How did Joseph de Maistre influence Charles Baudelaire’s thought?

The French poet Charles Baudelaire explicitly acknowledged that Joseph de Maistre was the thinker who taught him how to reason.1

Maistre’s influence, alongside that of Edgar Allan Poe, steered Baudelaire’s intellectual development in an increasingly antinaturalist and antihumanist direction. By studying Maistre’s conservative theories—which emphasized the necessity of original sin, the importance of social order, and a rejection of liberal empirical philosophies—Baudelaire deepened his own preoccupation with human depravity and the darker aspects of the human condition. This philosophical shift contributed to Baudelaire’s self-identification as a Roman Catholic, though his perspective remained characterized by an obsession with sin rather than a traditional faith in divine forgiveness.21