When Görres came to Paris, the Revolution has ended with
Napoleon’s coup d‘état. Görres who stayed in the city for
one year came across a new situation. He was now convinced
that the Revolution has failed.
Although the improvements of the time – above all the
civil code – remained, Görres was not able to detect the
spirit of humanity which he had in mind. What he saw in-
stead was rigour, severe discipline and brute force. A
general who was shaped by war and convinced by the right
of the mighty used the situation to become head of state.
According to Görres there were two reasons for the excesses
of violence:
One of them seemed to be the rejection of Christianity and
its morals in the 90s. He emphasized that a society needs
values in order to persist, but he did not see any alter-
native to the traditional ones.
Something new could not be created out of nothing.
The renunciation of the ethics was the cause of the cruel-
ty of the events and the ferociousness.
Secondly, Görres recognised on-site that there existed a
heterogeneity of the movement:
The Self-interested ambitions of the ruffian sides had
foiled the mutual success.
The lack of an entity was definitely connected to the
moral decline and the new egoism.