socialism for a while after the Boulangist defeat and wrote L'Ennemi de Lois which had Anarchistic tendencies. The Dreyfus affair seems to be a transitional phase however and he shifted towards increasing ultra-nationalism.

This is also notable in his three works of The Self. And the entire work is often considered part of the extreme right as well as an ideological ally to Right-wing Anarchism (basically people who are extremely conservatives but dislike the submission to the order part of the conservative political notion)

Leon Blum admired Barres, as did many French youth in that period, and as far as I can tell were something of friends untill the Dreyfus afair for obvious reasons stated above. Barres refused to be persuaded by Blum to join the side of those supporting Dreyfus and wrote instead that Dreyfuss was guilty, not because of evidence, but because he was a Jew.