Mundo interpretado 9: Joseph de Maistre

“Interpreted world” is a phrase from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke in the first of the Duino Elegies. It will serve as our motto for what we propose: to interpret the world through the great interpretations that have preceded us and, in this way, to understand a little better the world in which we live. Benjamin Constant, who coined the term “reaction” applied to politics, warned of the retrograde exaggeration of opinions. He was thinking of Joseph de Maistre. Over time, however, that exaggeration has acquired a challenging precision. The Spanish translation of the anthology that Emil Cioran prepared of the author of Evenings in Saint Petersburg is an extraordinary opportunity to revisit this challenge: are we in a position to replace the hermeneutical structure of the Catholic Church and the infallible sovereignty of the Pope? Antonio Lastra (Valencia, Spain, 1967) holds a PhD in Philosophy, teaches Philosophy at the secondary level, is an external researcher at the Franklin Institute for Research in North American Thought at the University of Alcalá, a researcher at the Edith Stein University Institute for Research in Philosophy at the Catholic University of Valencia, and teaches Ethics at the Valencia Business School (EDEM). He is the President of LA TORRE DEL VIRREY. INSTITUTO DE ESTUDIOS CULTURALES AVANZADOS (The Viceroy's Tower. Institute of Advanced Cultural Studies) and directs the School of Philosophy at the Ateneo of Valencia. His preferred fields of research are the ecology of culture, translation as a lingua franca, American constitutional writing, the theological-political problem, English literature, and film studies. His latest book is Aprender leyendo (Learning by Reading) (Ápeiron Ediciones, Madrid, 2018). Bibliography JOSEPH DE MAISTRE, The Greatest Enemy of Europe and Other Selected Texts, Anthology and Introduction by E. M. Cioran, translated by Yolanda Morató, El Paseo, Seville, 2020.