The Abbé Lamennais on Freedom

Many of the basic issues underlying the complex social, political, and religious problems which stirred France during the lifetime of Lamennais can be found in duplicate in this country. Moreover, it is evident that there is a resurgence of an extremely provincial form of nationalism in the United States together with mounting onslaughts against freedom. This makes increasingly relevant to the concrete lives of all of us an examination of the fundamental ideas of a thinker whose discernment of the disjunctions of his culture is formulated in published writings. Because of this as well as his contribution to the development of democracy in France, it is difficult to understand why the writings of Lamennais have been so singularly neglected in this country. Perhaps a contributing factor is that some of his works have been placed upon the Index Prohibitorum Librorum.