Montesquieu and the Despotic Ideas of Europe

An Interpretation of "The Spirit of the Laws"

Vickie B. Sullivan

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780226482910
• eBook ISBN: 9780226483078
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Montesquieu is rightly famous as a tireless critic of despotism, which he associates in his writings overtly with Asia and the Middle East and not with the apparently more moderate Western models of governance found throughout Europe. However, a careful reading of Montesquieu reveals that he recognizes a susceptibility to despotic practices in the West—and that the threat emanates not from the East, but from certain despotic ideas that inform such Western institutions as the French monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church.
           
Nowhere is Montesquieu's critique of the despotic ideas of Europe more powerful than in his enormously influential The Spirit of the Laws, and Vickie B. Sullivan guides readers through Montesquieu's sometimes veiled, yet sharply critical accounts of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Aristotle, and Plato, as well as various Christian thinkers. He finds deleterious consequences, for example, in brutal Machiavellianism, in Hobbes's justifications for the rule of one, in Plato's reasoning that denied slaves the right of natural defense, and in the Christian teachings that equated heresy with treason and informed the Inquisition.

In this new reading of Montesquieu's masterwork, Sullivan corrects the misconception that it offers simple, objective observations, showing it instead to be a powerful critique of European politics that would become remarkably and regrettably prescient after Montesquieu's death when despotism wound its way through Europe.
 

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. Montesquieu’s thought has been praised recently for its eschewal of dogmatic universalism and its embrace of pragmatism and particularism. See Rasmussen, Pragmatic Enlightenment, and Callanan, “Liberal Constitutionalism and Political Particularism.” The characteristics that now win Montesquieu admirers earned him stern critics at the time of the work’s publication. The failure of this French Catholic to advocate for the universal applicability of Christian teachings or to condemn such unchristian practices as, for example, polygamy was shocking. See, for example, Plesse, “Lettre au P.B.J.,” 105–7, 111, and La Roche, “Examen critique de l’Esprit des Lois,” 117, 121, 126. Montesquieu’s temperate approach also induces some commentators to ascribe the origins of objective social science to him. Commentators who, following Auguste Comte, regard Montesquieu as a relativist also regard him as a forerunner of social science who seeks primarily to document the rich diversity of cultures. See Durkheim, Montesquieu and Rousseau, 61, 51, and 15–18, but cf. 19–20, 22–23, 53; Althusser, Politics and History, 17, 19, 22, 29, but cf. 37, 39–42; Aron, Montesquieu, Comte, Marx, de Tocqueville, 13–14, 25, but cf. 47–49. See also Manent, City of Man, 11–85.

2. Some scholars see Montesquieu as ultimately participating in the natural law or natural right tradition. See, for example, Waddicor, Montesquieu and the Philosophy of Natural Law; Courtney, “Montesquieu and Natural Law”; Carrese, “Montesquieu’s Complex Natural Right.” Waddicor gives an informative summary of the long-standing controversy as to whether Montesquieu accepted or rejected the tenets of natural law (Montesquieu and the Philosophy of Natural Law, 16–21). Zuckert focuses on Montesquieu’s appeal to natural rights in the work, and hence his kinship to John Locke (“Natural Law, Natural Rights, and Classical Liberalism,” 239–43); see also Zuckert, “Natural Rights and Modern Constitutionalism,” 43–46.

3. Krause offers an excellent analysis of Montesquieu’s treatment of this concept (“Despotism in The Spirit of Laws”). See also Young, “Montesquieu’s View of Despotism,” and Boesche, “Fearing Monarchs and Merchants.” Montesquieu’s “absolute evil was despotism” (Craiutu, Virtue for Courageous Minds, 64).

4. Said, Orientalism. For the manner in which scholars have assessed Montesquieu’s participation in this discourse, see for example: Pucci, “Orientalism and Representations of Exteriority,” 263–79; Lowe, “Rereadings in Orientalism,” 115–43; Richter, “Montesquieu’s Comparative Analysis of Europe and Asia,” 332; Rubiés, “Oriental despotism and European Orientalism,” 109–15 and 168–70; Wolff, “Discovering Cultural Perspective,” 9; and Curtis, Orientalism and Islam, 72–102. Curtis indicates that when Pope Pius II called for another Crusade in 1464, he “helped make the word Europe interchangeable with Christendom” (30).

5. Courtney argues that Montesquieu supports “gradual” reform that “acknowledge[s] the existence of all the relevant circumstances. This has led to the misunderstanding that he is not really a reformer, but rather a relativist, who always finds arguments to justify existing institutions” (“Montesquieu and Natural Law,” 58). On his acknowledgment of the possibility of reform here, see also Pangle, Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism, 21–22.

6. Kautz, Liberalism and Community, 95–96.

7. Montesquieu does not name France here, referring only to “some states,” but his homeland was one European nation that used this form of torture. See Andrews, System of Criminal Justice, 385.

8. See also chapter 6 of Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline where he says that had the Spanish followed “the system” of the Romans in making themselves “the head of a body formed by all the peoples of the world,” “they would not have been forced to destroy everything in order to preserve everything” (75).

9. See Levin, Political Doctrine, 229–30, for a discussion, with references to ancient sources, of the use of torture among the Greeks and Romans. See also chapter 15 of Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline: “Since the Romans were accustomed to making sport of human nature in the person of their children and their slaves, they could scarcely know the virtue we call humanity.” He continues by asking: “When we are cruel in the civil state [l’état civil], what can we expect from natural gentleness and justice?” (136; OC 2: 148). See Waddicor, Montesquieu and the Philosophy of Natural Law, 141.

10. Larrère, “Montesquieu and Liberalism,” 290.

11. For a useful discussion of Montesquieu’s work that identifies him not as a relativist but as a liberal pluralist, who understood that various alternatives answered to the conception of the political good but who disapproved of the denial of basic rights, see Larrère, “Montesquieu and Liberalism.” Manin’s formulation is that Montesquieu offers a “libéralisme de la pluralité.” Although on Manin’s interpretation of Montesquieu there is no single path to the pursuit of the political good, he is surprised nevertheless at the interpreters who remain blind to the massive fact that in The Spirit of the Laws Montesquieu not merely decries but judges and chooses (“Montesquieu et la politique moderne,” 213 and 159). Klosko characterizes Montesquieu’s thought as that of both a moral relativist and a moral absolutist, but argues that the latter furnishes the basis for his political science, which “is no less a system of prescriptive political theory than those of Hobbes or Locke” (“Montesquieu’s Science of Politics,” 176, 154–55). See also Richter, Political Theory of Montesquieu, 20, 26, and 71, and Curtis, Orientalism and Islam, 76.

12. Craiutu, Virtue for Courageous Minds, 37. Craiutu offers this assessment in the context of commenting on Montesquieu’s remarks on the Gothic government.

13. Cf. Pangle’s comment that the “theme of Book XII is for Montesquieu the most important theme of political philosophy” (Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism, 139). See also Carrithers, “Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Punishment,” 221–22, and “Montesquieu and the Liberal Philosophy of Jurisprudence,” 293–94.

14. Callanan, “Liberal Constitutionalism and Political Particularism,” 593–99, and Schaub, Erotic Liberalism, 139.

15. Immediately before this statement, he offers two other possibilities that would induce him to consider himself the “happiest of mortals.” First, if he “could make it so that everyone had new reasons for loving his duties, his prince, his homeland and his laws and that each could better feel his happiness in his own country, government, and position”; and second, if he “could make it so that those who command increased their knowledge of what they should prescribe and that those who obey found a new pleasure in obeying” (pr., xliv).

16. Montesquieu recognizes the possibility of progress, but does not regard it as inevitable. For an instructive consideration of his approach to history in several of his works, see Carrithers, “Montesquieu’s Philosophy of History.” Carrithers, in fact, rejects the notion that Montesquieu possessed a teleological view of history (see particularly 79–80). On this point, see also Shklar, Montesquieu, 50. In the conclusion of this book, I offer some additional reflections on Montesquieu’s approach to history as it comes to light in The Spirit of the Laws.

17. Indeed, some scholars see his aversion to despotism as unifying the corpus of his writings. See Krause, “Despotism in The Spirit of Laws,” 231; Levi-Malvano, Montesquieu e Machiavelli, 99; Schaub, Erotic Liberalism, 19; Shklar, Montesquieu, 31. Binoche (Introduction, 199–241) and Barrera (Les lois du monde, 46–60) emphasize his desire to remedy this pervasive political malady in The Spirit of the Laws.

18. Krause, “Despotism in The Spirit of Laws,” 253. See also Grosrichard, Sultan’s Court, 49; Schaub, “Montesquieu’s Legislator,” 153; and Spector, Montesquieu, 105–6.

19. For his explanation of this use of the term, see 14.13, 243 and n. 25. See also Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline, 123 and n. 7 (chap. 13).

20. Shklar comments that for Montesquieu “despotism is a passion of the soul, a political tendency, and a system of government” (Montesquieu, 75).

21. In this place, Montesquieu mentions that fathers in China and in Peru are punished for the crimes of their children and then comments: “It is another punishment derived from despotic ideas.” He fails to elaborate in this place on the other punishments and the other despotic ideas he has in mind. In a related discussion, he says that it is a “despotic rage” (fureur despotique) that has children and wives punished for “the father’s disgrace” (12.30, 212; OC 2: 457). Here he gives no example of such a law or teaching that declares that the mistak...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on Citations
• Introduction
• Part I.  The Ideas of Montesquieu’s Modern European Predecessors
• Part II.  Christian Ideas
• Part III.  The Ideas of the Ancient Legislators
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index