Politics & International Relations
Montesquieu
Montesquieu was a French political philosopher known for his theory of the separation of powers, which greatly influenced the development of modern political systems. In his influential work "The Spirit of the Laws," he argued for a system of checks and balances to prevent the concentration of power in any one branch of government. Montesquieu's ideas continue to shape political thought and the structure of governments worldwide.
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7 Key excerpts on "Montesquieu"
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eBook - ePub- Raymond G. Gettell(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
The chief interest of Montesquieu was to set forth the governmental organization that would best safeguard political liberty. This demanded security against individual caprice, and implied subjection to law rather than to the will of a human being. Liberty was possible only where governmental powers were subject to limitations. Montesquieu believed that the essential safeguard against tyranny, and the surest guarantee of liberty, was the separation of the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of government, such as he believed to exist in England. Each power must be exercised by a separate organ and a system of checks and balances thus established. The separation of executive and legislative power was especially important. Criminal law and procedure must also be safeguarded against abuses that led to injustice. The doctrine of separation of powers, though based on a misconception of the English constitution, since the rise of cabinet government was combining executive and legislative functions, exerted a great influence in America. It was applied in both federal and state constitutions, and was included in many of the state bills of rights. It was also included in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, drawn up by the revolutionary assembly in France.Montesquieu followed Bodin in giving considerable attention to the influence of the physical environment upon political and social institutions, paying especial attention to climate and the fertility of the soil. He held that political liberty was natural in the colder climates; slavery, in the warmer. Mountainous regions were conducive to liberty; the fertile plains, to tyranny. The large geographical divisions of Asia favored despotism; the smaller units of Europe promoted freedom. Island peoples were more disposed to democratic government than continental peoples.The influence of social, economic, and religious conditions upon law were also given much attention, Montesquieu holding that law should conform to prevailing standards and customs. Questions of population, poor relief, money, and commerce were discussed in a scientific spirit, with examples drawn from history and from the conditions of his own time. Montesquieu realized, with Harrington, that the balance of political power tended to follow the balance of property. Highly developed commerce he held unsuited to monarchies; monopolistic commercial companies should not be tolerated in free governments. He agreed with the Physiocrats in the value of competition and individual effort.
eBook - ePubTheory in Social and Cultural Anthropology
An Encyclopedia
- R. Jon McGee, Richard L. Warms(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
Robert Launay Robert Launay Montesquieu, Comte de Montesquieu, Comte de 557 558 Montesquieu, Comte de Charles-Louis de Secondat, Comte de Montesquieu (1689–1755), was one of the leading thinkers of the French Enlightenment. His literary career began with the publication of Persian Letters in 1721, a novel comprising letters written by and to a pair of Persian travelers in France. The book ranges from a witty satire of French manners to philosophical reflections about society and a vehement condemnation of despotism as embodied by the harem. In 1748, toward the end of his life, he published The Spirit of Laws, a treatise relating the principles of different forms of government to climate, geography, commerce, warfare, family, and religion in Europe as well as the non-European world. The comparative scope of Montesquieu’s enterprise, if not his specific ideas, constituted a point of departure for social and political thought in France and Britain throughout the rest of the 18th century, providing a paradigm for universal schemes that, a century later, underpinned the emergence of modern anthropology. Montesquieu was born into the judicial aristocracy in Bordeaux. He trained in law before inheriting his title along with the office of president of the Parlement of Bordeaux. The success of Persian Letters granted him notoriety and entry into the salons of Paris. Tired of the provincial atmosphere of Bordeaux, he sold his judicial office to finance his life in Paris as a successful writer and man of the world. His background in the law was clearly central in the elaboration of his life’s major undertaking, The Spirit of Laws. Persian Letters reverses the logic of the standard travel narrative by furnishing an account of French society, ostensibly from the point of view of non- European foreigners. Montesquieu cleverly stages the progressive initiation of the Persians Usbek and Rica into French society as naive incomprehension gives way to familiarity
eBook - ePub- Ritchie Robertson(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Harper(Publisher)
He was also an active member of the Academy of Bordeaux, which was especially concerned with research in natural science. After resigning from the Parlement Montesquieu travelled extensively in Italy, Germany and England. Besides some short essays, he was the author of two brilliant and strikingly dissimilar books: the novel Persian Letters (1721) and the historical sketch Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence (Considerations on the Greatness and Decline of the Romans, 1734). Thereafter he devoted himself to an ambitious work that would draw on his legal knowledge, his classical studies, his extensive reading of travel literature, and his experience of foreign states – particularly of the liberty he had found in England. The Spirit of the Laws is not a work of jurisprudence. It deals rather with the political, cultural and geographical constraints which a legislator must take into account when framing laws. ‘Many things govern men: climate, religion, laws, the maxims of the government, examples of past things, mores, and manners; a general spirit is formed as a result.’ 8 This general spirit, which will be different in each nation, rests in turn on what Montesquieu calls laws of nature and which we might call basic human needs, such as the need to defend oneself, the need to eat, the need for sexual reproduction, and the need to live in society. 9 The scope of legislation is defined by the form of government. Montesquieu distinguishes three. Where Aristotle had distinguished rule by the many (democracy), the few (aristocracy) and the one (despotism), Montesquieu classifies democracy and aristocracy as subtypes of republican government; adds monarchy, which he says the ancients did not understand; and makes despotism the third form. 10 In a republic, the people govern: either directly, as in the ancient republics, where all the citizens gathered in the marketplace to vote; or mediately, through an aristocracy
eBook - ePub- Leo Strauss, Joseph Cropsey(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
12 Although Europe remained his main interest, he extended the purview of scientific explanation and evaluation in human affairs to all times and places. The phrase he applied to the Stoic emperors suits him even more aptly: he watched over humankind.Montesquieu’s philosophy delineates and relates the parts played by blind necessity and reasoned choice (another kind of necessity) in the formation of laws. His emphasis on the variety of political orders and the priority of particulars in statecraft derives from the classics. But he joins with Machiavelli and Locke in rejecting classical virtue as the ultimate political guide. This rejection foredoomed his effort to stem the revolutionary, universalistic tendencies of Lockean liberalism. Indeed, since liberty’s portrait, unlike virtue’s, must necessarily have widespread appeal, his elaborate description of English liberty itself became an instrument of that liberalism. The same rejection had another effect: by making a labyrinth of the relation between ethics and politics, it encouraged a political science that would lose interest in morality and statesmanship.The surface of The Spirit of the Laws is both simple and disorderly, the interior difficult and coherent. What we have said may suffice to establish the truth of the claim that it has a design. Its systematic teaching, even its mystifying title, will continue to elude us until that design is fully understood.READINGSA. Montesquieu. The Spirit of the Laws. Preface, bks I–V, XI, XII, XIX (11, 27).B. Montesquieu. The Spirit of the Laws. Bks XIV, XV, XVIII, XX, XXI, XXIV, XXVI.Montesquieu. The Persian Letters.Montesquieu. Considerations on the Greatness and Decline of the Romans.
eBook - ePub- Pierre Manent, Rebecca Balinski(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Princeton University Press(Publisher)
CHAPTER V Montesquieu and the Separation of PowersI N GOING FROM Hobbes and Locke to Montesquieu we change worlds. Montesquieu’s political intentions remain essentially the same as those of Hobbes and Locke, but the means chosen for realizing them, and the language in which they are described, are radically different.The political intention remains the same: the end of the political institution is to ensure the security of persons and goods. The more certain the security, the more recommendable the institution. But the need for individual self-preservation is no longer strictly speaking the foundation of political legitimacy, of an absolute and incontestable legitimacy. Whereas Hobbes and Locke spoke the language of absolute rights—the individual’s or the sovereign’s—Montesquieu abandons this language and reestablishes on new bases the flexibility of the ancient politics. For example, Locke considered absolute monarchy to be not only a bad and illegitimate regime, but in fact not a political regime at all. It left men in a state of nature worse than the original one. Montesquieu, in contrast, considered the defects and merits of the French monarchy with equanimity. The French monarchy’s principle of legitimacy was radically illiberal, but its effective functioning assured tolerable liberties. In short, Montesquieu’s liberalism is not aggressive like Locke’s; he is liberal not only in his principles, but also in his mood or tone. If he was able to abandon the Lockean “absolutist” language, it is because he managed to found liberty on bases other than the concepts of the state of nature and sovereignty.The doctrine of sovereignty was both the salvation and the bane of early modern political thought. It saved it by making possible the conception of a neutral power, superior in principle to all interests and passions that drive men to war, whether political or religious. Sovereignty was responsible for constituting a human world invulnerable in principle to religion’s power. The bane was that, by constructing a power capable of imposing peace, one simultaneously raised a power capable of making war on its subjects. Of course, Locke attempted to make it impossible for the absolute sovereignty to turn against citizens by placing it in a legislative assembly representing their desire for preservation. But what if this assembly betrays its mandate, becomes oppressive? Then, says Locke, the only recourse is to appeal to Heaven—to rebel. This recourse is always open since the people are the ultimate source of all legitimacy.1
eBook - ePub- Erin A. Dolgoy, Kimberly Hurd Hale, Bruce Peabody, Erin A. Dolgoy, Kimberly Hurd Hale, Bruce Peabody(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
6 Remarking as he does in the work’s “Preface” that he found his “principles” through years of reading and reflection, it took him two decades to work them out in full—an achievement for which his name lives on, even if he believed it to have sapped him of life’s vitality. Montesquieu died seven years after its publication.This essay discusses but a sample of the richness found in The Spirit of the Laws. Montesquieu’s initial examination of human nature includes consideration of humanity’s unique relationship to death, which is for him a mental fact and disposition with great political import. Montesquieu provides a psychological account of liberty based on an opinion of security. Individuals are free, he argues, when unburdened of fear of arbitrary death at the hand of one’s government or fellow citizens. This is especially acute when examining his views on criminal laws, which demonstrate how even severe punishment can contribute to security if justly established, based on the fact that men know that they must die but nevertheless desire to live securely—that is, freely.Man, Beasts, and Death
In the Preface to The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu notes that his work discusses an “infinite number of things.” Over the course of 6 parts divided into 31 books, each of which contains many chapters of varying length, Montesquieu’s magnum opus gives the impression of addressing nearly everything of importance in the human world. He succinctly informs readers of his method and motivation: “I began by examining men, and I believed that, amidst the infinite diversity of laws and mores, they were not led [conduits] by their fancies [fantaisies] alone.”7 Despite the great variety of things confronting his wide gaze and attentive observations, Montesquieu expresses confidence in the fact that the world of human activity is intelligible. Thus, he further advises, “Many of the truths will make themselves felt [sentir
eBook - ePubComparative Law
Mixes, Movements, and Metaphors
- Sean Patrick Donlan, Jane Mair, Sean Patrick Donlan, Jane Mair(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Oeuvre completes , textes présenté et annoté par Roger Caillois (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Gallimard 1949), vol. I, 133–373.25 Ibid., vol. II.26 Three types of government we see also in the work of Aristotle, Politeia , book III, chapter 14: democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy although Montesquieu gives a different interpretation to these governments. Montesquieu puts ‘aristocracy’ and ‘democracy’ together and reduces these forms of government to ‘republic’. Monarchy is according to Montesquieu a constitutional Monarchy. De l’Esprit des Lois , Livre XI, chap 9 and 11.In his De l’Esprit des Lois , we find his theory of the trias politica :27In every government there are three sorts of powers: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law.…When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty.…Again there is no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative, and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would be then the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression.
