Louis de Bonald

Louis de Bonald
Louis de Bonald, by Julien-Léopold Boilly.
Born	Louis Gabriel Ambroise de Bonald (1754-10-02)2 October 1754 Le Monna, Millau, Rouergue (now Aveyron)
Died	23 November 1840(1840-11-23) (aged 86) Le Monna
Era	18th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Conservatism Counter-Enlightenment Ultramontanism Traditionalism Royalism
Notable ideas	Social fact Pre-sociology
Influences Plato Tacitus Pascal Bossuet Malebranche Leibniz
Influenced Joseph de Maistre Chateaubriand Juan Donoso Cortés Lamennais Charles Maurras Carl Schmitt Julius Evola

Louis de Bonald, properly Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald (2 October 1754 – 23 November 1840), was a French counter-revolutionaryphilosopher and politician. Mainly, he is remembered for developing a set of social theories that exercised a powerful influence in shaping the ontological framework from which French sociology would emerge.

Bonald came from an ancient noble family of Provence. He was educated at the Oratorian college at Juilly, and after serving with the Artillery, he held a post in the local administration of his native province. Elected to the States General of 1789 as a deputy for Aveyron, he strongly opposed the new legislation on the civil status of the clergy and emigrated in 1791. There he joined the army of the Prince of Condé, soon settling in Heidelberg. There he wrote his first important work, the highly conservative Theorie du Pouvoir Politique et Religieux dans la Societe Civile Demontree par le Raisonnement et l'Histoire (3 vols., 1796; new ed., Paris, 1854, 2 vols.), which the Directory condemned.

Upon returning to France, he found himself an object of suspicion and at first lived in retirement. In 1806, he, along with Chateaubriand and Joseph Fiévée, edited the Mercure de France. Two years later, he was appointed counsellor of the Imperial University, which he had often attacked previously. After the Bourbon Restoration he was a member of the council of public instruction. From 1815 to 1822, de Bonald served as a deputy in the French National Assembly. His speeches were extremely conservative and he advocated literary censorship. In 1825, he argued strongly in favor of the Anti-Sacrilege Act, including its prescription of the death penalty under certain conditions.