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The Cambridge Companion to Montesquieu Montesquieu was among the most influential writers of the eighteenth century, and the study of his thought enriches and complicates our understanding of the Enlightenment. Following renewed interest in his writings over the last three decades, the Cambridge Companion to Montesquieu brings together the variety of disciplinary and interpretive approaches that have shaped the scholarship on his work and legacy. This Companion offers an integrated volume on Montesquieu as philosopher, novelist, historian, economic thinker, political scientist, and political theorist. It introduces readers to key themes and ongoing debates, reflects developments in the field, breaks fresh ground, indicates avenues for future research, and provides multiple perspectives on the relevance of Montesquieu’s thought to contemporary problems in political theory. is Associate Professor of Political Science at Middlebury College and Visiting Fellow with the James Madison Program at Princeton University. He is author of Montesquieu’s Liberalism and the Problem of Universal Politics (Cambridge, 2018). . is the William R. Kenan, Jr. University Professor of Political Science at Brown University. She is the author of numerous articles on Montesquieu and other topics in political theory, as well as several books, including Liberalism with Honor (Harvard, 2002), Civil Passions (Princeton, 2008), and Freedom Beyond Sovereignty (Chicago, 2015).
ABELARD Edited by . and ADORNO Edited by ANCIENT ETHICS Edited by ANCIENT GREEK AND ROMAN SCIENCE Edited by ANCIENT LOGIC Edited by and ANCIENT SCEPTICISM Edited by ANSELM Edited by and AQUINAS Edited by and AQUINAS Edited by and ARABIC PHILOSOPHY Edited by and . HANNAH ARENDT Edited by ARISTOTLE Edited by ARISTOTLE’S ‘POLITICS’ Edited by and ATHEISM Edited by AUGUSTINE nd edition Edited by and BACON Edited by BERKELEY Edited by . BOETHIUS Edited by BRENTANO Edited by CARNAP Edited by and CICERO’S PHILOSOPHY Edited by . and ï CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE Edited by . COMMON-SENSE PHILOSOPHY Edited by and THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO Edited by and CONSTANT Edited by CRITICAL THEORY Edited by DARWIN nd edition Edited by and SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR Edited by DELEUZE Edited by . and - DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA Edited by DESCARTES
Edited by
DESCARTES’ ‘MEDITATIONS’ Edited by DEWEY Edited by Continued at the back of the book
The Cambridge Companion to Montesquieu
Edited by KEEGAN CALLANAN Middlebury College
SHARON R. KRAUSE Brown University
Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge 2 8, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108478557 : 10.1017/9781108778923 © Cambridge University Press 2023 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2023 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data : Callanan, Keegan, 1981– editor. | Krause, Sharon R., editor. : The Cambridge companion to Montesquieu / edited by Keegan Callanan, Sharon R. Krause. : Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2021. | Series: Cambridge companions | Includes bibliographical references. : 2022023451 (print) | 2022023452 (ebook) | 9781108478557 (hardback) | 9781108745925 (paperback) | 9781108778923 (epub) : : Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de, 1689-1755. | Political science–Philosophy–History–18th century. : 179.8 .24 2021 (print) | 179.8 (ebook) | 320.01– dc23/eng/20220729 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022023451 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022023452 978-1-108-47855-7 Hardback 978-1-108-74592-5 Paperback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Contents
page vii
List of Contributors
ix xi
Acknowledgments Chronology
xiii
List of Abbreviations 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Montesquieu: Life and Letters Paul A. Rahe Persian Letters Catherine Volpilhac-Auger
1 20
Considerations on the Romans Thomas L. Pangle The Spirit of the Laws Keegan Callanan
35
Montesquieu and the Classical World Catherine Larrère Montesquieu’s Guiding Principles and Foundations C. P. Courtney
76
54
Montesquieu on Virtue David W. Carrithers Internationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and Empires Michael Mosher
9
Liberty in Montesquieu Céline Spector 10 Political Sovereignty in Montesquieu Sharon R. Krause v
94 113 130 147 162
vi
Contents
11 Montesquieu on Slavery Vickie B. Sullivan 12 Montesquieu and the Liberty of Women Diana J. Schaub
182
13 Political Economy Paul Cheney 14 Religion and Politics Annelien de Dijn
216
15 Constitutional History Jacob T. Levy 16 Montesquieu and the Enlightenment Jonathan Israel
248
17 Montesquieu’s Liberal Legacies Rebecca E. Kingston
289
Bibliography Index
307 329
198
232
266
Contributors
Keegan Callanan is Associate Professor of Political Science at Middlebury College. David W. Carrithers is Adolph Ochs Professor of Government Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Paul Cheney is Professor of European History at the University of Chicago. C. P. Courtney is Emeritus Reader in French Intellectual History and Bibliography at Christ’s College, the University of Cambridge. Annelien De Dijn is Professor of Modern Political History at Utrecht University. Jonathan Israel is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study. Rebecca E. Kingston is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Sharon R. Krause is the William R. Kenan, Jr. University Professor of Political Science at Brown University. Catherine Larrère is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. Jacob T. Levy is Professor of Political Science at McGill University. Michael Mosher is Professor of Political Science at the University of Tulsa. vii
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List of Contributors
Thomas L. Pangle is the Joe R. Long Chair in Democratic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Paul A. Rahe is Professor of History and the Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair at Hillsdale College. Diana J. Schaub is University Maryland.
Professor
of
Political
Science
at
Loyola
Céline Spector is Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne University. Vickie B. Sullivan is the Cornelia M. Jackson Professor of Political Science at Tufts University. Catherine Volpilhac-Auger is Emeritus Professor of Modern and Contemporary French Literature at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon.
Acknowledgments
In completing this volume, we have incurred a number of debts. I (Keegan) would like to thank my research assistants, Noah Rosenfield, Delia Lander, Danielle Brown, and Joseph Lyons. Much of my work on the Companion was completed during my time as a visiting fellow with the James Madison Program at Princeton University, and I thank Robert P. George and Bradford Wilson for hosting me. Middlebury College and the Institute for Humane Studies generously provided funding for research assistance, indexing, and editorial support. I thank my coeditor, Sharon Krause, for her wisdom and care at every stage of our collaboration. My deep gratitude extends, as ever, to my wife, Rachel, and my children, Fiona, Claire, William, Elise, and Jack, for their love and support in this and all my work. I dedicate the volume to my mother, Michelle, my first and best teacher. I (Sharon) acknowledge with great appreciation Keegan’s initiative, energy, and expertise in bringing this project to fruition. The idea for the volume was his, and he has consistently taken the lead in seeing it through, demonstrating remarkable skill and grace in the process. I am grateful to Brown University for funding support and to our research assistants and indexer for their excellent work. Finally, I thank my mother, Barbara (in memoriam), who cheered on this project as she cheered on everything I ever set out to do; and Tayhas, whose love makes everything possible. We would both like to thank our editor at Cambridge University Press, Robert Dreesen. Robert showed early enthusiasm at the possibility of
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a Cambridge Companion to Montesquieu; he provided expert guidance at the proposal stage; and he patiently supported our project through to publication. We are also grateful to the contributors for their professionalism and commitment to the project. Particular thanks are due to David Carrithers for an especially close partnership in our work on this volume.
Chronology
1689 1700–05 1705–08 1709–14 1713 1714 1715 1716
1717
1718 1721 1724 1725
Born at La Brède, near Bordeaux. Receives his formal education at the Collège de Juilly, near Paris. Studies law in Bordeaux, where he receives a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Bordeaux. Resides in Paris. Returns to Bordeaux following the death of his father (November 15). Becomes a counselor in the Parlement of Bordeaux. Marries Jeanne de Lartigue, a Protestant. Composes Memorandum on the Debts of State. Birth of his son, Jean-Baptiste de Secondat (February 10). Upon the death of his uncle, he becomes président à mortier of the Parlement of Bordeaux (April 24). Elected to the Academy of Bordeaux (April 3). Reads his Dissertation on the Policy of the Romans Regarding Religion to the Academy (June 18). Birth of his daughter Marie de Montesquieu (January 22). Drafts his Discourse on Cicero. Begins work on Persian Letters. Serves first term as Director of the Academy of Bordeaux. Publication of Persian Letters in Holland. Writes Dialogue between Sulla and Eucrates and Letters from Xenocrates to Pheres. Publication of The Temple of Gnidus in Holland.
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1725
1726 1727 1728 1728–31
1731–33
1734 1736–38 1748 1749 1750 1751 1752 1752–54 1754 1753–55 1755
Chronology Reads portions of Treatise on Duties and Discourse on the Motives That Ought to Encourage Us to Undertake the Sciences to the Academy of Bordeaux. Sells his parlementary office (July 7). Birth of his daughter Denise de Montesquieu (January 22). Composes Considerations on the Wealth of Spain. Elected to the French Academy. Extensive travels in Austria, Hungary, Italy, Germany, Holland, and England. Arrives in Amsterdam, October 15, 1729. Arrives in London, November 3, 1729. Becomes a member of the Royal Society of London and a Freemason. Returns to La Brède. Composes Reflections on the Character of Certain Princes, Reflections on Universal Monarchy, and Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and on their Decline. Publication of Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline in Holland. Montesquieu composes Essay on the Causes that Can Affect Minds and Characters. Publication of The Spirit of the Laws in Geneva. Censure of The Spirit of Laws in Jansenist journal, Nouvelles ecclésiastiques (October 9 and 16). Publication of Defense of the Spirit of the Laws (February). The Spirit of Laws placed on Papal Index (November 29). Montesquieu completes Lysimachus, begun in 1731. Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris drafts but does not publish a censure of The Spirit of the Laws. Montesquieu drafts Responses and Explanations Given to the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris. Montesquieu composes Memorandum on the Silence to Impose on the Constitution. Montesquieu composes Essay on Taste for Diderot’s Encyclopédie. Montesquieu dies in Paris (February 10).
Abbreviations
We have used abbreviations for frequently cited primary texts. Unless otherwise noted, references appear in the text as follows: Individual Major Works CR Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline, ed. David Lowenthal (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1999), cited by chapter number. EL Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, L’esprit des lois in Oeuvres complètes de Montesquieu, ed. Roger Caillois (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1949–51), cited by book and chapter number. MT Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, My Thoughts, ed. Henry C. Clark (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2012), cited by entry number. PL Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, Persian Letters, ed. Andrew Kahn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), cited by letter number. SL Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, ed. Anne M. Cohler, Basia C. Miller, and Harold S. Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), cited by book and chapter number. SL-N Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Thomas Nugent (London: Nourse and Vaillant, 1750), cited by book and chapter number. xiii
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List of Abbreviations
Collected Works Nagel Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Oeuvres complètes de Montesquieu, ed. André Masson (Paris: Les Éditions Nagel, 1950–5), cited by volume and page number. OC Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Oeuvres complètes de Montesquieu, ed. Jean Ehrard, Catherine Volpilhac-Auger, et al. (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1998–2008; Lyon and Paris: ENS Éditions and Classiques Garnier, 2010-), cited by volume and page number. Pléiade Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Oeuvres complètes de Montesquieu, ed. Roger Caillois (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1949–51), cited by volume and page number.
1 Montesquieu Life and Letters Paul A. Rahe
There are political writers who merely regurgitate prevailing opinion. There are political writers who refine one of the forms of political discourse dominant in their own time. Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu fits into neither category. Like all of the major political philosophers, he was a man who thought for himself. Montesquieu was born on January 18, 1689 at his mother’s family’s ancestral seat, the Chateau de La Brède, outside Bordeaux. He died in Paris on February 10, 1755. He wrote in and refined the French that he had inherited. While young, he was taught by the schoolmaster in the village of La Brède. As he approached, then entered adolescence, he studied with the Congregation of the Oratory at the College de Juilly some twenty miles outside Paris. And, as a young man, he mastered Roman and French law both as a student at the University of Bordeaux and as a neophyte practitioner in Paris.1 Along the way, Montesquieu read all or nearly all of the Greek and Roman writers of note. And in time he became closely familiar with the works of Machiavelli, Montaigne, Bodin, Hobbes, Pascal, Pierre Nicole, Pufendorf, Algernon Sidney, Locke, and many another writer less well-known today.2 But he was not constrained by any of the “languages” in which their discourse was framed. What he wrote at the end of his life with regard to himself applies with equal force to all thinkers of comparable stature: “I have had new ideas; it has been quite necessary to find new words or to give to old words new meanings” (EL Avertissement de l’auteur).3 If Montesquieu was in any sense “a man of his own time,” it was in two crucial particulars. To begin with, he had a keen interest in the 1
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well-being of the polity to which he belonged and also felt a genuine affection for his fatherland. His exploration of the various forms of government and of their grounding in human psychology; his investigation of the influence exerted on human mores, manners, and laws by these governmental forms; and his study of the impact on all four of geography, climate, commerce, and religion – these were first and foremost the product of a genuine and deep curiosity. He firmly believed that this had liberated him from the “prejudices” of his time and place (EL Préf.), and he hoped that he would be read centuries after he had passed from the scene (MT 1940). But this did not exhaust Montesquieu’s aims, for he wrote also with an eye to the tastes, interests, and particular needs of his contemporaries – above all, his fellow Frenchmen – and his desire for their approval and concern for their welfare (and his own) sometimes operated as a constraint on the thinker in his guise as an author. Montesquieu was tied to his time in one other regard. He was a philosopher of history – though not in the Hegelian sense. His understanding of history was in no way an echo of the notion of salvation history propagated by the Christian church. He was merely a witness to an ongoing and increasingly dramatic transformation. The earth was moving beneath everyone’s feet, and Montesquieu was among the first to notice and reflect on the logic and long-term implications of the tectonic shift then underway.4 Had he lived four hundred years earlier, he might well have been alert to the manner in which the emergence of Christianity and, later, Islam had permanently altered the political playing field, but it is most unlikely that he would have been similarly sensitive to the revolutions that commerce was undergoing and to the larger revolution that these were already then effecting in mores, manners, and politics. Coming of age when he did, he could easily discern that commerce was producing consequences, that they were already profound, and that they would be even more so in the future. What it was that awakened Montesquieu from the dogmatic slumber that is the fate reserved for most men is a mystery. His upbringing was conventional. His years of study in the village of La Brède, at the College de Juilly, at the University of Bordeaux, and in Paris were what one would expect in the case of a young person in his situation. Montesquieu was the first-born son of a French aristocrat and expected to spend his life in service to the crown. He belonged both to the nobility of the sword and to the nobility of the robe. His father had been a soldier; his father’s elder brother was a président à mortier in the Parlement de Guyenne in
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Bordeaux. Expectations weighed heavily on the scion of such a house. He could easily have followed his father’s profession, and he may at some point have considered it. Eventually, he did become a judge – in succession to his uncle, who had no heir. Ordinarily, that would have been the end of it. With minimal effort and a modicum of frugality, Montesquieu might have been a local notable – an exceedingly prosperous vintner, a presiding judge in the provincial parliament, and a member of the nascent Académie de Bordeaux – and all of this he was.5 But he also became a thinker of world-historical importance, and how and why he did so will always be a puzzle. It was undoubtedly important that Montesquieu resided near a port on the Atlantic in a part of France tied up with international trade. That in itself was a liberation. Had he lived deep in the interior, far from the sea and the complex of rivers and canals that linked parts of the kingdom with it,6 he might well have been less alert to the larger world of trade, and he might have settled into a more parochial outlook. It was also crucial that his father had a substantial library, which filled the largest room in the family castle. Much of what he did not learn from the merchants who flocked to Bordeaux from distant parts, he could learn from the books he had inherited and from those that he acquired. But this is insufficient as an explanation for his emergence on the world stage. There was one event – which took place when Montesquieu was in his sixteenth year – that helps explain this development, for it profoundly upended the young man. His country had for centuries been the leading power on the European continent. It had sometimes been checked. But it had not decisively lost a major battle in a century and a half; and, in the seventeenth century, as the War of the Spanish Succession was being fought, Louis XIV, the Sun King of France, seemed to be on the verge of establishing a universal monarchy in Europe and the New World. “Before the battle of Blenheim,” Montesquieu later remembered, France had risen to a time of greatness (grandeur) that one regarded as immutable, although the country was then on the verge of decline (touche au moment de la décadence). It is certain that the league [of those allied against Louis XIV] was in despair. That day at Blenheim, we lost the confidence that we had acquired by thirty years of victories. . .Whole battalions gave themselves up as prisoners of war; we regretted their being alive, as we would have regretted their deaths. It seemed as if God, who wished to set limits to empires, had given to the French this capacity to acquire, along with this capacity to lose, this fire that nothing resists, along with this despondency (déscouragement) that makes one ready to submit to anything. (MT 1306)
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Of course, Marlborough’s victory might well have been dismissed as a fluke. But he managed the like thrice again – at Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet – and he did so in the years, stretching from 1706 to 1709, when Montesquieu was coming of age.7 By that time, it was obvious, even to the unsuspecting glance, that there was something very much amiss, and that the dream fostered by the Sun King regarding the destiny of France was unsustainable. After the great king died at the beginning of September 1715, the extent of the fiscal crisis produced by his wars became evident. The Scottish financial wizard John Law was brought in a few years later to address the matter; and, by dint of financial legerdemain and an illadvised paper money scheme, he managed to produce a financial bubble followed by an economic collapse that greatly increased the national debt and reduced the value of French banknotes to less than the paper on which they had been printed.8 At this stage, everyone was forced to concede that France was bankrupt, and the discerning in their number recognized that this was true in more ways than one. The monarchy did not command resources sufficient for the successful pursuit of the course set out for it by Louis, and it knew no other path. It was this gradually dawning realization that eventually gave Montesquieu’s innate curiosity a focus. That curiosity knew no bounds. It is not surprising that while studying in Bordeaux and while residing in Paris, Montesquieu began jotting down in a set of quartos extensive notes on the law.9 He had a profession to master. But it is revealing that, while in Paris between 1709 and 1713, he began a series of commonplace books that he called his Spicilège and named another set of volumes Geographica. In the two he summarized lectures, papers, and conversations touching on a vast array of topics: such as the eulogies delivered at the Académie des Sciences and the Académie des Inscriptions; a then unpublished scientific paper that had come into his hands; a controversial critique of a Jesuit’s history of France; a conversation he conducted with a Chinese Christian visitor to Paris concerning the mores, manners, and practices of his native land; and the acerbic table talk of a Neapolitan scholar concerning the ancient Greek historians, the canonical books of the Old Testament, the papal bull Unigentius, and the Jesuit order.10 When he returned to La Brède after his father’s death in November 1713, Montesquieu took up his patrimony and his responsibilities as a proprietor. Sixteen months later, he married a woman of substance and began fathering children. Thirteen months thereafter, he inherited his
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uncle’s office, which he soon assumed. Much of his time was now spoken for, but he continued his quest to learn. Soon after the foundation of the Académie de Bordeaux, he was invited to join, and in 1716 he became an active participant. He had already composed a little treatise on the idolworship of the ancients, a brief eulogy of Cicero, and a mémoire – addressed to Philippe II, duc d’Orléans, who was serving as regent during the infancy of Louis XIV’s great-grandson Louis XV – suggesting how the government might deal with the crushing debt incurred during the wars conducted by his long-lived uncle the Sun King of France. Now, for the academy of his province, Montesquieu composed and delivered a Dissertation on the Policy of the Romans Regarding Religion deeply indebted to Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy; and at about the same time he drafted a Discourse on Cicero. Moreover, in keeping with the academy’s larger purpose, he dabbled in science, conducting experiments on animals and plants alike and reporting on his findings. In these years, under its auspices, he also announced a great geological project encompassing a history of the earth in ancient and modern times.11 As all of this suggests, Montesquieu might have ended up as a dilettante – a well-to-do, highly intelligent country gentleman with a penchant for studying this and that. He was saved from such a fate when the plight of his native land came once again to preoccupy him. All of his major works were begun as meditations on the causes and consequences of France’s décadence.
The first of these works, a literary masterpiece entitled Persian Letters, was ushered into print under the Regency shortly after the collapse of John Law’s “system.” It was a jeu d’esprit – playful, satirical, and, at its core, profoundly serious and even philosophical; and it took the form of an epistolary novel. It was founded upon an attractive and intriguing conceit: to wit, that in 1711 two prominent Persians – Usbek and his younger friend Rica – had left their native land in search of safety as well as wisdom. They journeyed to Europe, sojourned in and near Paris until late in 1720, and over the years regularly exchanged letters with friends, eunuchs, and wives back home as well as with one another and with two Turkish acquaintances (one of whom traveled west in their wake). The letters bring to life two worlds: the one these two travelers had left behind (above all, the harem of Usbek) and the one to which they journeyed (above all, France). From the outset, the anonymous editor of this
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correspondence invites his fellow Europeans to reflect on the despotic east and to come to see themselves as outsiders might see them. The book, which appeared in Amsterdam under a false imprint, enjoyed a grand succès de scandale.12 Although its author was not identified on the title page, his identity was soon bruited about, and it made him in short order a celebrity throughout Europe. In Paris, he was almost immediately the talk of the town, his notoriety catapulted him into high society, and after a brief interval admiration for his literary achievement rendered him eligible for election to the Académie Française. The work’s irreverent character also induced André Hércule Cardinal de Fleury, the chief minister of Louis XV from 1726 to 1743, to hesitate before having the king confirm his election.13 Fleury had reason for his misgivings. The book was no less controversial for its treatment of politics than for its handling of religion, and it was as entertaining as it was subversive. The harem narrative gave it a structure, the satirical description of France provided by Usbek and Rica gave it purchase, and its mischievous depiction of French politics and religion rendered it delicious. Had Montesquieu merely mocked the vanity of his compatriots and the sacral character of the monarchy, as he did to great effect (LP 22.24–42/24),14 he might have elicited more amusement than ire. But there was more than mere mockery in the book. There was also analysis, and it was blunt. By means of it, Montesquieu raised a question concerning the likely future of France that he wanted his contemporaries to ponder. He achieved this by having Usbek debunk monarchy itself as “a violent State” with a perpetual tendency to “degenerate into a Despotism, or a Republic.” It was not, Usbek contended, possible for “power” to be “shared equally between the People and the Prince.” He regarded “the equilibrium” as “too difficult to maintain.” He expressed the view that “it is necessary that power diminish on one side while it grows on the other.” In this struggle, moreover, the prince, as “head of the Armies,” ordinarily had “the advantage.” That monarchy could long subsist, Usbek judged implausible (LP 99.9–16/102). This Montesquieu intimated in another fashion as well. In his depiction of the relations between Usbek and the harem that he had left behind in Ispahan, some among his contemporaries and friends recognized an elaborate burlesque of the French court with obsequious prelates, priests, and ministers represented as eunuchs who have exchanged a servitude of obedience for a servitude of command, and with fawning courtiers of both sexes parodied as concubines – all professing a love for and devotion
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to their master, all desperate for his favor, and all obsessed with outmaneuvering one another by way of manipulating the despot they served.15 Some may even have discerned in Montesquieu’s narrative of the chief eunuch’s ultimately successful campaign for the acquisition of tyrannical power, an account of the collapse of the system of government by councils, called polysynodie, which had been established by the Regent after Louis XIV’s demise, and a depiction of the rise to pre-eminence of his chief minister, Guillaume Cardinal Dubois, Archbishop of Cambrai. In a letter to the author, written not long after the appearance of Montesquieu’s book, one such friend knowingly referred to this very minister on the occasion of his death as “the grand vizier” of France.16 Elsewhere, Montesquieu had Usbek and Rica comment on the decline of the parlements (LP 89.13–23/92, 134/140), describe in unflattering terms the operation of the court at Versailles (LP 22/24, 35/37, 122.20–30/127), depict the manner in which favor and the machinations of adulterous women consistently trump merit in the making of royal appointments (cf. LP 35/37, 86.9–16 /88, 104 /107, with 87.42–49/89), touch on the prominent status accorded tax farmers (LP 46.33–45/48, 95/ 98), and ponder the moral and political consequences of the speculation spawned by John Law’s financial prestidigitation (LP 126.9–23/132, 129.8–44 /135, 132.1–2, 22–41 /138, 136.43–105/142). It is, tellingly, on this last note that Montesquieu brought his narrative of Usbek’s observations in Paris to an end (LP 138/146). That in subsequent letters he went on to describe in detail the disintegration taking place within Usbek’s harem in Ispahan at this very time and then recounted the rebellion of his favorite wife, Roxane (LP 139–50/147–61), is more telling yet – for, among other things, the harem is, as we have seen, a parody of the court at Versailles; and Roxane justifies her fierce assertion of her right to freedom on the basis of an appeal to laws of nature of the very sort that will eventually be deployed in France against the monarchy itself (LP 150/161). Twelve years after the publication of Montesquieu’s epistolary novel, Voltaire wrote that there had never been “anything of greater force and strength than the Persian Letters” and expressed doubts as to whether there was any other “book in which anyone has discussed the government and religion with less tact and solicitude.”17 In later years, when moderation had become his watchword (EL 29.1) and he was inclined to speak of the letters as “juvenilia,” Montesquieu is said to have told some friends that “if he were actually going to put forth those letters now, he would omit certain ones in which the fire of youth had overwhelmed and transported him (l’avait transporté).”18
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In the years stretching from 1713 to 1727, Montesquieu oscillated back and forth between La Brède, where he had duties to attend to, and Paris, the political and intellectual capital of France. In the six years following the appearance of his Persian Letters, he once again gave curiosity full rein, producing a number of minor literary works such as The Temple of Cnidus, Letters from Xenocrates to Pheres, A Dialogue between Sulla and Eucrates, and A Dialogue of Xathippe and Xenocrates; and delivering at meetings of the Bordeaux academy papers entitled Observations Regarding Natural History, On Consideration and Reputation, and A Discourse on the Motives That Ought to Encourage Us to Undertake the Sciences. He started a book entitled A Treatise on Duties, which was deeply indebted to the Stoics, and delivered a paper on the subject at the provincial academy. He drafted the Essay on Taste that would later appear in the Encyclopédie edited by Diderot and D’Alembert, and he composed Considerations on the Wealth of Spain.19 In the years subsequent to his father’s death, while maintaining two households – one at La Brède, the other in Paris – Montesquieu ran up considerable debts; and in 1726 he made a momentous decision. He sold to a local lawyer of some distinction a life-interest in his office as a président à mortier in the Bordeaux parliament, and in April 1728 he set out on a tour of Europe that would last three years.20 Montesquieu had always been sensitive to the diversity of the mores, manners, and laws governing the various nations of the world. He had seen plenty of evidence for this while in Bordeaux and Paris, and it had later been one of the many themes explored in his Persian Letters, Spicilège, and Geographica. But he had never fully confronted that diversity. Now he did so, and in the process he discovered how to make a whole of the many and quite distinct objects of his curiosity. Looking back upon this period at the time of the publication of his magnum opus, some two decades after his departure from France, he reflected on this development in the following fashion: Many times I began this work and many times I abandoned it; a thousand times I dispatched to the winds the pages I had penned; every day I felt the paternal hands drop; I followed my object without forming a design; I knew neither rules nor exceptions; I found the truth only to lose it. But when I discovered my principles (mes principes), everything that I had been seeking came to me; and, in the course of twenty years, I saw my work begin, grow, advance, and come to completion. (EL Préf.)
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While he was on his grand tour, pondering what gave all of this diversity a unity, Montesquieu sojourned in Vienna; then, in Venice, Milan, Turin, Genoa, Florence, Rome, Naples, Bologna, Modena, Parma, and other places in Italy. Thereafter, he visited Munich, Hanover, Utrecht, Amsterdam, and the Hague. And, finally, he settled down in Great Britain. Wherever he went, he dined out on the fame the Persian Letters had afforded him and on the prestige attendant on his election to the Académie Française. He hobbed with the knobs, conversed with the local intellectual luminaries, and became acquainted with an enormous host of notables including Prince Eugene of Savoy, John Law, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the English king George II, his wife Caroline of Anspach, and their young son Frederick as well as Lord Chesterfield, Charles Townshend, the Earl of Pembroke, and Lord and Lady Hervey. All the while, in a set of notebooks he referred to as Mes voyages, he took copious and sometimes caustic notes both on the mores, manners, art, and laws of every place he visited and on what he learned from his conversations both about the locality in which he happened to be and about places further afield, such as Portugal and China, in which his informants had at one time or another resided. It was almost certainly on this tour that Montesquieu first became familiar with the Origines iuris civilis of Gian Vincenzo Gravina and the Istoria civile del regno di Napoli of Pietro Giannone, books that, as exemplars, helped shape his later work. He may even have met their fellow Neapolitan Giambattista Vico, about whose New Science he had heard a great deal.21 England was of particular importance to Montesquieu, and it is regrettable that his Voyage en Angleterre is lost almost in its entirety.22 There he spent roughly half of the time devoted to his tour, and it was arguably there that he settled on his “principles.” For he is reported to have later said that, while “Germany was made to travel in, Italy to sojourn in, . . . and France to live in,” it was “England” that was made “to think in.”23 In the United Kingdom, Montesquieu studied not only the regnant mores and manners but also the political regime. He perused Cato’s Letters, he devoured the English press, and, with some frequency, he worked his way through the numbers of The Craftsman, a journal edited by the Tory freethinker Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, whom he had known in Paris. In the winter and early spring of 1730, he attended meetings of Parliament to observe the debates. He was astounded when the maneuvers taking place in the House of Commons and House of Lords eventuated in the passage of a bill curtailing bribery in elections that neither house really wanted.
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It was almost certainly in England that Montesquieu either studied the pioneering work on political economy, A Discourse of Trade, that had been published in 1690 by Nicholas Barbon or listened to conversations echoing the man’s prescient analysis of the obstacles apt to prevent Louis XIV from establishing a universal monarchy on the continent of Europe and his careful examination of the economic and institutional foundations of England’s strength. It was also during his sojourn in Britain that Montesquieu was elected a member of the Royal Society and admitted to the Freemasons.24 The chief practical objective that Montesquieu pursued by way of making his grand tour – a goal articulated repeatedly in letters written both from abroad and after his return to various figures in Paris, including Fleury – was to secure for himself a diplomatic post. This pursuit was, however, doomed. For while circulating among the notables he met, he was outspoken on a variety of issues in a manner most undiplomatic – and while in England, at social gatherings, he compared the government of his native France unfavorably with that of the country he was visiting, and this, when reported back to the authorities in Paris, was fatal to his quest.25 Had he succeeded, he might be remembered today solely as the author of the Persian Letters.
When Montesquieu journeyed back to France in May 1731 and discovered that he was not to receive a diplomatic post, he turned, in frustration, to another pursuit. To La Brède, which he had not visited in four years, he returned; and there for two years he settled down to write – with an eye to achieving by way of his pen what he had hoped to accomplish as a political insider. It was also in these years that Montesquieu began energetically jotting down his passing observations in a new series of notebooks he called Mes pensées.26 Montesquieu’s immediate objective was to refine and deepen the thinking of Nicholas Barbon by way of producing a triptych made up of three essays: the first, a study of Rome’s rise to imperial grandeur and its establishment of what he called a “universal monarchy”; the second, an exploration of the reasons why, after the fall of Rome, no one in Europe was able to duplicate this feat; and the third, a description of the peculiar form of government found in England and an account of its success in articulating an alternative grand strategy that eschewed expansionism on the continent of Europe and aimed, instead, at promoting England’s
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commerce, ruling the sea, and defending the British Isles. His purpose was to persuade his compatriots to learn what they could from the English example and to ponder how they might adapt their institutions and French policy to the constraints attendant on the environment produced in Europe by the rise of Christianity and the massive expansion in commerce that characterized his own time.27 Montesquieu managed to compose a brief disquisition on the second of these two topics, his Reflections on Universal Monarchy in Europe, wherein he discreetly made mention of the battles at Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet; and he made a start on the third study he had in mind. But he did not at this time finish the latter account – in part, perhaps, because he came to think it impolitic to combine a critique of the policy of Louis XIV with a eulogy of England’s government and its grand strategy, and almost surely for another reason as well. Rome had long loomed large in Montesquieu’s imagination. He had written disquisitions on Roman religious policy and on Cicero for the Académie de Bordeaux. When he sat down to write a brief account of Rome’s establishment of a universal monarchy and of its ultimate dissolution, he lost control, as he later acknowledged,28 and he produced a book of some length, not an elegant little essay focused on a single question. For the triptych to be a success as such, he would have had to balance this with something of comparable length and scope on England, and this he may not at this time have been ready to do. So, Montesquieu set aside what he had written on the English form of government, and he sent his Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline and his Reflections on Universal Monarchy in Europe off to his publisher in Amsterdam so that the type could be set. Later, in April 1734, while he was reviewing what we might be tempted to call the galleys, an event took place that caused him to change his plans and cut from the projected volume the latter of these two works. In August 1733, Voltaire had published in London in an English translation a set of letters describing the British; assessing their literature; praising their policy concerning religion, the form of government they had adopted, and their commercial policy; and disparaging France’s handling of these matters. In 1734, when the original French version, along with an additional letter critical of Pascal, appeared in a clandestine edition, a lettre de cachet was issued ordering Voltaire’s incarceration. In the interim, his printer was arrested, the remaining copies of his book were
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confiscated, and the parlement de Paris denounced the work and ordered the public hangman to burn it. It was Voltaire’s fate that induced Montesquieu to consign his Reflections on Universal Monarchy in Europe to his files, to remove all reference to universal monarchy from his Considerations on the Romans, and to publish the latter work in a stand-alone volume. Censorship had been lax under the Regency in 1721 when Montesquieu published his Persian Letters. It was vigorously enforced in 1734 under Fleury, and it was no longer safe for a writer to explore the defective character of the French monarchy and the futility of the grand strategy that it had adopted.
’ Montesquieu’s little book on Rome sold well. Four editions appeared in 1734. It was translated into English and published in three separate editions that year, and it appeared in Italian in 1735. Moreover, by 1749, eight more editions had been issued in French. As a publishing effort, however, it did not compare with the book that would follow it fourteen years later.29 In the years subsequent to the completion of his little book on Rome, Montesquieu had returned to his old practice, shuttling back and forth between La Brède and Paris, managing his estates, conducting scientific experiments, and delivering papers on an enormous variety of subjects at the academy in Bordeaux, on the one hand, and attending salons and meetings of the French academy in Paris, composing minor literary works and learned essays, and sketching out a history of France, on the other. All the while, although he had trouble with his eyesight, he was laboring on the last and most important of his major works,30 an immense book wherein he laid out a comprehensive political science designed to provide his readers with an understanding of the range of political possibilities open to man and with an understanding of the constraints imposed on human agency by geography, climate, religion, commerce, and inherited mores, manners, and laws. Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws was by no means a value-free assessment of the available options. Montesquieu shared the conviction of Hobbes and Locke that security is the chief end of government, and he refined their understanding by emphasizing the psychological dimension. In judging the various forms of government, however, Montesquieu eschewed partisanship. Despotism he regarded as a horror, to be sure;31
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and, after visiting Venice, he did not have a much higher opinion of aristocratic republics. The latter form of government with its predilection for entertaining anonymous accusations he found hardly less inimical to individual security and the conviction that one is secure than the former (EL 2.3, 3.4, 5.8, 7.3, 8.5). But his treatment of democratic and monarchical governments, as well as the peculiar “republic in the guise of a monarchy” that he had studied while in England (EL 5.19), was balanced and impartial – appreciative and critical at the same time – so much so, in fact, that there has long been a great deal of debate among readers as to which of the three he preferred.32 It nonetheless seems clear that his admiration for republicanism on the ancient model, with its dependence on an all-encompassing political “virtue,”33 was tempered and that he harbored misgivings of two sorts. He thought the patriotism and single-minded devotion to the public good constituting that virtue a species of fanaticism and zealotry incompatible with the true ends of government – individual security and the tranquility of spirit that arises from the conviction that one is, in fact, secure (EL 11.2–4, 6; 12.1–2). And he regarded that single-minded publicspiritedness as an anachronism that could not be duplicated in postpagan times thanks to the sway of Christianity with its universalism and its subordination of life in the political communities of this world to life in the world to come (EL 4.4). The rival regimes that remained viable in these circumstances and that deserved careful consideration were monarchy on the European model – with its aristocracy, its intermediary powers, its honorific culture, and its quasi-independent tribunals – and the peculiar species of commercial republicanism that had emerged from monarchy in England. In the novel he published under the Regency in 1721, Montesquieu had had a relatively free hand in discussing monarchy in general and the government of his native land. Thirteen years later, Voltaire had learned, to his dismay, that one could no longer speak freely on this subject; and, as we have seen, Montesquieu took note (MT 1462). He had also changed his mind in one particular. Moderation was not the primary aim of the author of the Persian Letters. Cryptic though it might be, the conclusion of that work reads, with its ostentatious embrace of natural rights, like a call for revolution. By way of contrast, in The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu adopts a posture remarkably similar to that assumed in 1789 by his fervent admirer Edmund Burke, intimating that rupture and a radical break with the past is likely to inspire fear and set a polity on the road to despotism.34 When he embraces liberty as an end and defines it in
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terms of the security attendant on the rule of law and of the tranquility of spirit apt to arise therefrom (EL 11.1–6, 12.1–2), he turns away from revolution and embraces caution, gradualism, and gentle amelioration as a course, and he eschews the notion that, in politics, one should assume that one size fits all. Geography, climate, religion, inherited mores and manners, and legal tradition serve as powerful constraints – while commerce and, in certain places, the liberation of women from male domination tend gently to loosen bonds.35 In consequence, when, in his Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu takes up the theme that had preoccupied him when he was composing his first two major works and once again treats European monarchy, he tends to tiptoe around the subject – to give praise where, he thinks, praise is due and to tone down or partially conceal any criticism he thinks apt. He distinguishes sharply between this species of one-man rule and despotism, lauding the former for the manner in which the honorific culture produced by its aristocratic structure acts as a constraint on royal arbitrariness, nourishes the rule of law,36 and gives rise to a mindset of nonchalance oblivious to the insecurity that bedevils human life and conducive to a joie de vivre and a tranquility of spirit (EL 9.7; 11.7; 19.5–6, 8–9). At the same time, without issuing a word of condemnation, he makes it perfectly clear that the serried ranks characterizing European monarchy are artificial; he boldly asserts that the culture of honor to which this hierarchical structure gives rise is grounded in “prejudice” and is false, arbitrary, whimsical, and philosophically indefensible (EL 3.5–7; 4.2; 24.6); and he lets his readers see that the distinctions on which this culture insists are unjust and contrary to natural right, which asserts the natural equality of all men (EL 1.2–3; 8.3; 15.1, 7, 9; 17.5). He also induces his readers to ponder whether the monarchy in France is not, in fact, drifting in the direction of despotism (EL 8.6–8, 13.20). The savage critique of monarchy articulated in the Persian Letters is there to be excavated from The Spirit of the Laws – and the fact that, at the end of his life, while preparing what was to be the posthumous edition of the former work, Montesquieu chose to slightly tone down a letter or two but not to cut out a single one suggests that, although he regarded some of the letters as impolitic and perhaps even hyperbolic, he never ceased to believe that in the criticism of monarchy that he had by various means suggested therein he had hit on the truth.37 In his Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu had one criticism to make of European monarchy that had not appeared in his Persian Letters and that had not been fully articulated in his Reflections on Universal Monarchy in
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Europe. In the interim between 1733 and 1748, he had come to think monarchy an anachronism doomed to destruction. Its aim, as he tells us in his magnum opus, is glory; and this, he makes clear, can be attained only in a deplorable fashion through success in war (EL 5.19; 9.2, 7; 10.2; 11.5, 7; 13.1, 17; 20.22). In a sense, then, monarchy is at odds with itself. For success of the sort sought, were it to reach completion and eventuate in universal monarchy, would – as he had made clear in sections of his Reflections on Universal Monarchy in Europe that he later inserted into his Spirit of the Laws – be fatal to the monarchy as a monarchy (cf. EL 9.6-7, 10.9, 16; RMU 17). Of course, this may not have mattered. For Montesquieu also thought the establishment of a universal monarchy in Europe virtually impossible. Money he knew to be the sinews of war. The Romans were able to establish a universal monarchy because they could confiscate the land of the peoples they conquered and sell the natives into slavery. Thanks to Christianity, the ius gentium – at least as it was applied within Europe – ruled out such an expedient (RMU 1; EL 9.1, 10.3, 24.3–4). In consequence, wars of conquest tended to produce bankruptcy, which got in the way of future wars of conquest (RMU 1). This was rendered doubly true by the fact that, over time, the world, and Europe in particular, had become ever more commercial (RMU 2, 18, 24; EL 20.23–21.23); that monarchy is incompatible with a full expansion of commerce like that achieved by the Venetians, the Dutch, and the English (EL 5.9; 20.4–5, 7–8, 10–14, 21–22); and that war disrupts the commerce of the powers involved and contributes in this way to their impoverishment (RMU 2, 18, 24).38 Montesquieu entertained grave misgivings regarding England as well. He had no doubt that, if England was a better place in which to think, France was a better place in which to live. He was firmly persuaded that England did a better job than France in securing the rule of law and what he called “liberty in relation to the constitution” (EL 6.17; 11.4, 6–7; 12.19; 26.20), but he intimates that monarchy, as it existed in France, did a better job in promoting the tranquility of spirit that constitutes “liberty in relation to the citizen.”39 Moreover, mindful that the parliament in England had eliminated that monarchy’s intermediary powers and stood unopposed, he worried that, if for some reason the English were ever to lose the very real liberty they did possess, they would end up as one of the most enslaved peoples on earth (EL 2.4). All of this notwithstanding, Montesquieu shared Barbon’s conviction that, in the increasingly commercial world of his own time, a “democracy” or “republic based on commerce” (EL 5.6; 4.20.4–6, 10,
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17; 21.7) – such as the English form of government, with its lack of interest in territorial expansion in Europe, its single-minded focus on the rule of law and commercial prosperity, and its fierce love of liberty – would prove to be more viable than an expansionist monarchy on the French model (EL 19.27).40 He asserts, moreover, that the English are free from “destructive prejudices,” and he makes it easy for his readers to recognize that the English form of government better honors the natural equality of man (EL 19.27). If he did not think that France could and should slavishly imitate England, he certainly thought that France was in deep trouble and that his countrymen had an enormous amount to learn from contemplating the English achievement, and he hoped that they might improve on it in a fashion consistent with their inherited mores, manners, and laws. Had it not been for the War of the Austrian Succession, which pitted England against France, Montesquieu would have dedicated his great book to Fredrick, the prince of Wales (MT 1860).41
’ The Spirit of the Laws appeared in the late fall of 1748. Montesquieu died a bit more than six years later. In the interim, he divided his time between accepting the accolades conferred on him and defending the book that occasioned these accolades. In it, he had offended both the Jesuits and the Jansenists, and they took aim not only at his treatment of the Catholic church and the Christian religion more generally but also at the critique of monarchy visible just below the surface of his text.42 Montesquieu wrote an elegant and witty Defense of the Spirit of the Laws,43 his admirers published essays and books praising his magnum opus, and others in their number, working inside the ecclesiastical hierarchy, labored valiantly on his behalf, but they did not manage to stem the tide. When the book was placed on the Index librorum prohibitorum at Rome and later condemned by the faculty of the Sorbonne, Montesquieu was understandably dismayed. But he could take solace from the fact that, by this time, the work was celebrated in England, in Scotland, and in every corner of the continent.44 Had he lived on, however, to witness the decades separating the publication of The Spirit of the Laws from the outbreak of the French Revolution, Montesquieu would have been appalled. Implicit in that work was a call for a gentle, gradual, unobtrusive but profound transformation of France’s monarchy. What happened was the opposite – a
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tightening of monarchical authority and wars, inspired by ambition and the longing for glory, that France could not properly fund – and the consequence was what Montesquieu had come to fear the most: a revolution not unlike the one staged in Usbek’s harem in Ispahan by his favorite wife Roxane culminating in the establishment of a despotism.
Notes 1 See Shackleton, Montesquieu, 1–13. 2 His library tells the tale: See Desgraves and Volpilhac-Auger, Catalogue de la bibliothèque. 3 Except where otherwise indicated, translations are my own. 4 See Rahe, “Was Montesquieu a Philosopher of History?” 71–86. 5 See Shackleton, Montesquieu, 13–20. 6 See Fox, History in Geographical Perspective. 7 See Churchill, Marlborough, 1:711–868; 2:95–627. 8 See Jones, The Great Nation, 1–72, with Murphy, John Law. 9 For a critical edition of these quartos with an introduction and detailed notes, see OC 11–12. 10 Shackleton, Montesquieu, 8–13. For a critical edition of the notebooks mentioned along with introductions and detailed notes, see OC 13 and 16. 11 See Shackleton, Montesquieu, 20–6. For critical editions of the works mentioned here and others written at this time along with introductions and detailed notes, see OC 8:1–257. Many of Montesquieu’s minor works have recently become available in an English translation: Montesquieu, Montesquieu: Discourses, Dissertations, and Dialogues, ed. Carrithers and Stewart. 12 See Courtney, “Bibliographie II. Editions,” in OC 1:84–131, which should be read in conjunction with Mass, Literatur und Zensur, 139–271. 13 See Shackleton, Montesquieu, 46–67, 85–9. 14 See Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV, 1–133 (esp. 125–33); then, consider Merrick, The Desacralization of the French Monarchy. 15 See Schaub, Erotic Liberalism, passim (esp. 16–54, 71–92). 16 See Letter from Denis Dodart on August 11, 1723, in OC 18:51–2 (at 51). In this connection, note MT 739, 783. 17 See Letter from Voltaire to Pierre Robert Le Cornier de Cideville on July 26, 1733, in The Complete Works of Voltaire, 86:365. 18 See Letter to l’abbé Ottaviano, comte di Guasco, on October 4, 1752 in Nagel 3:1438–42 (at 1441), with particular reference to ibid., 1441, n. d, which was added by Guasco. 19 For critical editions of these and other works composed in these years as well as introductions and detailed notes, see OC 8:259–623, 9:1–15. 20 See Shackleton, Montesquieu, 46–89. 21 Ibid., 90–116. For a critical edition of what survives of Montesquieu’s Voyages with introductions and detailed notes, see OC 10:1–487.
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22 All that we have are the handful of pages making up what is called his Notes sur L’Angleterre. See OC 10:489–506. 23 See Le Rond d’Alembert, “Éloge de M. le President de Montesquieu,” vii. 24 See Shackleton, Montesquieu, 117–45. Cf. Barbon, A Discourse of Trade, reprinted in Commerce, Culture and Liberty, 66–99, which is not to be found in the library at La Brède, with EL 19.27, and see Rahe, “Carthage Can Now Defeat Rome,” 53–66. 25 See Shackleton, Montesquieu, 91, 122–3, 154. In this connection, see also MP 1466, and Vantuch, “Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle,” 177–221. 26 Mes Pensées can be found in Nagel, 2:1–677. For a corrected version with notes, see Montesquieu, Pensées, Le Spicilège. 27 Here and in the two paragraphs following, I summarize the argument I spelled out at length elsewhere in Rahe, “The Book That Never Was,” 43–89, and Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty, 3–60. 28 See Montesquieu, “Project de préface,” in OC 2:315–16. 29 See Courtney, “Introduction à Considérations,” in OC 2:48–85, and Courtney, “L’Esprit des lois,” 66–96. 30 See Shackleton, Montesquieu, 170–355. For critical editions of the minor works produced during Montesquieu’s travels and in the twenty-seven years following, along with introductions and detailed notes, see OC 9:17–304. 31 See EL 2.5; 3.8–10; 4.3; 5.13–18; 6.1–2, 5–9, 15, 17, 19; 7.4, 11, 13; 8.10, 19; 9.4; 11.5. 32 Montesquieu supposed a partisan of the republics of virtue: Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty, 280–1, n. 40. A partisan of monarchy: ibid., 320, nn. 1–2. A partisan of the English form of government: Fletcher, Montesquieu and English Politics; Stewart, “Montesquieu vu par les Anglais,” 339–48; and Spurlin, Montesquieu in America. 33 See EL 4.5–8; 5.2–7, 19; 6.1–4, 8, 11, 14–15, 21; 7.1–2, 4, 8–16; 8.2–5, 11–14, 16. 34 See EL 3.19, 2–6 with Courtney, “Montesquieu and Revolution,” 41–61. See also Courtney, Montesquieu and Burke. 35 See Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty, 147–85, and Callanan, Montesquieu’s Liberalism. 36 See EL 2.4; 3.1–2, 5–7, 10; 4.2; 5.9–12, 19; 6.1–2, 5–10, 21; 7.1, 4–5, 8–9; 8.6–9, 17–18, 20; 11.7–11. 37 In this connection, see Kra, “La Défense des Lettres persanes,” and Schneider, “Les Lettres persanes,” 18–49. 38 See Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty, 186–211 (with 31–45). For a view opposed to my own, cf. Spector, Montesquieu: Pouvoirs, richesses et sociétés, 145–287. 39 Cf. EL 11.7 and 19.5–6, 8–9, with the penultimate paragraph of 11.6 and with 14.12–13; then consider the emphasis placed on English inquiétude in EL 19.26–27 with an eye to EL 12.1–2. 40 See also EL 3.3; 20.4, 7–8, 10–14, 21–3; 21.7, 20–1; 22.2, 18; 23.29, which should be read in light of RMU 11. Note also MP 645.
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41 See Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty, 86–143, 224–38. Cf. Pangle, Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism, who gives far less weight to Montesquieu’s misgivings than I do. 42 For the details, see Lynch, “Montesquieu and the Ecclesiastical Critics,” 487–500. See also Beyer, “Montesquieu et la censure religieuse,” 105–31. For a list of the passages singled out for criticism, see Carrithers, “Jansenist and Jesuit Censures,” 467–8. See also Lauriol, “La Condamnation de L’Esprit des lois,” 91–114. 43 For a critical edition of the text with an introduction and detailed notes, see OC 7:39–113. 44 See Shackleton, Montesquieu, 356–99.
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2 Persian Letters Catherine Volpilhac-Auger
Persian Letters (Lettres persanes) is Montesquieu’s first published work, the one that rescued him from the uninteresting cases and wearying procedures of the Bordeaux parlement, to orient him toward writing and the life of the mind.1 But it is also the work that inaugurated the age of Enlightenment. The realm of Louis XV still clung to the old world while trying its hand, under the impulse of the Regent who exercised power during the king’s minority (1715–23), at a hitherto unknown freedom. Despite this, the boldness of a pitiless critique manifests itself in Persian Letters as a critique of institutions, of the state of France, and of Christianity, and of all countries dominated by one religion. The book also imparted a tone of joyous elation, of mordant irony. Already Montesquieu, the notable native of Bordeaux, the parlementary magistrate entrusted with the dispensation of justice, had understood that it was less important to instruct (especially by delivering a learned lesson) than to provoke reflection. To incite the reader to see himself in the cruel mirror one places before him, one must also entertain him. The immense success of Persian Letters in Europe, sustained from 1721 on, was to prove him right. The credit, therefore, goes to Montesquieu, thirteen years before Voltaire’s Philosophical Letters, twenty-six years before Zadig, and nearly thirty years before the first impact of works by Diderot and Rousseau, for opening the age of Enlightenment and launching a movement, not to be reined in, of a critical spirit that led to the definition of new ideals of freedom and happiness. The Renaissance had laid claim to a similar critical spirit and taken a stance that broke with the previous era. It, too, gave one the duty to liberate the mind, but never had the attacks extended to all facets of society, engaging the readers in the joyful 20
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saraband that makes them aware of the vanity of their values and offers them new ones. In July 1720, Montesquieu purchased the ten volumes of Jean Chardin’s Voyages en Perse (1711).2 The project, which he had no doubt been nursing for a long time, began to assume clarity and thus find its form. He published anonymously (for greater freedom)3 in Amsterdam a fiction modeled after Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy,4 which featured radically foreign characters (practically no Persian had been seen in Paris before 1715, when an ambassador appeared at the court of Louis XIV), in order to juxtapose Europe and the Orient. The principle was to survey the absurdities of institutions near exhaustion, and the absurdities of a society full of contradictions that had undergone a series of shocks. Another factor was surely the memory of his relations with the Chinese man Hoang or Wang whom Montesquieu had met in Paris during his stay there between 1709 and 1713. Hoang was the first Chinese person to have lived in Paris, and his ingenuous view of French society, as related in the Spicilège,5 might have provided Montesquieu with the work’s main theme.6 The Persians whom he makes to speak, or rather to write, allow him to implement the procedure that Jean Starobinski has admirably described. The name designates the taboo: By designating “without naming,” by describing things as they are, one eludes the taboo by redefining “their perceptible characteristics” outside any metaphysical or social basis, or by passing for a foreign equivalent; the use of profane vocabulary desacralizes as much as the transfer into another religion.7 To say that “the king of France is old”8 (Louis XIV reigned for seventy-two years, to the age of seventy-seven) is another way of saying that he has no clothes and makes little impression on travelers, especially those who are aware of the archaism of a kingdom which perpetuates customs that have lost their meaning. The tribunal of the Inquisition threatens bad Christians, but “Happy is the man . . . who has always prayed to God with little wooden beads in hand, who wore on his person two pieces of cloth attached to two ribbons, and who has sometimes been to a province called Galicia” (LP 25 [27]). Here we have rosaries (wooden beads) and scapulars (two pieces of cloth), ornaments carried in honor of the Virgin Mary, and the pilgrimage to St. James of Compostela, divested of all spiritual content and reduced to superstitious practices. The most consecrated customs are thus stripped of their prestige and become strange in the foreigner’s eye. The novelistic framework of these 150 letters is supplied by two Persian travelers, Usbek and Rica,9 the former more serious, the latter
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more jocular, whose letters to one another and to others tell the dual story of their travels in the West and the drama that unfolds in the seraglio while they are gone. Usbek has left behind, in his “seraglio” (sérail, a term used in the eighteenth century in preference to “harem”), wives who remain under lock and key while he roams abroad. Disorder will not take long to penetrate this confined space which Usbek vainly tries to govern from Europe. (Letters between France and Persia take six months to reach their destination, and sometimes get lost.) The work ends with the destruction of the seraglio: The wives have deceived Usbek, introducing into their midst men whom the eunuchs discover and put to death before visiting the master’s vengeance on the wives themselves, thus destroying the seraglio. In a reversal which at the time is almost unprecedented in fiction,10 the final letter, written by Roxane, Usbek’s favorite wife who has nevertheless been abandoned like the others, reveals to Usbek and to the reader what they have been unwilling to see: that Roxane has been married by force, and therefore raped, and has nothing but hatred for this husband who imprisons her for his own pleasure. Before she dies, by a suicide that releases her from all constraint and frees her from her condition, she proclaims a right to freedom that goes well beyond individual heroism, and can be interpreted as an essential element of Montesquieu’s thought:11 How could you have thought me credulous enough to imagine that I was on earth only to worship your whims? That while you allow yourself anything, you had the right to frustrate all my desires? No, I may have been able to live in servitude, but I have always been free; I have reformed your laws on those of nature, and my spirit has always maintained its independence. (LP 150 [161])
Whatever the force of this outcry, we cannot necessarily believe Usbek and Rica are genuine fictional characters, of which they have neither the consistency nor the coherence, as can be seen throughout the series of sketches, which in 1721 composes an essay, rather than a novel. Similarly, Usbek’s other wives (Zelis, Fatmé, Zachi, and Zephis), who author seven letters in all to their lord and master, hardly play their role except by opposition to Roxane, in missives that consist in (never verifiable) proclamations of their love and fidelity. In what must be called a novelistic structure rather than a novel, where the correspondents, sometimes no more than recipients of letters, are numerous, it is paradoxically in the eunuchs whose duty it is to guard the women that we find strong individuality, an authentic voice, with a great letter of intimate revelation by their chief, the Great Black Eunuch (LP 9). For the first time in French literature, a Black man speaks out, as a man in no way distinguished from
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other men, even if he is a slave. Dispossessed of his virility, experiencing potency only through the power he exercises over the wives, he reveals a humanity that seemed lost to him. The slave of a system, he makes the women he guards pay for his sufferings: “Although I guard them for another the pleasure of making them obey me gives me an inner joy; when I deprive them of everything, it seems to me it is for me, and I always get an unseen satisfaction from it.”12 In this way a whole system of enslavement reveals itself; to the wives even virtue is forbidden, since they are “happily powerless to fail” (Usbek to Roxane, LP 24 [26]). But Usbek himself, as foreign to his own country as to Europe, is its prisoner.13 He whose satiety has ultimately made him tired of his wives, who finds himself devoid of desire, cannot escape the deadly logic of the seraglio which constrains him to undeviating severity; he cannot fail to punish if he wants to be respected. The Spirit of Law will give substance in a political mode to this system of terror by defining despotism as a distinct form of government in its own right. But the Persian Letters do not concentrate on Persia; they focus above all on France and Europe. If the book was strictly banned in France (which only reinforced its success),14 that was because it attacked the very foundations of the realm, and religion in the first instance, on which Louis XIV, in the piety of his later years, kept a strict eye. In 1685, with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he tried to force the Protestants to convert, which above all prompted them to flee into Europe or to hide their faith (like Montesquieu’s wife, who lived and died a Protestant), and in 1713, by obtaining the bull Unigenitus he sought to eradicate Jansenism, having already condemned a mystical doctrine, Quietism, in 1687. To be sure, since 1715 the Regency had seen morals and the yoke of religion relaxed, but France was still presumed to be very Catholic like her king, and there was no such thing as freedom of conscience. The Persian Letters are particularly virulent on this subject: They are pitiless toward Catholicism (“the pope is an old idol who is worshipped out of habit”), its pretended mysteries, and its dogmas, but also its institutions from which the ecclesiastics benefited, which horrify Montesquieu (LP 27 [29]). He considers the ecclesiastics as indolent parasites, wanting in any spiritual aspiration.15 He thereby denounces the ravages of all religions, beginning naturally with Islam, which justifies polygamy and the imprisonment of women, and is no less rich than Christianity in all kinds of miracles and superstitions. Thus can Rica declare to his correspondent: “You are a Jew, and I am a Mohammadan, which is to say we are both quite credulous” (LP 137 [143]). And what is said about Islam, a “false
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religion” to an eighteenth-century Christian, strangely resembles what is proclaimed by the “true” religion: “The holy religion that the angels brought . . . is defended by its very truth, which has no need of these violent means to sustain itself” (LP 27 [29]). The words are the same for Islam and for Catholicism. The implicit conclusion is clear: Which is the “true” religion, and who the “true” God? Everyone may decide for himself. If Persian Letters had been limited to such attacks, it surely would not have been so appreciated. One of the reasons for its success is its diversity. For example, a denunciation of the prohibition of suicide by Christians (LP 74 [76]) is followed without transition by a long letter that goes back over, in a humoristic mode, the Spanish black legend (LP 75 [78]). This letter is then followed by an observation on the laws of history: “Most legislators have been limited men, whom chance has placed in charge of the others, and have taken account of little but their prejudices and their whims” (LP 76 [129]). The work also reflects recent events such as the abdication of Queen Ulrica Eleanor of Sweden in April 1720 (LP 133 [139]), or again the Spanish plot against the Regent, called the Conspiracy of Cellamare, in 1718, which resulted in the exile of the Duc du Maine, son of Louis XIV and great-uncle of the king, and the imprisonment of his accomplices (LP 121 [126]). In the first case we have “a great example of conjugal affection,” since the queen of Sweden has abdicated her throne in deference to her husband. In the second, Rica says he is “saddened by the fate of this prince”: “even the grandees, for whom my heart is hardened while they are elevated, I love them the minute they fall.” Montesquieu maintains a genuine interest in the men who exercise power, sometimes so badly, and who are so similar to other men in their passions and weaknesses, be they kings or sons of kings. The analysis of the mechanisms and the reality of power will also be at the heart of Montesquieu’s future visits to the Austrian, Italian, or German courts, as well as England, only a few years later (1728–31).16 This diversity will be the founding principle of The Spirit of Law, and for the moment the key to Persian Letters’ success. An uneasiness also feeds the work, perceptible in a series of eleven letters (LP 108–18 [112–22]) that draw from a dissertation Montesquieu had written for the fledgling Academy of Bordeaux, of which he had been a member since 1716. These letters express the fear of seeing the world depopulated by dint of illnesses, natural catastrophes, wars (he constantly evoked the conquest of the New World, which was destroying both America and Africa), bad government, and corruption generally. This
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fear of depopulation was to become a central notion in his work.17 The physical causes were the most visible and most easily denounced, but the moral causes were still more dangerous: First of all, religion, which in some places allowed polygamy and in others forbade divorce, while depriving eunuchs and priests of sexuality altogether, conspires to lead humanity to its doom and turn the Earth into a desert. This is a false idea, it will be said, for the demographic of Europe goes back precisely to the eighteenth century. Yet in France the decade 1710–20 was a period of demographic stagnation. The end of Louis XIV’s reign left the French population exhausted by taxes in this “little ice age” that historians of climate have identified. This pessimism was still to be the basis of Book 23 of The Spirit of Law devoted to the “number of inhabitants.” However, it will then be counterbalanced by the quest for means of favoring fertility. Far from being predestined, Montesquieu indicates that this decline can be countered by behavior and laws. To be sure, Montesquieu will leave behind the received truth that the wealth of nations consists in the number of men (LP 111 [115]) but in 1721, one idea is firmly anchored: Humankind can “rebel” against whatever condemns it, if it can manage to understand it. Persian Letters also offers, in an entirely different mode, a satire of characters in the manner of La Bruyère, mocking coquettish women who refuse to age (LP 50 [52]) or smug men who try to shine in society by practicing their witticisms,18 or again spectators who go to the theatre to be seen and not to attend the show, to the point that Rica thinks the show is played not on the stage but in the audience (LP 26 [28]). The French, curious but superficial, notice Rica only when he is wearing the exotic costume of the Persian (LP 28 [30]), which gives rise to the famous question: “Comment peut-on être Persan?” (“How can one be Persian?”). They are much more interested in fashion, however transient and vain: A woman who leaves Paris to spend six months in the country returns as antique as if she had buried herself there for thirty years. The son fails to recognize the portrait of his mother, so greatly does the costume in which she is portrayed seem foreign to him; he imagines that it is some American woman it represents, or that the painter wanted to express one of his fantasies.19
Yet there is nothing visual to be found in the Persian Letters.20 Montesquieu manages to give the impression that he is describing when in fact he is merely suggesting. The reader is caught in the trap of an elliptical discourse which leads him to imagine, to deduce, and to reflect.
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For the limited number of “characters” or moral types defined by the anthropology of the classical era are substituted figures in movement, sometimes caricatural or even grotesque, sometimes sketched in a single sentence, defined above all by the role that these characters play in society, from the scholar alone in his study to the man of the world, from the nouveau riche to the man who praises times gone by. The moralist tradition is renewed by an irony that was soon to become, thanks to Montesquieu and Voltaire, one of the characteristics of the spirit of the Enlightenment. Such variety, such suppleness of writing, are not artifices but are part of the effect of surprise, and that is the essence of Montesquieu’s art of writing. It is also what makes it possible to include the much more violent evocation of the France of the Regency devastated by the financial crisis. Indeed, the Regent, Philip of Orléans, great-uncle to the king, intent on remedying the financial difficulties of the realm ruined by the wars and the pomp of Louis XIV, had entrusted to the Scotsman John Law the direction of an innovative project. The project was a bank of which the capital was guaranteed by the profits on the stock of the Mississippi Company, and which would replace metal currency with paper money, facilitating exchanges and investments. This was Law’s “System.” The anticipated profits were enormous, and speculation took hold of them, while mistrust of paper money was growing. When the bubble broke in July 1720, there were winners to be found (among whom were the Prince de Conti and the Duc de Bourbon [cousins of the king], dukes, and financiers – in other words, insiders), but also, as in any crisis, losers. The latter included a certain Marivaux, but also friends of Montesquieu and so many others, ruined and in desperate straits. Lettres Persanes denounces those who benefited from the System: I have seen the faith of contracts banished, the most sacred conventions blotted out, all the laws of families overturned. . . . I have seen the sudden birth in every heart of an insatiable thirst for riches. I have seen the formation in a moment of a detestable conspiracy of self-enrichment, not by honest and hard work, but by the ruin of the prince, of the state, and of fellow citizens. I have seen an honest citizen in these unhappy times never go to bed without saying to himself: Today I have ruined a family; I will ruin another tomorrow. (LP 138 [146])
The fall of Law’s System (and perhaps of France) structures the Persian Letters in parallel with the collapse of Usbek’s seraglio:21 French society and Usbek’s family follow the same line, reinforcing the dramatic effect
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that so strongly contrasts with the savory jibes with which the work is strewn. But questions still more grave are also raised, of a metaphysical and religious order. For example, what is uncleanliness, that notion that is so important for both Muslim and Jewish religions? Were there not other worlds before ours?22 If there were no God, would there still be justice? As for God, if triangles had one, he would be three-sided (LP 81 [83], 55 [57]). The idea of a triangle God was not new but came from the correspondence of Spinoza, and was already present in Montesquieu’s Notes on Cicero, which date from about 1715.23 To question the existence of God and to suggest that men make him in their own image, is to introduce a doubt – not to plead in favor of atheism, which was repugnant to Montesquieu,24 but to stimulate his readers to think freely, as a philosopher. This too is the lesson of the Notes on Cicero: As it is impossible to be both a philosopher and a theologian at the same time, because what is according to the natural order has no relation to what is according to the order of grace, I have often put myself in the place of the pagan whose works I was reading, determined to fall at once back into line and leave those opinions at the door to my study.25
Books 24 and 25 of The Spirit of Law and the Defense of The Spirit of Law in 1750 would further affirm this distinction between “philosopher” and “theologian” in the most solemn manner as one of the fundamental principles of Montesquieu’s philosophy – although it is the subject of a major clash with the theologians.26 Montesquieu celebrates the initiator of this primacy of reason, the indispensable condition for the life of the mind, in Descartes, who elicits the admiration of the Persians for Europeans: You could not believe how far this guide has led them. They have sorted out the chaos and have explained by simple mechanics the order of divine architecture. The author of nature has given movement to matter: it took no more to produce this prodigious variety of effects that we see in the universe . . . laws that are general, immutable, and eternal, which are observed without any exception, with an order, a regularity and infinite promptitude in the immensity of space. (LP 94 [97])
In 1721 Newton was still unknown in France, and what Montesquieu takes from Descartes above all is not a physical theory, but a manner of reasoning.27 We are thus far from the “frivolous” work that the nineteenth century more or less appreciated.28 In Persian Letters Montesquieu fully asserts
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and commits himself, and the links to the ensemble of his works are innumerable. To be sure, all his ideas are not fixed, and in The Spirit of Law he was to define fundamental notions like honor on other bases, or affirm his unshakable confidence in the parlements as ramparts against creeping despotism, whereas in 1721, these institutions appeared to be emptied of their meaning.29 Later, he was to temper his most mordant attacks on religion, for his tendency toward moderation would lead him to prefer a different strategy consisting of drawing readers onto his own terrain and thus making them share his convictions. But on the principles, he was never to bend. This we see when he prepares corrections for a new edition of Persian Letters after The Spirit of Law had been completed. He was hard at it between 1751 and 1754 but did not have time to apply the final touches before his death in February 1755. On his deathbed, a Jesuit, sent by his superiors who want to answer to the pope for the Christian end of such a dangerous author,30 intends at all costs to make off with the new edition draft. Montesquieu, who detests Jesuits and knows too well what they might do with his papers, defends himself devilishly and entrusts them to two of his influential women friends who are not about to be impressed by clerics.31 What did they contain that was so precious? Nothing, indeed, that contradicted the audacity of 1721 but simply attenuations of the form, never of the substance. They include, besides numerous corrections of a stylistic order,32 the addition of entire sentences or paragraphs, of a postface, “Some reflections on the Persian Letters,” and eleven supplementary letters.33 Thus we come to 161 letters: To the last thirteen letters five new ones are added; the outbreak of violence in the seraglio is thereby more developed, and the voice of the wives amplified. But Montesquieu held firm on his philosophical convictions, despite the fact that since 1751 he had borne the attacks of a certain abbé Gaultier, a fervent Jansenist, who had been incited by The Spirit of Law in 1748 to reread the Persian Letters, in which he saw the seeds of all the pernicious ideas that were developed subsequently.34 Witness “Persian Letters” convicted for impiety (1751), in which Gaultier attempted to make explicit what was in his eyes Montesquieu’s essential intention – to deride or criticize the Christian religion: Another artifice: The author has the Persian speak. If the Persian utters some impiety, you say: He is a Persian who reasons according to the principles, and sometimes also against the principles, of his sect, in which a Christian seems to take little interest! But those who have some experience of the world, those who know in how many guises impiety has cloaked itself in the last thirty years to
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multiply and extend itself, have no need to be told that the Persian who speaks is a very well-known Frenchman who puts into the mouth of a Persian what he himself, a Frenchman, thinks on religious matters.35
In his notebooks, Montesquieu takes pains, by underscoring the novelistic part of the work, to disarm the attack, as “Some reflections” argues: Nothing found more favor in the Persian Letters than to discover in them, unexpectedly, a sort of novel. One sees the beginning, the development, and the end; the various characters are placed in a chain that connects them. As their stay in Europe lengthens, the ways of this part of the world assume in their minds a less wondrous and less bizarre appearance, and they are more or less struck by that bizarreness and that wonder in function of the difference of their characters. Elsewhere, disorder mounts in the seraglio in Asia in proportion to the length of Usbek’s absence, in other words as the ire increases and love diminishes.
Moreover, these sorts of novels succeed ordinarily because one gives his own account of his present situation, which makes the reader feel the passions better than all the relations that one could make about them. Such insistence on the work’s fictional character, but also on the naïveté of the Persian vision – in French, persan (“Persian”) is pronounced like the adjective perçant (“penetrating”) – doubtless owes much to the abbé Gaultier’s accusation: That is what is called deflecting attention. But as Schneider points out, with respect to the hot subjects at the heart of Gaultier’s precise criticisms, if Montesquieu avoids certain formulations that might be too abrupt, he modifies nothing bearing on the essentials: the necessity of toleration, the condition of priests, the clamor for divorce, etc.36 So it is with suicide, which Usbek claimed as the inalienable right to put an end to unbearable sufferings.37 He even deemed its prohibition a simple effect of human arrogance; to him death is but the separation of the soul from the body that inscribes the latter in the general movement of matter.38 On this subject, which we can call emblematic (engaging religious thought and civil law, and raising the question of natural law), especially since it is incarnated in Roxane with incomparable force, Montesquieu is very far from retreating. He prepared an addition to letter 74 (76) of which he wrote five successive versions. Comparing them allows us to follow his hesitations. First tempted to temper the audacity of his thought by having Usbek refer to “paradoxes” as if he regretted them, he ultimately modified them in no significant way. But he added Supplementary Letter three (77), which is a genuine masterpiece.39 It adopts the language of the most ethereal spirituality, which has sometimes made it possible to see in it a balanced response to the destructive
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arguments of the preceding letter. But what it says is entirely different: “[I]t seems to me that, for a true Muslim, misfortunes are less punishments than warnings. Days that incline us to expiate offenses are most precious. It is times of prosperities that should be shortened.” Stated otherwise, one might say that if a man suffers in an intolerable way, that is because he has previously been too happy. Human life ought to be devoted to suffering, to expiating sins. This is a fine perspective, wholly Christian in substance. The reasons for the ban, on the other hand, are fragile. The same letter is content to assert that the prohibition of suicide could be either a religious or a civil law – in other words not a law with character of necessity: “If a being is composed of two beings, and the necessity of preserving their union is more a sign of submission to the creator’s commands, it could be made a religious law. If that necessity of preserving the union is a better warrant of the act of men, it could be made a civil law.” It is therefore an arbitrary form which in the final analysis is the basis for the prohibition on suicide. In view of this, can one conclude that Montesquieu retreats in the face of abbé Gaultier’s intransigence and the malaise of all his critics imbued with Christian thought? In 1758, the posthumous edition of Montesquieu works, composed under the aegis of his son Jean-Baptiste de Secondat, included a new edition of Persian Letters, based on the same notebooks of corrections, which until 200440 was the source of all editions of the work. Hence, inattentive commentators cite passages or letters not introduced until 1758 as dating from 1721.41 Moreover, the 1758 edition does not always respect the notebooks of corrections, which are sometimes difficult to interpret, and it includes the usual bevy of mistakes that accompany any ancien régime edition.42 Even more importantly, it places the “Some reflections” (cited above) at the beginning, conferring on it a function of preface that it never had. One passage has particularly caught the attention of certain critics: “The author has given himself the advantage of being able to incorporate philosophy, politics and morality into a novel, and to connect it all by a silent and, in a sense, unknown chain.” This “silent chain” (chaîne secrète) has since the mid-twentieth century evoked innumerable interpretations,43 each commentator imagining a new explanation that would give the work its full meaning, previously unknown. This apparent richness is deceiving, for each new publication invalidates the preceding ones, deemed unsatisfying, and pretends finally to reveal the true secret chain. Does this not constitute a major difficulty for the understanding of the work?
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These dozens of articles have in fact obscured the interpretation of Persian Letters above all by failing to relate it to Montesquieu’s thought, and by believing that secret (“inner”) meant “hidden” or “invisible.”44 Montesquieu was not fond of enigmas. On the contrary, his entire philosophy is turned toward the reader, whom he wishes to be active but from whom he never seeks to dissimulate his real intention.45 The chain at the heart of Persian Letters may be seen only in the activity of the mind as the Essay on Taste describes it in detail in the section “On curiosity.” There Montesquieu says, Our mind is made for thinking, in other words for perceiving; so such a being ought to possess curiosity, for as all things are in a chain where each idea precedes another and follows another, one cannot like to see one thing without desiring to see another [. . .], that is why the mind is always looking for new things, and never rests.46
Far from being hidden, the chain is the necessary link that connects things, but also the mind that discovers and enjoys them. This continuity that reinforces the mind’s curiosity and pleasure thereby reinforces the work’s philosophical interest. There is no way the “romance” of the seraglio can be disassociated from the social and moral satire, and religious and metaphysical doubts that are mutually resonant; it is their entirety that constitutes the work’s philosophical lesson, incorporated in the very form Montesquieu gave to his creation.47 Persian Letters shows how much “Montesquieu seems to bring ideas to life,” to cite Madame de Staël.48 He was soon to turn to other subjects; but with Persian Letters he gave himself the means of thinking differently about the world, opening a way that was never to be closed: By writing a work of fiction he became a philosopher; by amusing the reader he raised the most serious questions. With this admixture, he brought the Enlightenment into being. Notes 1 On Montesquieu’s education and his situation in the Bordeaux parlement up to 1726, as well as more precise biographical questions, see Volpilhac-Auger, Montesquieu: Let There Be Enlightenment, 1–77 (chs. 1–3). 2 See “Documentation” and “Les catalogues de libraire” in Volpilhac-Auger, Bibliothèque virtuelle Montesquieu. 3 None of the works he was to publish in his lifetime would bear his name on the title page, but he allowed himself to be designated explicitly as the author of Persian Letters in editions published abroad. See his letter to Hume on September 3, 1749 (Correspondance III, OC 20: no. 788).
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4 An Italian work by Jean Paul Marana; in French, L’Espion dans les cours des princes chrétiens ou L’Espion du Grand Seigneur (1684). 5 OC 13: no. 368. 6 See the editors’ introduction in Montesquieu, Lettres persanes (Lyon); and Stewart, “Persian Letters.” 7 Starobinski, “Préface,” 16–17. All translations, including those of Persian Letters, are by Philip Stewart. 8 LP 35 in the edition of 1721 (Montesquieu, Lettres persanes [Lyon, 2019]), 37 in the posthumous edition. All subsequent citations to Lettres persanes in this chapter refer to Montesquieu, Lettres persanes (Lyon, 2019) except where otherwise indicated. Where the letter numbers differ, references take the form of LP 35 (37). 9 Behind the name of Rica the verb ricaner (“to snigger”) can perhaps be heard. 10 Volpilhac-Auger, Montesquieu: une histoire de temps, 43–58. 11 Schaub, Erotic Liberalism. 12 LP 9; joie secrète, which is to be understood in the sense of inner or intimate joy. 13 Stewart, “Toujours Usbek,” 141–50, and Stewart, ”Les émigrés,” 29–42. 14 It was brought in clandestinely, where it was rapidly reprinted just as clandestinely. On the history of this publication, see the editor’s introduction to Montesquieu, Lettres persanes (Lyon). 15 See, for example, LP 127 (133). 16 See Voyages, OC 10. 17 See Spector, “Corruption.” A Montesquieu Dictionary. 18 LP 52 (54); see also LP 34 (36), with respect to the “public houses” where coffee is consumed: “There is one where the coffee is prepared in such a way that it confers wit on those who consume some; at least among all who are leaving there is not one who does not believe he has four times more than when he entered.” 19 LP 96 (99). “American” then meant a savage, and a fantaisie (“fantasy”), in painting, is a portrait that has no real model. 20 Volpilhac-Auger, Montesquieu: une histoire de temps, 19–42. 21 See Schneider, “Les jeux du sens,” 127–59, and Stewart, “Persian Letters.” A Montesquieu Dictionary. 22 LP 16 (17) (“Why is it that our Legislator prohibits us the flesh of swine and of all meats he calls unclean?”) and LP 106 (109). 23 Reading notes recently discovered and published for the first time in 2017 (OC 17). 24 Casabianca, “Des objections sans réponses? À propos de la ‘tentation’ matérialiste de Montesquieu dans les Pensées,” 135–56. 25 Montesquieu, Notes sur Cicéron, 17. 26 Défense, OC 7. XXVI. 27 On the importance of Descartes in Montesquieu, see Casabianca, “Descartes.” A Montesquieu Dictionary. 28 See editors’ introduction and “Lectures” in Montesquieu, Lettres persanes (Lyon, 2019).
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29 LP 89 (92): “The parlements are like those ruins that one treads underfoot [. . .]. About the only thing they now concern themselves with is the dispensing of justice; and their authority is always languishing unless some unforeseen coincidence comes along to restore their strength and life.” 30 The Spirit of Law was placed on the Index of forbidden books in 1751. 31 Volpilhac-Auger, Montesquieu: Let There Be Enlightenment, 217–20 (ch.9). 32 It was necessary to get rid of the typographical errors, numerous in 1721, and not always visible; Montesquieu was also intent to “simplify, clarify, and lighten” his text (Schneider, “Les Lettres persanes trente ans après,” 34–7). In 1721, he was not yet an experienced author, and, however great the verve of Persian Letters, the expression sometimes left something to be desired. 33 Several of these letters had already appeared in 1745 in the Dutch periodical Le Fantasque, but they were doubtless much older, and probably were stolen from Madame de Lambert, a friend and influential protector of Montesquieu, by the author of Le Fantasque, Thémiseul de Saint-Hyacinthe. 34 See Défense de l’Esprit des lois, OC 7. 35 Gaultier, Les “Lettres persanes convaincues d’impiété,” I–II. 36 Schneider “Les Lettres persanes trente ans après,” 38–41. 37 This point had even provoked the criticism of a level-headed reader like Marivaux; see Le Spectateur français, 10 April 1722. See also Montesquieu’s correspondence with Father Castel, OC 19: no. 387. It is found as a constant in other works of Montesquieu, for example Considerations (XII, note i, censured in the Paris edition of 1734, and all subsequent editions) and The Spirit of Law (14.12 and 19.9); it reappears in a 1755 edition of the Considerations where Montesquieu has manifestly had the controversial note inserted. See Volpilhac-Auger, “Un auteur en quête d’éditeurs,” 173 and ff. This evidence shows how firmly he holds to it. 38 LP 74 (76). “When my soul is separated from my body, will there be less order and less arrangement on earth? Do you believe that that new combination is less perfect and less dependent on the general laws; that the world has lost something thereby, and that the works of God are less grand, or rather less immense? Do you believe that when my body has become a stalk of grain, a worm, or grass, it is changed into a work of nature less worthy of her, and that my soul detached from everything terrestrial about it is become less sublime?” 39 Stored since with the notebooks of corrections, accessible on the site of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Gallica), which are in the hand of several different secretaries, it has a particular status, as being entirely in Montesquieu’s hand, doubtless written in his final days. The integral transcription of the notebooks in question can be found in the introduction to Montesquieu, Lettres persanes (Lyon, 2019), as well as the links to their digitization online. 40 OC 1. This edition was the first to take the edition of 1721 as its base text, so as to preserve its initial vigor, that of the first edition. 41 The same phenomenon occurs in the second edition of the Considérations sur [. . .] les Romains (1748: see OC 2) and the posthumous editions of L’Esprit
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des lois (1757–8) which are used instead of the texts of the original editions (1734 and 1748, respectively). Just one example: Letter 74 (76) originally reads: “[W]e do not conceive that one man more or less in the world – nay, all men together, a hundred million earths [in French, ‘terres’] like ours, are but a subtle, inchoate atom that God perceives only because of the immensity of his knowledge,” a cosmic vision that translates the disproportion between God and man, and constitutes the ultimate justification of the right to suicide. In 1758, because of a typo (nothing of the kind appears in the notebooks of corrections), the text becomes: “a hundred million heads like ours [. . .].” Not only is this usage of “heads” (têtes) awkward in French, but the cosmic dimension that referred to a vertiginous infinity disappears. Braun, “La chaîne secrète: a decade of interpretations,” 279–91. See, for example, MT 213, 1298; see above, note 12. Some misgivings are in order regarding these Straussian readings of Montesquieu. Yet it is well to note the maliciousness of the last sentence of “Some reflections”: “Certainly the nature and design of the Persian Letters are so patent that they will never fool any who do not wish to fool themselves.” My emphasis. See also MT 1675, where Montesquieu suggests that in reading, the mind identifies with objects. He uses both âme and esprit to refer to the same entity which is here translated by the single word mind. Generally, these articles are based only on the Persian Letters (and only particular passages), never on the overall work. On the full question, here only summarized, see Volpilhac-Auger, Montesquieu: une histoire de temps, “Pour en finir avec la chaîne secrète », 59–76. Staël, De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales, 1800, 2nd ed., 1800, vol. 1, 381.
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3 Considerations on the Romans Thomas L. Pangle
The title signals that this is the work of a political philosopher, rather than of an historian. The momentous philosophic dimension comes to sight when eventually, in chapter 18, Montesquieu makes explicit that he is presenting here a preeminent case study helping to vindicate the unprecedented contention that “it is not Fortune that dominates the World”: There are “general causes, some moral, some physical, which operate,” and “all the accidents are subject to these causes.”1 This foreshadows the dramatically bold claim with which Montesquieu opens his Spirit of the Laws: “I have posed the principles, and I have seen the particular cases unfold therefrom as if by themselves; the histories of all the nations are nothing but the consequences” (SL Pref.). These statements signal the emergence of the modern philosophy of history, as a major component of Enlightenment rationalism’s most ambitious project and hope: to show that human reason can provide a system of universal causal explanation that will leave no room for plausible evidence of governance by supraand contra-rational providential and legislative divinity. What philosophers led by Spinoza and Leibniz claimed to achieve in metaphysics, and what philosophers led by Hobbes and Locke claimed to achieve in empirical study of nature, now Montesquieu claims to achieve in the study of history. In the generation prior to Montesquieu, the greatest orthodox Roman Catholic political theorist in modernity, Jacques-Bénigne Lignel Bossuet, wrote his monumental and influential Discours sur l’histoire universelle (1681, revised ed. 1700) laying out the Christian providential interpretation of world history, and not least of Roman history. The synoptic view of Rome in part three, chapter one is entitled “The Revolutions of 35
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Empires are Regulated by Providence, and Serve to Humiliate Princes,” and is introduced by the statement: “You must discover the secret judgments of God on the Roman empire and on Rome itself – a mystery that the Holy Spirit has revealed to Saint John, and that this great man, apostle, evangelist, and prophet, has explained in the Apocalypse.” The work ends with a chapter “Showing That All Must Be Traced to Providence”: “God exercises by this means his redoubtable judgments, according to the rules of his always infallible justice”; “what is chance, in the view of our uncertain counsels, is a concerted design in a higher counsel.” Montesquieu’s great project, especially as regards history, is profoundly opposed not only to revealed religion but to ancient political rationalism. A nigh perfect, succinct statement of the Socratic perspective on history is given by the Athenian Stranger in Plato’s Laws (709a–c): “Together with god, it is fortune and opportunity that pilot all the human things – though these are accompanied by yet a third, gentler thing: art, which is a great advantage when it comes to cooperating with the opportune moment in a gale.” This perspective is applied to Rome by Plutarch: “time, with god, underlying Rome, mixed and yoked fortune and virtue so as to work out for all humans a sacred hearth.”2 Montesquieu does not delay in sharing his “considerations” on what are the most important of the “causes” operating in this case of the Romans. After a few sentences indicating how primitive were the “Beginnings of Rome,” he turns to “Her Wars,” and, recounting how “Romulus and his successors” regularly returned with spoils, which “caused a great joy,” he suddenly proclaims: “There is the origin of the Triumphs, which later were the principal cause of the Grandeurs at which that city arrived.” Shortly thereafter he adds, commenting on Romulus’ adoption of a foreign shield design: “One should note that what contributed the most to rendering the Romans the masters of the World” was that militarily “they always gave up their own practices as soon as they found better ones of the same sort” (OC 1:89–90).3
But just as we are getting the impression that Rome’s origins manifest an overwhelming causal vector toward war, we are jolted: “the Reign of Numa, long and pacific, was well suited to leave Rome in its mediocrity; and if she had had in that time a territory less limited, and a power more great, it appears that her fortune would have been fixed, forever”
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(OC 1:90). So Rome started on an alternative path, away from greatness – a path apparently foreclosed only by rather marginal variables. We read in EL (5.3; see also 5.2, 8.16, 9.1): “A republic where the laws will have formed many mediocre people, composed of sober people, will govern itself soberly; composed of happy people, it will be very happy.” The “greatness” of a republican people is in profound tension with its “happiness” (in “mediocrity”);4 indeed, the greatness of a republic’s leaders, after its founding, threatens its survival (cf. OC 11:170 on Caesar with EL 10.6; 26.17; 28.41; 29.7). Here Montesquieu immediately adds: “One of the causes of [Rome’s] prosperity is that its Kings were all great personages.” From this he ascends to a universal causal consideration: “In the birth of Societies, it is the Chiefs of the Republics who make the institution; and thereafter, the institution that forms the Chiefs” (OC 1:90). The “greatness” of Numa was evidently of another stripe from that of Romulus and the later “captain” chiefs. Yet Montesquieu leaves entirely out of sight the religiosity, and the claim to divine revelation, that was the hallmark of Numa’s rule. When our rationalist does finally acknowledge the role of religion in supporting5 the obedience and patriotism of the Romans, he refers only to Romulus, again erasing the prophet Numa’s different and distinctive, more pacific, religiosity.6
The “captain” kings formed “a people proud, enterprising, and bold”; such a people, “enclosed in the walls, must necessarily either shake off the yoke, or else soften its mores” and “remain a small and poor monarchy.” Once again, we see that there was a fork in Rome’s historical road. But if they were to have stayed on the road of kingship, Numa’s successors would have had to lead the common people to become more subdued, soft, and deferential; and Servius Tullius did the contrary (see also EL 11.12–13). Spotlighting a “very remarkable” parallel – the outcome of a similar change effected by the Tudor king Henry VII – Montesquieu interjects a strong universal claim: “Since humans have had in all times the same passions, the occasions that produce the great changes are different, but the causes are always the same” (OC 1:91–92). Yet these unchanging historical causes, we see here again, do not rule out decisively important human choices between radically opposed, permanently recurring alternatives.
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As we learn in EL (8.16 – see the entire chapter), “it is of the nature of a republic that it has only a small territory.” So the crux question regarding Rome is, what caused this deviant republic to grow so unnaturally? Montesquieu gives us more of the answer by elucidating the causes why each of the three components of the nascent republican form of government was so extraordinarily impassioned for aggressive war (OC 1:92–94). The Consuls, because they were elected (from the patricians) only for a one-year term, and paired as rivals, were more “ambitious” for quickly achieving “the honor of the Triumph” than would have been any lifetime monarchic executive. The patrician senators, anxious to maintain their tenuous predominance over the populace, saw in war a way to “distract” and to “occupy” the latter. Above all, the populace lusted after war’s “booty.” For, Rome “being a City without Commerce” (cf. EL 21.12–15), the “sole means that individuals had to enrich themselves” was “pillage.” Yet fighting to plunder, and without pay, and without siege machinery, caused “few of their wars to be decisive,” and so their “victories did not corrupt them at all, and left them in all their poverty.” That is the cause of the Roman republic’s escaping “the destiny of almost all the States of the world” – “passing too quickly from poverty to riches, and from riches to corruption.” Because Rome was confined for generations “in a very small orbit,” she was able to “train herself in the virtues that were to become so fatal to the Universe” (OC 1:96–97). Our teacher prods us to wonder: Is there no other way of eluding this “destiny?” (see EL 5.6, 7.15n, 8.4, 11.5, 20.5). What precisely were the Roman virtues? It transpires that they were quasi-piratical perversions of the “virtue” that EL identifies as the “principle” of republics. The Roman virtues, while communal, were self-aggrandizing more than self-renunciatory (contrast EL 3.5–3.6, 4.5, 5.2–5.3, 19). “The Founders of the ancient Republics” divided the lands equally; and this was the cause, in each yeoman-citizen, of “an equal interest, & a very great one, in defending the fatherland” (OC 3:106; cf. EL 5.5–5.7). In the singular case of Rome, this “interest” was much intensified because the neighbors who were victims of ceaseless Roman plundering responded by rendering every Roman “always exposed to the most frightful acts of vengeance”; on that sanguinary basis, “Constancy and Valor became” for each Roman “necessary virtues,” which “could not be distinguished from love of oneself, of one’s family, of one’s fatherland, and of everything dearest among men.” Meanwhile, to prevent the citizen’s thirst for his own share of booty from causing disunity, each
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soldier was required to swear a fearful religious oath, “which was always the nerve of their military discipline” (OC 1:93–94; see also 10:161; EL 8.13). In addition, we learn later that as a result of “riches” being “scorned,” and “poverty being public virtue,” “birth & dignities could not confer great advantages,” even on individual senators (OC 8:145–46; cf. EL 19.25). Last but not least: During the short period of “servitude” while “the Tyranny of the Decemvirs lasted,” Rome “seemed to have lost the soul that made it move” – which makes clear, Montesquieu says, how much “the aggrandizement of Rome depended on its Liberty” (OC 1:97). The closest thing to any “intellectual” virtue of the Romans consisted in their “profound understanding of the military Art” – which became “a new Art” when the senate started paying the soldiers, and thereby enabled sieges lasting as long as ten years (OC 1:94, 98). Montesquieu devotes the second chapter to a synoptic account of the entire history of the “Roman art of war,” considered in contrast to the military practices of “today’s” very inferior armies. He spotlights “the education of the Roman Soldiers,” and especially how it caused the following spiritual difference: Whereas “in our combats today, an individual has scarcely any confidence except in the mass,” each Roman “counted always on himself; he had courage naturally – that is to say, that virtue which is the feeling of one’s own strengths” (courage by nature is individualistic, not communal). In the third chapter Montesquieu leaps forward in time to adumbrate the chief economic cause of the Romans’ eventual loss of their virtues – again with a comparative view to “today’s” civic vice. When the laws that equalized land holding eventually “were no longer rigidly observed” in the republic, “things came back to the point where they are at present among us”: “the avarice of some Individuals, and the prodigality of others,” and “the Arts introducing themselves, for the mutual needs of the rich, and of the poor,” resulting in “almost no more Citizens, nor Soldiers.” The fourth chapter makes this point more vivid and brings out the universal causal implications through a contrast with Carthage. Rome was led by men whose “ambition out of pride” and “passion” for glory made them trusted and followed in wartime by a buccaneering citizenry which was constantly being expanded through incorporating the best soldiers from defeated enemies. But Carthage, as a commercial republic, had an elite animated by “ambition out of avarice,” and “the feeling” for balancing costs and benefits (cf. EL 3.3, 8.14, 20.4). This not only made the Carthaginian leadership less stubbornly persistent in war; it bred
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popular distrust, and conduced to reliance on corruptible mercenaries. Montesquieu ascends to a lapidary pronouncement: “The Powers established by Commerce can subsist a long time in their mediocrity; but their greatness is of short duration.” That Montesquieu has in mind modern as well as ancient commercial “Powers” is made evident by his pausing to explain what has caused naval forces to have become much more important and skillful “today” than in antiquity (cf. EL 21.13). Exploding like sudden fireworks at the end of the fourth and the start of the fifth chapters is the panegyric of Hannibal: “the most beautiful spectacle that antiquity has furnished to us.” It is not Rome, nor any ancient republic, that provides this spectacle. And we are led to observe that Montesquieu never finds any individual in the Roman republic during its prime worthy of great note. In striking contrast to Machiavelli as well as to ancient historians of the Roman republic, Montesquieu’s science of history very much deemphasizes the causal role (after the founding) of the essentially fortuitous (or providential?) sprouting of great individual leaders.
’ What “saved Rome” from Hannibal was “the strength of its institution” – above all the senatorial collective leadership, which in foreign policy “never departed from its ancient maxims” and thereby made Rome “a prodigy of constancy.” After bringing down Carthage, “Rome had almost only small wars and great Victories.” Chapter five lays out the main extrinsic and all-too-normal causes for this: the lack of virtue, and the strategic blunders, of Rome’s successive prey. Chapter six explains the more remarkable, intrinsic cause: the “profundity” of the Roman senate’s ruthlessly serpentine grand strategy – which is revealing of mankind’s easily duped, anxious, moralistic trust and hopefulness. The senate “never made peace in good faith, & only with the design of invading everywhere.” “Setting itself up as a Tribunal that judged all the Peoples,” the senate inflicted “at the end of each war” on its purportedly criminal enemy “incredibly” harsh and humiliating punishments, thereby devising a “new genre of Tyranny” aimed at “ruining” the defeated while affording excuses for future “useful vengeance.” This pseudo-moralistic strategy so overawed other nations that, in trying to escape the senate’s judgments, they rarely even formed defensive leagues. Meanwhile Rome ceaselessly acquired “allies” – by taking the weaker side in any neighboring war, by encouraging rebellions in monarchies, by fomenting factional
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strife in republics and dissolving republican confederacies, and by intervening in other nations’ internal disputes “as protectors of the Universe,” under whom “Peoples and Kings were their Subjects, without knowing precisely by what title.” The senate’s “constant maxim above all was to divide.” Rome’s “friends” were forbidden to ally with anyone else, and were “all” compelled to “ruin themselves by the immense presents” that they felt pressured to send to their Roman “protectors” – who as “plunderers, were less unjust as Conquerors than they were as Lawgivers.” The Romans did not have “even that justice of brigands, who bring a certain honesty into the exercise of their crime.” Yet the senate shrewdly insured that Rome refrained from taking over the peoples they thus dominated. They “waited until all the Nations were accustomed to obey” as purportedly “free,” and “Allies,” before finally “commanding them as Subjects” – who had by then, in effect, disappeared “little by little into the Roman Republic.” Montesquieu concludes with a universal admonition for crafty imperialists, evoking the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru as exemplifying the “folly of Conquerors” – “wishing to give their Laws and their Customs to all Peoples” (cf. EL 10.9–10.11, 10.15). The Roman republic, on the contrary, “imposed no general Laws,” with the result that her subjugated “Peoples did not have any dangerous links at all among themselves;” they wound up being “all Roman, without being Compatriots”; the “power was in the hands of” the senate, while “only justice,” impotent, was left “in the hands of the conquered.”
’ We learn in the eighth chapter that the Patricians were, in their domestic policy, neither as wily nor as iniquitous nor as powerful as in their foreign policy. After the republican revolution, the senators’ fear of a return of the kings drove them to promote in the populace “an immoderate desire for Liberty” (OC 8:145; contrast EL 11.13). This intensified a cause that operates universally against “hereditary Aristocracy” when it is not balanced by an hereditary monarch: “one has seen in all times, and one sees still now, the People detests the Senators,” having become “tormented by envy & jealousy.” Therefore “the Republics where birth gives no part in Government are in this regard the most happy” (OC 8:146; cf. EL 8.5). Nevertheless, in his survey of the long “hidden war” between the plebs and the patricians, Montesquieu makes clear the civic superiority of the latter. “By a sickness that is eternal among humans, the Plebians, having obtained the Tribunes for their defense, made use of them to attack.” The
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“Senate defended itself by its sagacity, its justice & the love that it inspired for the fatherland”; “by its benefits and a sage dispensation of the treasures”; by arousing “the respect that the people had for the glory of the principal families and the virtue of the great personages”; by “the religion, the ancient institutions” – “in short,” by “that constant maxim of preferring the conservation of the Republic to the prerogatives of any Order or Magistracy whatsoever.” Nevertheless, eventually, “power had to return to the greatest number.” In Rome, the practical result of this inevitable arithmocracy was the replacement of the patricians by a more narrow-minded and selfish, plutocratic elite: By the time of the Gracchi brothers, “individuals had immense riches,” and “the old mores (moeurs) were no more.” This degeneration was indeed retarded by the board of censors, “a very wise institution,” which not only policed morals but manipulated the suffrage so as to keep practically disenfranchised the landless urban mass – an arrangement “regarded as the salvation of the republic” (OC 8:146–51; cf. EL 2.2, 5.8, 11.16). But “when the Legions crossed the Alps and the sea,” the “men of war” – now drawn from the landless – lost “the spirit of citizens” and gave their hearts to their various generals. Each of the latter, no longer under the direct oversight of the senate, “all of whose sagacity became useless,” competed from afar for becoming the “favorite” of the ever more predominant, largely landless populace back home. Montesquieu rises to another universal causal consideration: “What causes the free States to last less long than the others” is that both “the reverses and the successes that befall them almost always lead to the loss of Liberty”; “a wise Republic ought to take no risk that exposes it to good or to bad fortune” (OC 9:153–54). No less deleterious was the outcome of the rebellion of the Italian subjects, demanding Roman citizenship – which Rome was compelled to concede. Soon “the ambitious brought to Rome Cities and entire Nations, to disturb the voting.” As a result, “the city, in tatters, no longer formed a unified whole” looking to “the same gods, the same temples, the same sepulchre,” and animated by the “same love of Liberty and hatred of Tyranny” along with “that jealousy of the Senate’s power” that expressed “only a love of equality” that was “always mingled with respect.” And here Montesquieu brings to the fore a major conflictual dimension of his theory of republicanism that is considerably less evident in his Spirit of the Laws. Strenuously rejecting the common judgment of “the Authors” (Bossuet would be a prime example) that it was “the divisions that destroyed Rome,” our philosopher insists that “as a general
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rule, all the times that one will see everyone tranquil in a State that gives itself the name of Republic, one can rest assured that Liberty does not exist there.” Still more universally: “The true union” of any “political body” that is “moderate” (i.e., is not a “Despotism”: cf. EL 8.8) is a “harmony” that is constituted by opposed divisions: “like the dissonances in Music,” “like the parts of this Universe, eternally linked by the actions of some and the reaction of others” – “from which” can “result the happiness [see n. 3 above] which alone is the true peace” (OC 9:157; cf. EL 3.5, 3.7). It was not at all the conflicts between patricians and plebs, “it was solely the greatness of the Republic” that “did the harm.” Rome “was designed to increase itself, and its laws were admirable for that.” But “this is a thing that one has seen always, that good Laws which have made a small Republic become great, become a burden to it when it has increased itself, because they were such that their natural effect was to make a great People, and not to govern it” (OC 9:158; cf. EL 2.2, 8.16, 8.20, 9.1, 10.6). Was the Roman citizenry then, in its growth to “greatness,” not so divergent from “the nature of a republic” after all? The provocatively enigmatic tenth chapter opens with our philosopher speaking in the first person, about the destructive causal power of a philosophic sect’s critique of religious belief: “I believe” (he testifies) that “the Sect of Epicurus,” after having “corrupted” Greece, “contributed a great deal to spoiling the heart and the spirit of the Romans.” He focuses on the breaking of the Roman citizens’ “enchainment” by their religious oaths – remarking, in an Averroistic footnote, that “the fear of Hell has been wisely established, and its being combatted nowadays is irrational.” Speaking still more universally, he declares that “Religion is always the best guarantee one might have of the mores of humans” (OC 10:161; cf. EL 24.8). But he surprisingly claims that what was “particular” about the Romans’ piety was that they “mingled some religious feeling with the love they had for their fatherland” – as if religion as such need not be mingled with loving patriotism. Abruptly, he switches to speaking of how the Romans were corrupted also “by their riches” and “by their poverty.” Yet “whatever the corruption,” he declares, the “force” of Rome’s “institution was such” as to maintain its “heroic valor and all its application to war, in the midst of the riches, the softness, and the pleasure”; and such a persistence of valor “has not, I believe” (he again testifies) “happened to any other Nation in the world.” Montesquieu concludes by pointing to a major cause of this unmatched persistence: The “Roman citizens regarded commerce and the arts as the occupations of a slave”; it is “thus” (ainsi) that “the warrior
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virtues remained, after all the rest were lost” (OC 10:161–63; see also 18:236–37). He prods one to wonder: In a republic animated by antiRoman, non-warrior, commercial “virtues,” including a commercialized piety or religion, would not Epicureanism be much less dangerous?
In the civil wars that were the republic’s protracted death throes, great Roman leaders and their varying individual characters and actions become for the first time subjects for Montesquieu’s causal considerations. But only as secondary vehicles for deeper causes: “If Caesar and Pompey had thought like Cato, others would have thought like Caesar and Pompey; and the Republic, destined to perish, would have been dragged to the precipice by another hand” (OC 11:172; cf. EL 11.4). Thus, Sulla in his preeminence seemed at first to have succeeded in restoring ancient aristocratic virtue, supported by popular deference; but the means he had to use wound up only intensifying all the syndromes of decay, and, after Sulla’s death, brought about Pompey’s populist backlash. Montesquieu again ascends to the universal cause: “The excessive preferences given to a Citizen in a Republic always have necessary effects: They give birth to the envy of the People, or they augment its love without measure” (OC 11:167; cf. EL 2.3). Caesar’s coming out on top in the subsequent struggle for domination was not, Montesquieu insists, due to his luck or fortune but to his “great qualities” (OC 11:170). All the more incomprehensible, Montesquieu has to admit, however, is Caesar’s failure to grasp the truth that “one never offends people more, than when one shocks their Ceremonies and their customs.” As de facto “tyrant,” Caesar “could not hide the contempt that he had conceived” for the senate, and so “it was very difficult for Caesar to be able to defend his life.” His assassination, joined by his friends, was a bloody final spasm of republican virtue, which “seemed to forget itself in order to surpass itself” (OC 11:174–75). Paradoxically, during these mortal agonies, “which went on for so long a time,” the “power of Rome externally never ceased increasing itself.” This exemplifies a counter-intuitive universal causal consideration: “There is no State that so strongly menaces others with Conquest as one that is in the horrors of Civil War.” Why? Because everyone in it “becomes a Soldier; and when, with peace, the forces are reunited, this State has great advantages over the others who have almost only Citizens.” Not the least of the advantages is that “in Civil Wars, Great
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men are often formed, because, in the confusion, those who have merit make themselves come to the fore.” Montesquieu proceeds to support this universal causal consideration with no less than eight “recent” examples (OC 11:171). In analyzing the scramble to seize the tyranny after Caesar’s death, Montesquieu puts the spotlight on the most philosophic of the “Great men”: Cicero – whose greatness Montesquieu undercuts. He attributes the cause of the Great man’s lack of success in his attempt to revive some dignity and balancing role for the senate to his falling prey to the fatally flattering seductions of Octavius – epitomizing the general consideration that “what spoils almost all ventures is that ordinarily those who undertake them seek, in addition to the main object, also certain petty individual successes which flatter their vanity” (amour-propre: OC 12:179). But Cato epitomizes the contrasting exception, and here Montesquieu finally brings true republican virtue to sight in a single great individual. Whereas for the philosophic Cicero, “virtue” was only the “accessory,” for the simpler soul Cato it was “glory” that was only the “accessory.” “Cicero always thought primarily of himself; Cato always forgot himself – he wanted to save the Republic for its sake; Cicero, so that he could boast of it.” On this basis, Cato “always saw things with sang froid,” while Cicero saw them “through a hundred petty passions.” “I believe” (Montesquieu testifies) “that if Cato had preserved himself for the Republic, he would have given things an altogether different turn.” So, general causes were not determinative, at this point. But what was it that caused Cato to commit suicide and thus to fail to “preserve himself for the republic?” Montesquieu offers considerations on the “causes of this Custom so general among the Romans.” Apart from a primary mention of “the progress of the Stoic Sect, which encouraged it,” Montesquieu’s analysis is largely in terms of the universal psychological power of “self-love (amour-propre), the love of our conservation,” which “transforms itself in so many ways, and acts by such contrary principles, that it carries us to sacrifice our Being for the love of our Being.” Montesquieu does not explain how this applies to Cato, given the previous analysis of Cato’s self-forgetting motives. The Christian censors compelled Montesquieu to remove the sentence that immediately followed in the first published version: “It is certain that humans have become less free, less courageous, less carried to great enterprises than they were when” they had “this power over oneself” (OC 12:179–82; cf. EL 14.12, 29.9). Octavius’ sinuously self-protective lack of manliness, combined with his shrewdness and exploitative psychological insight, were the causes7 of
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his becoming the survivor who, renaming himself Augustus, “established order, that is to say, a durable servitude” in place of the “anarchy in the Republic” that had been the work of “all the people who had had ambitious projects.” “The key to the whole life of Augustus” is his “having had always before his eyes the fate of Caesar”; “in order to avoid that fate, his thought was on how not to follow that conduct.” This “cunning tyrant conducted” the Romans “gently into Slavery” while “talking only of the dignity of the Senate, and of his respect for the Republic” (OC 13:186–88; cf. EL 19.3). Speaking universally, “there is no authority more absolute than that of a Prince who succeeds a Republic, because he finds himself having all the power of the People, which could not limit itself” (OC 15:205).
The truth about the Augustan system burst forth under Tiberius, who instituted an all-pervasive and fiendishly intrusive inquisition, perverting laws originally instituted to protect the people’s Tribunes. Speaking again universally, “There is no Tyranny more cruel than that exercised under the shadow of the Laws and with the colors of Justice,” when “one drowns the unfortunates on the plank on which they were to save themselves.” The Senators as collaborators “fell into a state of inexpressible baseness,” while all property became controlled by the Emperor. As for the “Roman People, who no longer had any part in Government,” they “felt only their impotence” (OC 14:194–98). Under Tiberius’ successors, “they became the most vile of all the Peoples,” “finding security in baseness” (a people’s concern for and achievement of security can be despicable in Montesquieu’s eyes). Continuing to regard “Commerce and the Arts as things proper only to Slaves,” they “neglected the lands” and became dependent on the dole of grain; “accustomed to Games and Spectacles” as “necessities,” they enabled the emperors to “imagine that their Government produced public felicity” (OC 15:201–2). At a deeper causal level, “that appalling tyranny of the emperors came from the general spirit of the Romans”: “The citizens were treated as they had treated their vanquished enemies.” What’s more, “accustomed to making sport of human nature in the persons of their Children and of their Slaves, they could scarcely know of that virtue that we call Humanity.” That virtue is linked with our “softer mores” and “a more repressive Religion.” But “our” modern humanity has grim limits: The Roman spirit reminds Montesquieu of “that ferocity that we find in
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the inhabitants of our own Colonies” (Louisiana and the Caribbean) who “continually employ punishments upon an unhappy portion of humankind.” Montesquieu ascends to another of his universal causal considerations: “When one is cruel in the Civil state, what can one expect of gentleness & of natural justice?”8 (OC 15:199–200, 205; cf. EL 5.7, 6.17, 10.3, 12.18, 15.5–15.8, 15.11–15.12, 15.17). As he contemplates the sick excesses of Caligula, Montesquieu is propelled to a melancholy, Olympian perspective (OC 15:204): “It is from here that it is necessary to give oneself the spectacle of the human things” – “to view in the History of Rome so many wars undertaken, so much blood shed, so many Peoples destroyed, so many great actions, so many triumphs, so much statecraft, sagacity, prudence, constancy, courage; this project of invading everywhere – so well formed, so well sustained, so well accomplished: In what did it end, except in appeasing the happiness of five or six monsters?” It transpired, moreover, that even “as the greatness of the Republic was fatal to the Republican Government,” so “the greatness of the Empire was to the life of the Emperors.” For soon, each of the great armies that were dispersed around the empire elected, and fought to install, its own new “agent-emperor,” producing an erratic succession of “tyrants equally cruel, mostly mad, often imbecile,” and wildly “prodigal.” Eventually the government became a rapidly revolving, elective warlord system, with each emperor “the minister of a violent government, elected for the particular utility of the soldiers.” This exemplifies the paradoxical but “pretty general rule” that “military Government is more Republican than Monarchic in certain regards” (OC 15:206–8, 16:219–21; cf. EL 6.15).
, , But, in one of the darkest hours, when the “monster” Domitian was assassinated by some of his terrorized household, the assassins happened to choose in his place the aged, decent, and wise Nerva; and Nerva happened to adopt as heir Trajan – whom our philosopher proclaims to be “the most accomplished Prince that History has ever spoken of,” possessing “all the virtues, without being extreme in any,” and “the human most suited to honor human Nature, & to represent the divine” (emphasis added). There was “nothing so happy nor so glorious for the Roman People” as his reign (a people’s extreme baseness can be reversed by a single benevolent tyrant). Montesquieu suddenly presents the
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tyrannical power of the emperors as having proven itself capable of being wielded in a manner so beneficial and virtuous as to afford a glimpse of what the philosopher conceives to be the rule most suited to God (OC 15:208–9; see also EL 10.14, 24.10). Yet Montesquieu is strangely silent on the actual domestic achievements of Trajan, and focuses instead on his great war against the Parthians – which Trajan died failing to win, and from which his chosen successor Hadrian soon prudently withdrew. What is our teacher up to here, with this “over the top” praise of Trajan? Montesquieu makes “the wisdom of Nerva, the glory of Trajan, the valor of Hadrian, the virtue of the two Antonines” come to sight as constituting a golden eye in the hurricane of the history of the emperors. Was this possibly a miracle, one of those “secret ways that God employs and that are known to him alone?” Not according to our philosopher: “In those days the Sect of the Stoics was spreading and gaining credit in the Empire”; and “to it” the “Romans owed their best emperors”; and “it seemed that human Nature had made an effort to produce by itself this admirable Sect” – “as in places Heaven had never seen” (emphasis added, OC 16:211, 215).9
’ “When new monsters took the place” of the Antonines, “the abuse of military Government” reappeared, “in all its excess” (OC 16:211). By the time of the emperor Gallienus, there were “thirty different pretenders” to the throne; “the Barbarians penetrated everywhere”; and the empire “would have been ruined then, had it not been raised up again by a happy concurrence of circumstances” – above all, another succession of “four great men, Claudius, Aurelian, Tacitus, and Probus.” It would again seem that general causes can at least be suspended by good fortune. Diocletian, a principal successor to these four great men, tried to stabilize the empire by instituting dual emperors, seconded by dual “Caesars”; each of these was assigned one of four main armies – so that they might intimidate and balance one another. But the system only became effective after Constantine reduced the power of the Prefects in charge of the emperor’s Pretorian bodyguard (“who were pretty much like the Grand Viziers of those times”: cf. EL 2.5; 5.14, 16; 6.15). As a result, finally “the lives of the Emperors began to be more secure.” But then “one beheld another genre of Tyranny” and “a new genre of corruption.” Our philosopher makes explicit in a minimally apologetic
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footnote that he defies Christian historiography by refusing to accord any causal significance to Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and elevation of it as the state religion. What Montesquieu stresses instead (as the truly operative cause) is the change in the mores. The “Court was governed, and itself governed,” with “greater silence,” and in a despotic removal from the public; “in place of that hardiness of conceiving a wicked action,” there appeared “only the vices of feeble Souls”; “the Ministers and the Officers of war were ceaselessly put under the discretion of” a “sort of people who are not able to serve the State, nor tolerate that anyone else serve it with glory.”10 Montesquieu then circumscribes two catastrophic political blunders that made Constantine the single most destructive of all the Roman emperors. First, in his “vanity” Constantine “moved to the Orient the Seat of the Empire,” renaming the new capital after himself. This “Revolution” sucked the life out of the city of Rome, and “caused the ruin” of the empire as a whole – “because all the parts of this great Body” were “interdependent.” And, speaking again universally, “when one changes a total System, one can remedy only the inconveniences presented in the Theory,” inevitably overlooking “others that practice alone can make evident.” Second, Constantine “removed the Legions” from the river frontiers and “dispersed them in the Provinces.” Thus “the barrier holding in check so many Nations was removed,” and “the Soldiers grew soft in the Circus and in the Theaters.” The resulting invasions were temporarily checked by the successor Julian, who “by his wisdom, his constancy, his economy, his conduct, his valor, and a continual sequence of heroic actions drove back the Barbarians” – sacrificing his life in the noble effort after ruling only a couple of years. Montesquieu adds a mordant remark on how history has handed down “to us the character of the emperors extremely disfigured” on account of the hostile prejudices of “the diverse political parties, the different Religions, and the particular Sects of these Religions” (OC 17:225–30; cf. EL 24.10). Julian is of course the notorious “Apostate,” the persecutor of the Christians and the bête noir of Christian historiography, who strove to bring paganism back and to repress Christianity. After Julian’s death, the Goths, under pressure from the Huns out of central Asia, flooded into the empire. Attempts were repeatedly made “to appease them with money,” but, as a universal consideration, “peace cannot at all be purchased, because he who has sold it is only more able to compel it to be purchased again” and so “it is better to run the risk of
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waging an unhappy war.” The money paid to the barbarians accelerated the impoverishment of the government, making it unable to afford its own troops and thus forcing it to hire barbarians as a “cheaper militia.” Once the Roman soldiers “were mingled in with the Barbarians, they contracted a spirit of independence which constituted the character of those Nations,” with the result that the hitherto persistent Roman discipline and military virtue and art of war were finally lost. Thus “the maxims employed in this new government made the greatness of the Romans collapse.” Montesquieu adds, however, that “the faults which statesmen commit are not always voluntary; often they are the necessitated consequences of the situation.” He then ascends to his famous pronouncement, that makes explicit the leit-motif of the entire work, and that we quoted in the opening: “What dominates the World” is “not Fortune” but “general causes, some moral, some physical,” and “the principal pull (allure) carries with it all the particular accidents” (OC 18:233–35). The single most important implication of this fundamental thesis is the exclusion of any need to recognize particular divine providence as having any decisive causal role in human affairs. But that Montesquieu by no means overlooks the causal impact of the Christian religion as a human phenomenon becomes manifest at the start of the nineteenth chapter, the first part of which he entitles “Greatness of Attila.” He begins by observing that “since it was in the time when the Empire enfeebled itself that the Christian Religion established itself, the Christians reproached the Pagans for this decadence, while the Pagans held the Christian Religion responsible for it.” He proceeds to present, at some length, arguments advanced on each side, without passing judgment. Then, abruptly, he launches into his surprisingly favorable account of Attila’s total domination of the Romans, whose emperor Theodosius was reduced to the status of being Attila’s “slave.” Montesquieu thus provokes his thoughtful readers to wonder: How is it that the first part of the causal explanation of the “Greatness of Attila” is the debate over whether it was the traditional pagan or the new Christian religion that was responsible for Roman decadence? Montesquieu’s few words on the city of Rome’s final days as a political entity are rich in irony: “The People of Rome, almost always abandoned by their Sovereigns, began to become sovereign & to make Treaties for its preservation; this is the most legitimate means of acquiring Sovereign power.” On its deathbed the people of Rome began to achieve the most legitimate government that it ever had.
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’ After Attila’s death the Eastern empire under Justinian was able to revive somewhat by taking advantage not only of the barbarians’ mutual wars, but also of the inflexibility of their military arts, as well as their softening by indulgence in southern luxuries. But “the principal causes” of the empire’s temporary successes were “the qualities of that great man” Belisarius – “the greatness of whose soul” somehow made him an exception to the general rule that “the great virtues ordinarily hide themselves or destroy themselves in servitude.” Yet Belisarius’ “conquests that had for their cause not the force of the Empire, but certain particular circumstances,” wound up “losing everything.” The self-destructive weakness of the empire was abetted by “the bad conduct of Justinian”: his prodigality, harassments, plundering, inconstancy, severity mingled with feebleness, and uxorious catering to his debased wife; still worse, his partisan encouragement of frenzied civil strife between “the blues and the greens” – two factions of theater and sports fans whose absurd mortal conflicts convulsed Constantinople. Speaking universally, “divisions, always necessary in a republican government for its maintenance, can only be fatal to the government of emperors, because they produce only a change of the sovereign and not the reestablishment of the laws” (OC 20:249–55). But “what effected the greatest harm” was “the project” that Justinian “conceived of reducing all humans to the same opinion in the matters of religion.” While “the ancient Romans had strengthened their Empire by allowing in it every sort of Cult,” Justinian “eventually reduced it to nothing by amputating one after another of the Sects that were not dominant.” In “obliging them to revolt, he obliged himself to exterminate them,” and thus “rendered several Provinces uncultivated” – opening the way “by which, several reigns after, the Arabs penetrated to destroy the empire” (OC 20:256–57; cf. OC 22:265). The violent intolerance did not abate after Justinian. “There arose, successively, a number of heresies that had to be condemned.” And “a number of emperors” were “seduced into returning to the condemned errors,” with the result that “the Peoples accustomed themselves to thinking that Princes who were so often rebels against God could not have been chosen by Providence to govern.” This contributed to “the History of the Greek Empire” being “nothing more than a tissue of revolts, of seditions, and of perfidies.” Montesquieu steps back to draw a sharp contrast with
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the “general spirit” prevailing among his own contemporaries. Conspiracies leading to revolutions, he contends, have become much less feasible, on account of the agents that every prince has in all other courts, and the publicity afforded by the postal services and newspapers, and the control that merchants exercise over funding (OC 21:260–64). Our philosopher maintains a deafening silence on the religious dimension of this “general spirit” of his commercial age of enlightenment. The twenty-second chapter treats the Islamic conquest of the Eastern Roman Empire. Montesquieu “explains this famous event involving the conquest of so many countries” without “having recourse to [Muslim] enthusiasm alone.” The Byzantine empire was overwhelmed by Islam above all because “a universal bigotry broke the courage and numbed the entire empire”; clergy and monks gained enormous power, and “all the attention of the Emperors was occupied, at times in calming, often in stirring up Theological Disputes.” The “most poisonous source” of all the ills was that the Byzantines “never had an understanding of either the nature or the boundaries of Ecclesiastical and Secular Power” – “the basis,” universally speaking, “on which rests the tranquility of Peoples” (OC 22:266–68, 273, and 277). At this point, suddenly, Montesquieu gives the appearance of recognizing, for the first and only time, the causal force of particular divine providence: With the Islamic conquests. “God permitted his Religion to cease to be dominant in so many places.” Why would God do this? The philosopher answers: “Not because he had abandoned his religion, but because, whether it is externally in glory or in humiliation, it is always equally capable of producing its natural effect.” And what is that natural effect of Christianity? Our philosopher invokes the authority of “a celebrated Author” who has affirmed that “illness is the true state of the Christian.”11 “One can say the same,” Montesquieu impishly submits, regarding “the humiliation of the Church, its dispersion, the destruction of its Temples, the sufferings of its Martyrs” (OC 22:265–66).
The question that stands before the reader is this: Has Montesquieu vindicated his fundamental philosophic contention? Has he shown, in and through this crucial case study, that he elaborates a new political science that can reveal “general causes, moral and physical,” to which “all the particular accidents” are “subject?” Or is this a boast – a very high level, anti-providential, philosophic propaganda?
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Notes 1 Montesquieu’s Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and of Their Decline was first published 1734. He issued a revised version in 1748, in conjunction with his publication of the Spirit of the Laws: This most mature version is the one that I am introducing. All translations from these and other works not originally in English are my own. For guidance as to the historical context, Montesquieu’s sources and intellectual predecessors, and the secondary literature, I recommend the editors’ introductions and notes in Vol. 2 of the OC as well as Rahe, “The Book That Never Was,” 43–89, and Gilmore, “Montesquieu’s Considerations,” 359–79. The most accurate translation is by David Lowenthal. Montesquieu, Considerations. 2 On the Fortune of the Romans, 316f–17a; it should be borne in mind that, as Plutarch stresses, Fortuna was a divinity for the Romans and (as Tuchē) for the Greeks. 3 All parenthetical citations, unless otherwise noted, will be of the Considerations by volume number followed by the page numbers in OC. 4 Although he speaks of social “happiness” more than ten times in the Considerations, Montesquieu never attributes happiness to life in the Roman republic (he comes closest in 8:146). It was “under the reign” of the emperor Trajan that “it was a happiness to have been born” (OC 15:209): For Montesquieu, a people’s happiness does not require republicanism, or political participation – a striking contrast with the teaching of classical political philosophy. 5 As in EL (see esp. 8.13 and 19.4), the role of religion in republics comes to the fore only when the focus is on their decay, not when the focus is on their vigor: Montesquieu conceives republican religion more as an essential prop than as a mainstay – in contrast with classical republican theory: see above all Plato’s Laws. 6 OC 10:161; see also 2:99, 9:156, and Montesquieu’s youthful “Dissertation on the Policy of the Romans Regarding Religion.” 7 In contrast, Plutarch, quoting Octavius himself, contends that the latter’s success was caused mainly by fortune or luck: On the Fortune of the Romans 319d–20a. 8 Through these passages Montesquieu was “the first man, in the front rank of reputation” to “open the struggle” against the European enslavement of Africans, the struggle “which was not carried to final triumph until more than a century after his death.” Vaughan, Studies in the History of Political Philosophy, 2.283; see Vickie Sullivan’s Chapter 11 in this volume. 9 Elsewhere we find that Montesquieu holds that “the Stoics were atheists, because they believed that a blind fatality governs the universe” in the part extending beyond humanity. See OC 7: 83–6 and Defense of the Spirit of the Laws, Part 1, obj. 10; cf. EL 24.10 and 24.19. 10 OC 16:221–2; 17:223–4. Emphasis added. 11 Referring to Pascal, “Prière pour demander à Dieu.”
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4 The Spirit of the Laws Keegan Callanan
Since the eighteenth century, students of Montesquieu’s masterwork have tended to emphasize one of two principal themes. The Anglo-American reception of De l’esprit des lois (1748) has long celebrated the author’s constitutionalism as it is developed in his account of English liberty and, more broadly, in his treatments of political moderation, limited government, and intermediate powers. Anglophone readers, statesmen, and scholars, past and present, have often treated Montesquieu’s theories of the distribution of power, federalism, and representation as holding first rank among his contributions to modern political science. But no reader fails to notice that the author of The Spirit of the Laws has theoretical ambitions extending beyond his interests in constitutional structure. Without neglecting his constitutional theory, Montesquieu’s continental readers have placed the accent instead upon his account of the relationship of law and political institutions to social and cultural phenomena. Rousseau and Tocqueville alike drew inspiration from his treatment of the relationship of laws to mores. Hegel, for his part, believed Montesquieu’s “immortal work” had taught him to judge institutions not merely in the abstract, but with reference to their suitability to historical circumstances.1 Later, Émile Durkheim, Louis Althusser, and Raymond Aron would similarly emphasize this set of ideas developed in The Spirit of the Laws. From the very outset of the work, Montesquieu posits a principle of political sociology: The aptness of a given law depends, in part, on its conformity with the characteristics of the people and place it governs (SL 1.3). It is “only by extreme chance that the laws of one nation can suit
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any other.”2 Laws should “relate well” to the characteristics of their particular country. The title of the work itself contains an allusion to this theoretical orientation – what Céline Spector has fittingly called Montesquieu’s “principle of suitability.”3 The esprit of the laws is formed by the “relations” of the laws to place and people (SL 1.3). On Montesquieu’s view, it is this spirit, and not merely the laws themselves, that deserves the attention of scholars and practitioners of law and politics. Of course Montesquieu was not the first legal writer to speak of the esprit of law. The usage is tied to the old civilian notion of the mens legum (commonly translated esprit des loix) or ratio legis, an important concept in neo-Bartolist legal science of the late seventeenth century.4 While earlier efforts sought to identify the esprit understood as the universal rational core of Roman law or French law, Montesquieu now seeks to reveal the esprit understood as this complex of relations that accounts for the particularity and embedded character of all civil and political law.5 Montesquieu places a classic question of political philosophy at the head of the work: Which form of government is most in conformity with nature (SL 1.3)? Setting aside answers that appeal to an older political naturalism, he responds that it is “better to say that the government most in conformity with nature is the one whose particular disposition best relates to the disposition of the people for whom it is established” (EL 1.3). With this meta-answer, the author indicates that claims on behalf of the naturalness of particular forms of rule cannot be adjudicated in the abstract. He explicitly rejects, for example, a political naturalism based on the model of the family – natural patriarchy as the ground of monarchy, natural adelphiarchy as the basis of aristocracy, and so on. Yet he silently passes over another answer he might have given: The government most in conformity with nature is that which takes its bearings from man’s free and equal nature. We might say he passes over the answer of John Locke and Algernon Sidney. Montesquieu instead invokes a conception of nature as a manifold. A government “in conformity with nature” must strive to reflect not only what is distinctively human, but also what is distinctive to each nation in the sense of second nature or disposition. This line of thought forms the axis of what we may call Montesquieu’s political particularism. He never denies the existence of a universal nature against which regimes may be judged. But it is “better” not to name the most natural government; he refers the inquirer to the distinction between first and
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second nature. Montesquieu, for whom “the excess even of reason is not always desirable” (SL 11.6), suggests that this approach is less dangerous than directly addressing the question of natural government. To advance theories of “natural government” or the “best regime” without foregrounding the fact of human diversity threatens to license projects of revolution and transformation unaccommodated to the spirit of each people. We begin to see, then, why Montesquieu’s contemporaries and modern interpreters have at times wondered aloud about the compatibility of the two great themes cycling through his masterwork. To the generation of radical thinkers active during the period of the French Revolution, Montesquieu’s particularism seemed to entail a disregard for universal justice that was incongruous with his work’s unremitting critique of despotism. The marquis de Condorcet, pseudo-Helvétius, and Antoine Destutt de Tracy – the latter with the backing of Thomas Jefferson – protested Montesquieu’s apparent regard for backward customs and unjust prejudices.6 According to a letter of pseudoHelvétius published alongside Tracy’s critique of Spirit, Montesquieu had compromised with prejudice as an impressionable young man compromises “with certain females, who, although advanced in years, have still some pretensions.”7 Contra Montesquieu, Condorcet famously asserts the principle of invariability in legislation: “A good law should be good for all men. A true proposition is true everywhere.”8 The “spirit of the legislator” should be that of justice, not of moderation as Montesquieu had erroneously asserted (SL 29.1).9 And where is Montesquieu’s rule for judging the justice of positive laws? “Why has he not laid down some principles which would enable us to discriminate among the laws flowing from a legitimate power, and those which are unjust, and those with are conformable to justice?” asks Condorcet.10 Destutt de Tracy regrets that Montesquieu has neither treated the question of the good regime “theoretically” nor “establish[ed] à priori, the principles of a truly free, legal, and peaceable constitution.” This would have required him to write from a more “elevated and retired” position.11 Montesquieu was not, at least in this sense, the retiring type. Beyond the theoretical criticisms, these thinkers saw that Montesquieu’s approach, when applied to France, seemed to support not the radical transformation of the ancien régime but rather its gentle reformation.12 He seemed to prescribe a modest regimen of pruning and grafting, and he had failed to reconcile his principle of suitability with the demands of political right. For such critics, a commitment to “eternal verities” (Destutt de Tracy) and the universal rights of man seemed to
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require a more uncompromisingly rationalist or universalist approach to politics – “making politics as the crow flies,” in Oakeshott’s phrase.13 Bemusement at the marriage of (proto-)liberal constitutionalism with a critique of universal politics is not a response peculiar to readers of the late eighteenth century.14 Shadows of the “Condorcet critique” can be found in modern scholarship. Some have discerned “no intrinsic relationship” between the two persistent themes of the work; or regarded The Spirit of the Laws as a series of “disconnected essays”; or even spoken of “two Montesquieus,” a pluralistic political sociologist and a prescriptive liberal constitutionalist, brandishing his ideal modelé.15 Numerous scholarly works on Montesquieu have simply not ventured an account of whether or where the two great lines of his thought might converge.16 We must also acknowledge that one truly towering figure of the eighteenth century agreed that Spirit seems to work at cross-purposes with itself, and his claim can be attributed neither to partisan animus nor to careless reading, for he was the work’s author. In his Pensées, Montesquieu likens his masterwork to a “big machine” with great gears (MT 2092). As one observes “wheels that turn in opposite directions,” it does indeed appear that the machine is “going to destroy itself.” But “those pieces, which seem at first to be destroying each other, combine together for the proposed purpose.” Montesquieu wrote these words in response to the Abbé de la Porte’s fault-finding commentary. Yet his statement may serve not only as a guide to wrestling with minor apparent contradictions in his text, but also as an invitation to explore the relationship between two principal elements of his masterwork which seem to move “in opposite directions.” This chapter considers that relationship from three different vantage points to show how the two great gears work in concert.17
Montesquieu’s particularism represents a self-conscious and selective recovery of important aspects of classical political science. He undertakes this recovery not in order to resurrect the substantive political ideals of the ancients, but rather as a first step in overcoming those ideals. Drawing upon classical political science, as he understands it, Montesquieu develops his principle of suitability in light of which contemporary applications of classical republican forms become unthinkable.18 This principle of suitability, wielded against the antique republic, therefore forms a vital part of his case for a distinctly modern constitutionalism.
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Preparing to write The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu made a careful study of Plato’s Laws and Aristotle’s Politics.19 His notebook on the Politics spanned at least a hundred pages.20 The Laws he cites more often than any other work of political philosophy, and his notebook on it ran at least one hundred and seventy-five pages.21 In developing his accounts of the relationship between the “disposition of a people” and the “disposition of the laws,” that is, the structure of government (SL 1.3, 12.1), Montesquieu drew upon axial principles of classical political science: The regime gives shape to the character (êthos) of the people governed by it; and conversely, a people’s character and physical circumstances may contribute to determining the form of political order that is established and sustained in any given city.22 For this reason, Plato and Aristotle taught, the legislator must adapt his institutions to comport with, though not simply to reflect, the character and circumstances of the people, and he must prepare a people’s character to support and sustain the political institutions and way of life of the city. In the Laws, Plato’s Athenian Stranger voices doubts about his own project of founding, conceding that its realization would require “opportune circumstances.”23 Founders must not imagine they are “molding a city and citizens from wax,” when in fact, a people willing to tolerate the proposed laws “may not be found.” This theme is renewed throughout the dialogue: The Athenian Stranger reminds his interlocutors that the laws must suit the circumstances and people for which they are intended. Just as the finest sculptor may be limited by his medium, so the prudent founder is limited by the particular character and conditions of his people: “Such factors should not be defied when one makes laws.”24 The legislator’s efforts are unlikely to succeed if he defies the fact of human diversity and frames laws for a universal human type or blindly assumes that a regime suitable for one people will cause another to flourish. In the same way, Aristotle famously defines the politeia as both the arrangement (taxis) of offices in a city as well as the way of life (bios) of a city.25 The character or êthos of the people is constitutive of the regime, and the regime in turn shapes the êthos. Aristotle employs causal language to describe this relationship, such as when he explains that the “character [êthos] peculiar to each constitution usually safeguards it as well as establishes it initially.”26 A “democratic character” safeguards and establishes a democratic regime; an oligarchic character safeguards and establishes an oligarchic regime. A people’s êthos is a “cause” (aition) of the form of government, and it circumscribes the range of suitable choices available to the statesman.27 The statesman must therefore “introduce the
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sort of organization [taxis] that the people will be easily persuaded to accept and be able to participate in.”28 Furthermore, Aristotle suggests that a “mismatch” of êthos and constitution often produces a disjunction between provisions of law and de facto civic life. Even if a constitution is de jure oligarchic, the de facto politics of the city may be more democratic if the “custom and training” of the people so incline the city. The reverse is also true: Character developed under one regime may survive a change of formal institutions.29 Because people’s moral character and capacities shape and limit the quality and extent of their participation in the regime, the conduct of politics in two cities could vary widely even if these cities share an identical constitutional structure or “arrangement.” When the statesman confines his inquiry to forms of government in the abstract, without reference to forms of character, he has neglected these fundamental realities. Such are the lineaments of a classical political particularism which left its mark on Montesquieu’s thought. Like Aristotle’s regime, Montesquieu’s basic political units, the “espèces de gouvernements,” have both a structural and psychological/cultural dimension. The “nature of each government” corresponds to Aristotle’s notion of the arrangement of offices (SL 2.1), while Montesquieu’s notion of the principle (principe) corresponds, albeit incompletely, to the classical notion of a regime as an ethos and way of life (SL 3.1). For Montesquieu, as for Aristotle, the fundamental unit of political life is not a naked structure or institutional scaffolding, but an animate political whole.30 To this initial dualism of nature-principle, Montesquieu adds another more comprehensive dualism: The “disposition of the people [disposition du peuple]” must “relate well” to the “particular disposition [disposition particulière]” of the government or, as he later puts it, the “disposition of the laws [disposition des lois]” (EL 1.3, 12.1).31 Here again, there is a two-fold character to Montesquieu’s political ontology. The disposition of the people encompasses not only physical circumstances but character, mores, habits, customs, and received examples – elements of the Aristotelian “way of life of the people.” The disposition of the government and laws corresponds to Aristotle’s arrangement of offices. Whether we think narrowly of “nature” and “principle,” or more broadly of the disposition des lois and the disposition du peuple, Montesquieu’s constitution recapitulates the two-fold nature of the ancients’ regime. As a reader of Greek philosophy, Montesquieu seems to have relied upon French and Latin editions. Reading these editions over Montesquieu’s shoulder, one discerns otherwise inaudible resonances
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between his discourse and that of his Greek interlocutors. This proves especially helpful in understanding the prehistory of Montesquieu’s emphasis on mores (moeurs), a concept central to his political particularism. The French term derives from the Latin mores, which was a contraction of mos maiorum (“custom of the elders”).32 The term mores was the common Latin translation of the Greek êthos (“character”) from the Hellenistic period through the Renaissance.33 Significantly, the term was carried into early modern French translations of the Politics on which Montesquieu relied. Aristotle’s êthos is rendered “les meurs ou la coustume [mores or customs].”34 This suggests that when Montesquieu discusses the relationship between moeurs, coutumes, and lois, and when he indicates, for example, that democratic moeurs establish and sustain democratic regimes, he is speaking the language of Aristotle’s Politics as he received it. In Part 1 of Spirit, with a few interesting exceptions, Montesquieu’s republics are “as Greek as they come.”35 He continually resorts to Greek examples in his discussion of republican government, presenting the laws of Lycurgus and Plato as the archetypes of Greek republicanism (SL 4.7). The persistent drift in Montesquieu’s account of the classical republics is to establish their unsuitability for the disposition of modern European nations. At every turn, he leverages the political particularism of the Greeks themselves to argue that we moderns cannot sustain republics of virtue. The ancients were correct in their judgment that money “must be banished” from singular republics, but we have money (SL 4.7). Therefore, we cannot have classical republics. The “extensive business” of populous countries makes the Greeks’ singular institutions unworkable for us (SL 4.6). Efforts to “inspire virtue” in great nations and to educate a great people “as a family” are doomed to fail, as the Greeks themselves first recognized (SL 4.6). In this way, Montesquieu turns classical political particularism against the substantive political ideal of the Greeks in order to accommodate a new modern politics of balance, moderation, and liberty. This mode of argument appears most strikingly as he develops his account of modern commerce. He proceeds without ever directly opposing the substance of Plato’s critique of commercial society. Plato’s view of commerce becomes another premise in an argument for the obsolescence of classical republican forms. In his first book on commerce, Montesquieu observes, “Commerce corrupts pure mores, and this was the subject of Plato’s complaints; it polishes and softens barbarous mores, as we see every day (SL 20.1).” As he marks a break with the classical devaluation
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of commerce, Montesquieu denies that he is out of sync with Plato. He explicitly ratifies the Platonic-Aristotelian teaching: Commerce does ruin pure mores.36 This was the “subject of Plato’s complaints.” However, if a people lacks pure mores, Plato’s objection implies no limits on the growth of commerce. It is past, a relic: We are free to look to new legislators for an altered disposition (SL 29.19). With his invocation of Plato, Montesquieu reprises the basic PlatonicAristotelian principle that no law is suited to every regime, people, or circumstance. Plato never proposed universal laws concerning commerce or any other matters; when Plato spoke of the best laws, they were meant for unspoiled men. A given law aims to produce particular effects in a people, assuming a particular ex ante disposition. When that disposition is absent, the law is presumably inapt. The ancients’ own principle of suitability allows Montesquieu to cabin “Plato’s complaints,” confining them to Sparta and Crete (perhaps also to the Jesuit reductions of Paraguay) and transforming the classical critique of commerce into a merely contingent critique (SL 1.6). Later in Book 20, he approvingly refers the reader to Plato’s view that “[c]ommerce brings into a country different sorts of peoples” (SL 20.18). In the passage from the Laws that Montesquieu cites, Plato compares the unmanageable diversity of commercial societies to the uniformity of good character possible in a non-commercial republic. In a republic without maritime commerce, the legislator can enact fewer laws as well as laws “more fitting for free human beings.” Montesquieu does not rebut but rather incorporates Plato’s judgment. The laws of ancient republics were indeed fit only for “free human beings” so understood, that is, citizens educated for the singular republican freedom of the ancients. But the cosmopolitan diversity of commercial society, which was for Plato a decisive strike against it, functions for Montesquieu as a fact to which modern politics must be accommodated. This accommodation takes the form suggested by Plato himself: Laws assuming a high degree of civic virtue are to be avoided. The premises of the argument for modern liberty are again laid upon the foundation of classical political particularism. Of course, Montesquieu’s use of classical particularism to retire the classical republic is not limited to his discussion of commerce. Other singular institutions of the Greeks, beyond their limitations upon economic activity, appear ill-suited to modern nations. His approach to these other institutions mirrors his approach to the restrictions on commerce: They were reasonable given the character and circumstances of Greek republics, but they are unsuited to other forms of political organization.
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The republics of Plato, Lycurgus, and Minos assumed that citizens paid “singular attention” to each other (SL 3.7), but in the bustle of large, diverse states, legislators lack the luxury of such an assumption. Republics of virtue must have their censors, as virtue can be destroyed not only by crimes, but also by “slackness in love of the homeland, dangerous examples, seeds of corruption” and other elements for which laws cannot account (SL 11.8). In modern monarchies, virtue need not be so vigorously guarded. Honor suffices to maintain monarchy, and it naturally has “the whole universe as a censor.” Plato wanted citizens punished if they neglected to alert magistrates when they witnessed wrongdoing, but “[t]his would not be suitable today” (SL 11.8). Plato opposed venality in government, “[b]ut Plato is speaking of a republic founded on virtue.” Montesquieu goes so far as to suggest that, as Plato advanced no generic political counsels and, like Aristotle, lacked a “clear” and “correct idea of monarchy,” his writings ultimately contain no positive guidance regarding the laws of modern monarchies (SL 11.8–9).37 This subtle but relentless mode of argument runs throughout Montesquieu’s treatment of ancient republicanism. He effects a break with classical republican ideals not in spite of, but because of, the fact that he utilizes the ancients’ framework of political particularism.38 In this way, Montesquieu prepares his readers for a species of liberty suitable to large, heterogeneous societies running low on the painful purity of the Greeks (SL 4.5, 5.2).
Just as Montesquieu’s principle of suitability opens space for him to emerge as a new legislator of modern constitutionalism, so his conception of constitutional liberty provides an ultimately normative grounding for the principle of suitability. He defines liberty in a citizen as, in part, a “tranquility of spirit” born of “the opinion each one has of his security” (SL 11.6). When citizens are prepared to receive and sustain it, free government promotes liberty so understood; it expels the species of fear that dominates men’s souls in despotic nations. But when a nation is not culturally and socially prepared to receive free political institutions, direct attempts to erect such institutions will likely produce political disquiet and fear – a “tyranny of opinion” – analogous to the psychological experience of subjects in despotic states (SL 19.3). Under these conditions, free institutions are no longer liberating in effect, for they fail to induce the tranquility of spirit that constitutes the liberty of the citizen. Thus, the
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account of liberty at the heart of Montesquieu’s constitutionalism also grounds his principle of suitability as it is applied to “liberalizing” reforms. When Montesquieu warns against untimely institutional reform in nations culturally unprepared for laws of liberty, he speaks from within the logic of his constitutionalism and not on behalf of prudential considerations external to it. In Book 11, Montesquieu describes the constitutional forms best suited to prevent abuses of power and thus to secure liberty (SL 11.4). He defines political liberty as “the right to do everything the laws permit” (SL 11.3).39 When a constitution allows constraint or compulsion not provided for in law, political liberty is in jeopardy. This means that liberty requires the rule of law. Montesquieu proceeds to his discussion of the “distribution” or separation of powers because this institutional feature preserves the rule of law. It becomes clear, then, that “the laws that form political liberty in its relation with the constitution” are fundamental laws securing the separation of powers and the rule of law (SL 11.1). Montesquieu speaks not only of “liberty in relation to the constitution” but also of “liberty in a citizen.” What does the “liberty of the citizen” require beyond the presence of liberal constitutional forms? The liberty of the citizen “consists in security or one’s opinion of one’s security” (SL 12.1; 11.6). This liberty has an unmistakably psychological dimension. It matters not only that I am objectively secure but that I consider myself so to be. This account suggests free institutions alone are insufficient to guarantee the liberty of the citizen. As Montesquieu explains in Book 12, It can happen that the constitution is free and that the citizen is not. The citizen can be free and the constitution not. In these instances, the constitution will be free by right and not in fact; the citizen will be free in fact but not by right. Only the disposition of the laws, and especially of the fundamental laws, forms liberty in relation to the constitution. But in relation to the citizen, mores, manners, and received examples can give rise to it, and certain civil laws can favor it. . . (SL 12.1)
These mores, manners, and examples are constitutive causes of political liberty; they “give rise to it.” They constitute what we might call a liberal culture. In the absence of this culture or “disposition of the people,” the citizen does not enjoy liberty even if the “disposition of the laws” forms a de jure free constitution. Montesquieu initially seems to present two conceptions of political liberty: the first rooted in observable constitutional arrangements and
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practices, and the second subjective or psychological in character.40 Yet it becomes clear that even the former is grounded, in part, in Montesquieu’s political psychology of fear. Just after Montesquieu promises to devote Book 11 to “liberty in relation with the constitution,” he appeals to the psychological aspect of liberty. Appearing to get ahead of himself, he writes, “Political liberty in a citizen is that tranquility of spirit [tranquillité d’esprit] which comes from the opinion each one has of his security, and in order for him to have this liberty the government must be such that one citizen cannot fear another citizen (SL 11.6).” This reference to “liberty in the citizen” in a chapter ostensibly concerned with “liberty in relation to the constitution” is not a Homeric nod. The psychology of liberty underwrites his analysis of the English constitution, and so, of his account of “liberty in relation with the constitution.” He continues, “When legislative power is united with executive power in a single person or in a single body of magistracy, there is not liberty, because one can fear that same monarch or senate that makes tyrannical laws will execute them tyrannically.”41 The separation of powers preserves liberty not simply by preventing actual tyrannical deeds, but also by removing the causes of fear, despotism’s principal passion. In view of liberty’s psychological dimension, Montesquieu locates the goodness of “free” institutions substantially in their ability to reduce fear. Absent this effect, the institutions are considerably less appealing. In this way, he foregoes a merely juridical or formal-institutional account of liberty.42 Montesquieu develops this original conception of liberty in his sketch of the English constitution, that chapter which more than any other has distinguished him as the theorist of modern constitutional design. But as the argument of Spirit proceeds, we find that this same conception of liberty informs Montesquieu’s warnings against violating the principle of suitability. The most explicit such warnings appear in his treatment of regime change in the crucial nineteenth book of The Spirit of the Laws.43 The book bears the title, “On the laws in their relation with the principles forming the general spirit [l’esprit général], the mores, and the manners of a nation.” Montesquieu opens the book by considering why “it is necessary for spirits to be prepared for the best laws” (SL 19.2). Unlike climate, terrain, and other “physical causes” of laws, the general spirit, together with mores and manners, admits of modification by political reformers: Spirits can be “prepared.” Montesquieu then adduces four examples of “unprepared” spirits. He recounts episodes from Roman history in which non-Romans balked at Roman judicial formalities. The Germans found
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Roman tribunals “intolerable.” Mithradates reproached the Romans for their formal procedures of justice. The Laxians judged the Roman trial of their king’s assassin a “horrible and barbarous” affair. Finally, Montesquieu adds that the Parthians could not tolerate their king’s universal affability and accessibility. In the passage from the Annals that Montesquieu cites, Tacitus reports that the people took offense at their king’s “alien mores [moribus aliena].”44 In these four examples, Montesquieu shows us nations failing to understand or accept the mores, tone, and practices of moderate government. Judicial formalities are a hallmark of moderate and free government (SL 6.2), and accessibility characterizes a monarch (SL 24.3). The spirits of the Germans, the Laxians, and the Parthians were unprepared for “the best laws.” A summation follows: “Even liberty has appeared intolerable to peoples who were not accustomed to enjoying it. Thus is pure air sometimes harmful to those who have lived in swampy countries” (SL 19.2). The “best laws” are laws of liberty and political moderation. But absent properly prepared spirits, these best laws are not merely unavailing but harmful to a people. The harm these institutions cause springs not from the institutions themselves, but rather from the people’s perceptions of them. Twice in this chapter, Montesquieu remarks that good laws “appeared unbearable” to a people. The danger of free and moderate institutions for “unprepared spirits” lies in a problem of opinion or perception. The next chapter in Book 19, “On tyranny,” seems at first out of place. Tyranny is not a regime type for Montesquieu, and one initially wonders why he takes up the subject in a book on the general spirit. In the original draft of The Spirit of the Laws, “On tyranny” is even more strikingly prominent: It appears to have been the lead chapter of Book 19 (OC 4:462). The chapter’s theme was apparently central to the purpose of Book 19 as Montesquieu originally conceived it. Here Montesquieu explains that there are two sorts of tyranny: a real tyranny (réelle tyrannie) and a tyranny of opinion (tyrannie d’opinion). Real tyranny “consists in the violence of the government.” Tyranny of opinion is “felt when those who govern establish things that run counter to a nation’s manner of thinking.” The introduction of this second variety of tyranny is a true innovation. John Locke offers a single, juridical definition of tyranny – the “exercise of power beyond right.”45 Montesquieu’s “real tyranny” corresponds to Lockean tyranny. But tyranny of opinion is a new political category, forged for this occasion.
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Montesquieu invites the reader to ask after its significance as he turns to the reign of Caesar Augustus to illustrate his meaning. He explains that when Augustus wanted to be called “Romulus,” the people “feared that he wanted to make himself king” (SL 19.3). The people’s fear did not simply flow from an aversion to acts of despotism. Rather, the institution of kingship was opposed to their manners. Montesquieu suggests that though Julius Caesar, the triumvirs, and Augustus himself “were real kings,” the people did not perceive their reigns as tyrannical insofar as they “preserved an appearance of equality” and “seemed opposed to kingly pomp.” The perception of tyranny proceeded not from any institutional structure or act of violence but from the rulers’ contravention of national manners. The Romans did not want a king because they did not want to “suffer his manners.” With this example of a “tyranny of opinion,” Montesquieu indicates that any political change, if it runs counter to the manners of a people, may be experienced as tyrannical and fear-inducing.46 In time, Augustus enacted truly harsh legislation. He governed violently, as a “real” tyrant. The Roman people grew discontent as they recognized his tyranny, but their fury soon abated when Augustus brought back from exile their favorite pantomime, Pylades. Montesquieu mordantly concludes that the Romans “felt tyranny more vividly when a buffoon was driven out than when all their laws were taken from them.”47 Real tyranny may exist where the tyranny of opinion does not, and the tyranny of opinion may exist where real tyranny does not. The Romans misjudged a real tyrant because he restored their favored celebrity. Another people may misjudge free and moderate government because it runs counter to their mores, manners, and general spirit. Though the institutions of free government may not produce “real” tyrannical violence in Montesquieu’s sense, a people may experience these institutions as alien, dissonant with their manner of thinking, and productive of fear and disquiet.48 They may endure a tyranny of opinion. The Romans, who felt tyranny when a buffoon was driven out, were as mistaken as the Germans and Laxians, who balked at Roman judicial formalities. (Judicial formalities “increase in proportion to the importance given to the honor, fortune, life, and liberty of the citizens” (SL 6.2).) But these unfortunate perceptions carry normative weight for Montesquieu. Placing the Romans on both the giving and receiving ends in his examples indicates the universality of the phenomenon, but his warnings about the tyranny of opinion hold special significance for partisans of the constitutionalism he favors. When otherwise moderate
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or free institutions are installed before “spirits” are prepared to understand and receive them as legitimate, the people perceive these innovations as tyrannical. No longer liberating in effect, the impositions enflame a people’s disquiet and fear, those same passions which sustain “real” tyrannical (despotic) regimes. They disturb and diminish a people’s “tranquility of spirit” and their opinion of their own security (SL 11.6). The unsuitable establishment of even the “best laws” may be harmful for the same reason that these laws are good in nations prepared for them: The goodness of the institutions lies substantially in their psychological effects. Thus the principle of suitability begins to merge with the “principles on which liberty is founded” (SL 11.5). Montesquieu’s particularism, as we have seen, opens theoretical space for a new legislator of modern constitutional liberty, and his philosophy of liberty grounds his warnings against violations of the principle of suitability. Uniting his philosophy of liberty and principle of suitability at the most fundamental level is a consistent vision of the constitution of authority, to which we now turn.
In monarchies, power flows through “mediate channels” (SL 2.4). It never reaches or touches its object directly. It does not affect all its objects uniformly because, passing through these irregular channels, it encounters various forms of “tempering, modification, accommodation, terms, alternatives, negotiations, remonstrances” and “eccentricities” (SL 3.10). This is the work of the “intermediate powers” that constitute the nature of monarchy. As the argument of Spirit develops, we find that these modes of mediating power should characterize all “moderate” forms of rule, in contradistinction to despotism, which is simple and “uniform throughout” (SL 2.4, 5.14). Institutional channels of tempering and accommodation are central to Montesquieu’s conception of properly constitutionalized authority. Yet this conception of authority is not confined to political institutions. The authority of reason itself is among the forms of rule which must be, so to speak, constitutionalized. Political universalism means the despotic rule of reason in politics, its general principles and deliverances unmodified and unchecked, impervious to the accommodations, negotiations, and eccentricities of particular circumstances (SL 3.10). But on Montesquieu’s view, human reason ought not to produce uniform effects in the realm of law and politics. Just as political sovereignty should meet
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intermediate powers and, passing through, be tempered and accommodated, so too the influence of sovereign reason over positive law should be mediated.49 Montesquieu’s particularism therefore entails a “monarchical” or “constitutional” rule of reason in politics. Here we find the most complete nexus of his two grand themes. Despotic government is “uniform throughout” because its power is unmediated in every sense (SL 5.14).50 Montesquieu’s term for lawless unitary power, “despotism” carries an allusion to the master of a household of slaves. The despot governs the nation with the immediacy of a household. A society governed by perfect despotism falls short of being a “state” in the strict sense because it lacks the most fundamental form of mediation: that of law itself. Montesquieu defines a state as “a society where there are laws” (SL 11.3).51 Law stands between the sovereign power and its subjects; the sovereign governs through the laws. In any true “state,” there is at least this form of mediation. “Without law and without rule,” every true despot governs not a state but an extensive household, seraglio, or plantation (SL 2.1; 2.5; 5.14, p. 60). Despotic regimes lack not only the mediation of the laws but also intermediate powers to occupy the ground between the will of the prince and the obedience of the people. Despots have their lieutenants, viziers, and pashas, but these ministers are simply instruments to amplify and extend the reach of despotic power. As the domestic despot Usbek asks of his chief white eunuch in Persian Letters, And what indeed are you, other than base instruments that I can shatter as I please? You exist only in as much as you know how to obey; you are in the world solely to live under my law or to die when I so command; you draw breath only in as much as my happiness, my love, and even my jealousy have need of your baseness; in a word, your only portion is submission, your only soul, my desires, and your only hope, my felicity. (PL 20; cf. 62, 158)
Officers of a purely despotic regime are mere extensions of the despot. Should they deviate from this role, the politics become either revolutionary or monarchical. Montesquieu’s constitutionalism emerges in Spirit as he distinguishes despotic government from monarchy, a prelude to his more sweeping distinction between despotism and moderate government. Monarchies are governed “according to law,” that most basic mediation (SL 2.1). In monarchy, princely power also meets intermediate powers. In France, they were the nobility of robe and sword, ecclesiastics, and municipal governments (SL 2.4).52 These intermediate powers “constitute” the nature of monarchical government. Due to the constitution of monarchy
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by these intermediate powers, the prince “cannot do everything he is able to do” (MT 1225). Montesquieu freely employs the language of power checking and stopping in his account of these powers within monarchies (SL 2.4). What he articulates in theoretical terms in Book 2, he develops through detailed historiography in Books 30 and 31 on feudalism. Modern monarchy emerged as the kings of the Franks allowed their immediate authority over all fiefs and vassals to slip away (SL 31.26). “What the king had held without mediation,” Montesquieu explains, “was no longer held except by mediation, and royal power was, so to speak, pushed back a degree, sometimes two, and more often more” (SL 31.28; emphasis added). This is the nascent constitution of monarchy. But Montesquieu understood the distinction between despotism and constitutionalized, mediated power as one that transcends the context of human authority. Despotic rule in Spirit is the political analogue of divine rule as conceived by Father Malebranche, the “philosopher par excellence” of Montesquieu’s youth and one of his “four great poets.”53 On Malebranche’s view, God is the simple, direct cause of all effects in the world; causality is proper to God alone.54 Creatures are mere “occasions” for immediate divine action, not potential sites of secondary causation. Montesquieu’s relationship to Malebranche on this point is unclear. In his notebooks, he seems to agree with Malebranche that God “could govern the entire universe immediately” and that “God has reserved an immediate government to himself” (MT 1764, 1946). Despotism would therefore entail a perverse imitation of a mode of rule reserved for God alone. Yet elsewhere, Montesquieu seems to endorse views difficult to reconcile with Malebranche’s metaphysics. He asserts, for example, that God makes use of secondary causes (e.g., human actions, wills, and institutions) and even submits to them: The effects of God as a general cause are influenced by these particular causes.55 Here is the theological analogue of the political doctrine of intermediate powers, and Montesquieu makes the connection explicit. The ancient pagans, he observes, lacked the notion of a “simple, unique, spiritual God” (MT 1946). Still, they recognized a material God who governs the universe. The combination of divine materiality and divine supremacy “plunged them into the opinion of the multiplicity of the gods.” “For how could this massive God,” wondered the pagans, “betake himself into all parts of the world at once?” To cope with the incongruity, the ancients introduced the notion of inferior deities with their own mediations, negotiations, and resistances to supreme Jupiter’s power. “They thought Jupiter governed the world as a monarch governs a state,” writes Montesquieu. The ancients may have
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“had no clear idea of monarchy” (SL 11.8), but they evidently had a hazy idea of it within their pantheon. Though Montesquieu speaks on both sides of the question of whether the Biblical God rules monarchically,56 the nature of Jupiter’s rule is clearer. For our purposes, it is most important to observe that Montesquieu’s distinction between despotic and monarchical or constitutional rule transcends the context of human regimes. This distinction applies not only to divine authority but also to Montesquieu’s view of the authority of reason in The Spirit of the Laws. His particularism invokes a certain conception of reason’s authority in politics. After he introduces his principle of suitability (“the government most in conformity with nature is the one whose particular disposition best relates to the disposition of the people”57), he summarizes the relationship between law and reason: Law in general is human reason insofar as it governs all people of the earth; and the political and civil laws of each nation should be only the particular cases to which human reason is applied. Laws should be so appropriate to the people for whom they are made that it is very unlikely that the laws of one nation can suit another. (SL 1.3)
Law in general – the whole of the earth’s laws – is human reason. But of no particular nation’s laws may it be said, “This is human reason.” Reason is refracted through and deflected by the variety of human dispositions. Like Jupiter, reason “governs” as a monarch. (“Law is the right reason of supreme Jupiter,” read the original epigram in Spirit.58) The consequence of monarchical reason’s rule is not uniformity but distinction and variety. Its principles are not immediately impressed upon the political and civil laws of each nation. Reason governs these “particular cases” mediately; its flow is or “should be” modified, accommodated, and tempered by the moral and physical causes of each nation. Following the passage above, Montesquieu straightaway introduces the pantheon of causes which form “the spirit of the laws”: climate, terrain, the way of life of the people, religion, inclinations, wealth, population size, commerce, mores, and manners. Reason, we say, makes concessions; it submits to these particular causes as Montesquieu’s god (in the Réponses) submits to secondary causes. The nature of human law, defined as “human reason insofar as it governs all people,” is to be “subject to accidents” (SL 26.2). Furthermore, when human intelligence
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forms positive law, the orders of reason “pass through” the passions and prejudices of the legislators and “are colored” (SL 29.19). Political rationalism, by contrast, wishes to see reason govern colorlessly and despotically: Law aspires to be ratio scripta as reason’s abstract precepts determine the shape of institutions without encountering the mediations and negotiations of “lesser deities.” This is an instance of the despotism Montesquieu consistently rejects. A common conception of mediated, accommodating rule thus unites the constitutionalism and political particularism cycling through The Spirit of the Laws.
The family of ideas now identified as “liberalism” was not packaged and labeled until the nineteenth century, but many elements of this political tradition are directly traceable to Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws.59 If fear of the charge of anachronism causes us to withhold from Montesquieu the appellation “father of liberalism,” we must at least insist that he is a founding grandfather of liberalism. Given the strong association between liberal political theory and a certain rationalism and universalism in politics, we pose a question of more than merely interpretive value when we ask how Montesquieu’s liberal constitutionalism and particularistic approach to political science and statesmanship cohere. I have argued that Montesquieu’s principle of suitability serves his aim of supplanting the classical republic with modern regimes of liberty and moderation; that the conception of liberty at the heart of his constitutionalism provides normative grounding for his warnings against violating the principle of suitability; and that his political particularism relies upon a “constitutionalized” vision of political reason. The blending of these two themes in multiple textures throughout The Spirit of the Laws suggests that we should not conceive of Enlightenment liberalism as essentially universalistic and heedless of the ways in which place, history, and culture must complicate the application of abstract rational principles. Were Montesquieu the only seminal theorist of liberal constitutionalism in our acquaintance, we might even be inclined to think that the liberal political tradition becomes less itself whenever it neglects his principle of suitability.
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Notes 1 Hegel, Natural Law, 128–29. 2 This particular translation is from Montesquieu, The Spirit of Law, trans. Philip Stewart, 1.3. 3 Spector, Montesquieu: pouvoirs, richesses et sociétés, 11. 4 See Kelley, “Second Nature,” 150–3; Kelley, “Louis Le Caron Philosophe,” 30–49; Schiffman, The Birth of the Past, 183–200. 5 Here, as elsewhere, Montesquieu is compelled to give “new meanings” to old words (SL “Author’s FW”). 6 Destutt de Tracy, Commentary; Jones, “Montesquieu and Jefferson,” 577–85. 7 Helvétius, “Letters of Helvétius, Addressed to President Montesquieu and M. Saurin, on Perusing the Manuscript of The Spirit of Laws,” in Destutt de Tracy, Commentary, 285. 8 Condorcet, “Observations on the Twenty-Ninth Book of the Spirit of Laws,” in Destutt de Tracy, Commentary, 274. See also Condorcet, “Essay on the Constitution and Function of the Provincial Assemblies,” in Condorcet, Selected Writings; Crevier, Observations, 4. 9 This was no minor criticism, for Montesquieu confesses that he has written The Spirit of the Laws “only to prove” that the spirit of the legislator must be that of moderation (SL 29.1). 10 Condorcet, “Observations,” 263. 11 Destutt de Tracy, Commentary, 108. 12 The secondary literature is host to a variety of views on the question of Montesquieu’s ultimate judgment concerning the best regime. For “liberal republican” or “modern republican” readings of Montesquieu, see illustratively Pangle, Montesquieu’s Philosophy; Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty; Rahe, Soft Despotism; Radasanu, “Montesquieu on Moderation”; Schaub, Erotic Liberalism; and MacDonald, “Problems with Principles,” 109–30. For critical appraisals of “liberal republican” readings, see Manin, “Montesquieu et la politique moderne”; Douglass, “Montesquieu and Modern Republicanism”; Spector, “Was Montesquieu a Liberal”; and De Dijn, “Was Montesquieu a Liberal Republican?” Studies offering monarchist readings of Montesquieu’s work include De Dijn, “Montesquieu’s Controversial Context”; Mosher, “Free Trade”; Wright, “A Rhetoric of Aristocratic Reaction?”; and Mosher, “Monarchy’s Paradox.” A number of studies treat Montesquieu as a regime pluralist without a systematic preference for monarchies or republics, including, Manin (above); Berlin, “Montesquieu”; Krause, “The Spirit of Separate Powers”; Hoquet and Spector, “Comment lire Montesquieu?”; Larrère, “Montesquieu and Liberalism,” 288–9; Williams, “Political Ontology”; Rasmussen, Pragmatic Enlightenment, 92–5; Craiutu, A Virtue for Courageous Minds, 40–3; and Callanan, Montesquieu’s Liberalism, chapter 3. 13 Oakeshott, “Rationalism in Politics.” 14 Faguet, Politique compareé de Montesquieu (1902), may have been the first to pronounce, “Montesquieu est un liberal” (14). His judgment is shared by Aron, Main Currents, 1.1; Berlin, “Montesquieu”; Manin, “Les deux
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libéralismes,”10–24; Shklar, Montesquieu; Pangle, Montesquieu’s Philosophy; Schaub, Erotic Liberalism; Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism; Krause, Liberalism with Honor; Carrese, Democracy in Moderation; and Callanan, Montesquieu’s Liberalism. For a learned alternative account, see Spector, Montesquieu: pouvoirs, richesses et sociétés. Sabine, History of Political Theory; Becker, Heavenly City; Bates, States of War, 134–9. For notable exceptions, see Berlin, “Montesquieu,” 148–58; Wolin, Presence of the Past, 100–10; Carrese, Democracy in Moderation; and Spector, Montesquieu: Liberté, droit et histoire. In Callanan, Montesquieu’s Liberalism, I expand on the interpretation advanced in this chapter. On the obsolescence of the classical republic, see Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern, 440–4, 582–8; Manent, City of Man, chapters 1–2; and De Dijn, French Political Thought, 28ff. Some interpreters contend that while Montesquieu viewed the classical republic as outmoded, he wistfully preferred it in the abstract to other regimes. See Shackleton, “La genèse de l’Esprit des lois,” esp. 432; and Richter, “Comparative Political Analysis,” 157. For a different account of Montesquieu’s relationship to ancient republicanism, see Nelson, Greek Tradition, chapters 4–5. Shackleton, Montesquieu, 265. Ibid., 265. Ibid., 265; MT 907. See Irwin, Aristotle’s First Principles, 456, 622. Plato, Laws, 745e–746b. Ibid., 747d. The immediate context is a discussion of the effects of climate on human character. See Aristotle, Politics, 1327b19–29. Aristotle, Politics, 1278b8–10, 1295a40. Ibid., 1337a14–15; see also 1273a36–9. Ibid., 1337a17; see Salkever, “Aristotle’s Social Science,” 53–4. Aristotle, Politics, 1289a1–2. Ibid., 1292b11–21. Goyard-Fabre, Montesquieu: la nature, les lois, 7, suggests that Montesquieu’s concept of the nature of a government is a “replica” of Aristotle’s concept of the politeia. The translation is mine. At 12.1, Cohler et al. translate “la disposition particulière” as “the particular arrangement” – a reasonable choice in isolation. But in context, this translation obscures the unsubtle parallel Montesquieu intends to draw between the disposition of the people (i.e., character and circumstances) and the disposition of the laws (i.e., institutional structure). Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern, 604. Maletz, “Tocqueville on Mores,” 4. Aristotle, Les Politiques d’Aristote, trans. Loys Le Roy (1568); Aristotle, Le Livre des Politiques d’Aristote, trans. Nicole Oresme (1374). Nelson, Greek Tradition, 176. Cf. Sullivan, Montesquieu, 155–6.
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37 On Montesquieu’s view, venality was in fact an important source of independence for judges – and so, a source of political liberty – in monarchies like France. See Carrithers, “Introduction,” 25. 38 As Montesquieu retains the formal elements of classical political particularism, he casts off its moral substance. His political science incorporates the Aristotelian view that a “character peculiar to each constitution usually safeguards it as well as establishes it initially.” But for Aristotle, this formal principle ultimately points toward the politics of human perfection: “[And] a better character is always the cause of a better constitution” (Politics, 1337a17). Montesquieu emphasizes the efficient-causal relationship of character and the regime while denying that the perfection of character is either the goal of the regime or the precondition for the best regime (SL 19.5–19.11). 39 Compare SL 26.20: “Liberty consists principally in not being forced to do a thing that the law does not order, and one is in this state only because one is governed by civil laws; therefore, we are free because we live under civil laws.” 40 Rahe, “Forms of Government,” 81. 41 Emphasis added. 42 That free government would address the problem of political fear is unsurprising given Montesquieu’s understanding of despotism. See SL 3.9; Shklar, Montesquieu, 91ff. 43 The first edition of De l’esprit des lois was published in two volumes, and Book 19 occupied an important place as the final book of the first volume. Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty, 89. Several studies note that the problem of political change moves to the fore in Book 19, the “fulcrum” of the entire work. Pangle, Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism, 195–6; Schaub, Erotic Liberalism, 138–44; Larrère, “Montesquieu and Liberalism”; and Samuel, “Design,” 312. 44 Tacitus, The Annals, 2:2, 47. The Parthian king had “virtues with which the Parthians were unfamiliar, and vices new to them. . . [T]hey hated alike what was bad and what was good in him.” 45 Locke, Two Treatises, 2.199. 46 On Augustus and his offense against mores, see MT 677. See also Montesquieu, Considerations, 210. 47 SL 19.3; emphasis added. 48 See Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty, 218–19; Larrère, “Montesquieu and Liberalism,” 291. 49 See Wolin, Presence of the Past, 100–19, and Carrese, The Cloaking of Power, 102, 116–21, on Montesquieu’s rejection of “Cartesian” rationalism in politics. See also Carrese, Democracy in Moderation, on the relationship between political moderation and “philosophical moderation” in Montesquieu’s thought. 50 Cf. SL 29.18: “Ideas of uniformity. . . infallibly strike small souls” because they find “a kind of perfection they recognize because it is impossible not to discover it.” On the homogenization of French law, see SL 18.37 and Bart, “Montesquieu et l’unification,” 136–46. 51 Larrére, “Les typologies,” finds here a conception of political legitimacy.
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52 See Mosher, “Monarchy’s Paradox,” 183–92, for an excellent discussion of the historical context of Montesquieu’s theory of intermediate powers. 53 Barrera, “Malebranche”; Shackleton, Montesquieu, 12–13; Riley, Philosophers’ Philosophy of Law, chapter 8. Montesquieu ranks Malebranche among “the four great poets,” along with Plato, Montaigne, and Shaftsbury. See MT 1092, 305. 54 Malebranche, Search after Truth, Book 6. 55 Montesquieu, Réponses et explications données à la faculté de théologie, OC 8.268–270; MT 1195. 56 But see Pangle, Theological Basis; Clifford Orwin, “For Which Human Nature.” 57 EL 1.3; translation is mine. 58 MT 1519, 1874. 59 See especially Chapters 9 and 17 of the present volume.
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5 Montesquieu and the Classical World Catherine Larrère Translated by Wan Ning Seah
Montesquieu was educated at the College of Juilly, which was directed by the Oratorians, where the teaching of Latin and classical humanities occupied a leading place. Holding the position of President at the Parliament of Bordeaux, he read law and made handwritten commentary on the Latin authors in the Collectio Juris. Inherited from his father, the library in La Brède, which he had greatly expanded, offered “a collection of the most important things that antiquity has produced.”1 If he did not read Greek, he had access to it through French or Latin translations. This importance accorded, in his schooling and culture, to the ancient authors and to the classical world, is reflected in his work. He was engaged early on by the Romans, and, in particular, Cicero. Manuscripts published after his death bear witness to this: Dissertation on the Policy of the Romans Regarding Religion (1716), Discourse on Cicero (1717), and Treatise on Duties (1725), composed on the model of Cicero’s On Duties, of which there only remains a table of contents and some fragments. Many passages from these manuscripts have been taken up in Thoughts or incorporated into Spirit of the Laws (including the “piece” on the Stoics, SL 24.10), which shows the continuity of Montesquieu’s interest. This was somewhat interrupted by the Persian Letters (1721), which he wrote, according to an often repeated but not necessarily credible anecdote, to unwind from the heavy boredom of Roman law. In any case, classical references are rare there, and even the fable of the Troglodytes (letters 11 to 14), which is located in antiquity, takes place in “Arabia,” showing the predominance of the East, albeit ancient, in a work that satirizes French mores and politics from the start of the eighteenth century. 76
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Until the end of his life, Montesquieu relied on ancient references to display his political thought. The Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline (1734) was entirely devoted to the history of Rome and its empire (including the Eastern Empire). The classical world is ever-present in Spirit of the Laws (1748): In the first part (Books 1–8), the presentation of the ancient republics (Greek and Roman) plays an important role in the theory of governments, and the reference is maintained in the second part (Books 9 to 13) which refocuses on political freedom. In the subsequent parts (third, fourth, fifth), which take up cross-cutting themes for different governments (climate, trade, religion), the classical world is still there. And, in part Six, an entire book (27) treats “the origin and revolutions of the Roman laws on inheritance.” No doubt it consists of only one chapter, but it is long. Robert Derathé, the excellent editor of Spirit of the Laws, complains that chapter 21 of Book 23, “of the laws of the Romans on the propagation of the species,” is “of an overwhelming length”: “Montesquieu does not spare the reader any detail, any reference, as is too often the case when he speaks of the Romans.”2 According to Camille Jullian, historian of antiquity who published an edition of the Romans at the end of the nineteenth century: “Montesquieu lived all his life full of the idea, of admiration, of thoughts of Latin Rome; his book was born as naturally from his mind as a blade of grass comes out of the sown earth.”3 There is no doubt that Montesquieu feels very comfortable in “the immense body of Greek and Latin histories of Roman civilization, which he knows admirably.”4 But from there to ascribe to him an admiration for the ancient world – the critical literature of the twentieth century rejected this interpretation. In “Rome enfin que je hais. . .?” Jean Ehrard showed how Romans called into question Rome’s traditional image, especially the republican myth of Roman virtue.5 How admirable are the Greek and Roman institutions? They are admirable only from a distance. “Montesquieu does not believe in the Republic, and for a simple reason: The days of republics are over,” asserts Althusser.6 And republican virtue does not deserve to be imitated, adds Thomas Pangle,7 followed by many commentators: It is rather the opposite of the political freedom which finds its place in England, in modernity. Two interpretations as opposed as that of Althusser, from a Marxist inspiration (for whom Montesquieu rejects the normative ideals of the bourgeois revolution to come that leads him to turn towards the science of what is), and that of Pangle, from a liberal inspiration (who sees in Montesquieu an adept realist of modern commercial values), therefore agree that the classical world is not, for Montesquieu, an object of
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imitation. In that case, why devote that much space to antiquity? The first question that arises is therefore the spirit in which Montesquieu approaches the study of antiquity: If there is no imitating the Ancients, for what reasons and in what way might one study them? It is in the Preface of Spirit of the Laws that Montesquieu specifies the spirit in which he had approached antiquity: “When I turned to antiquity, I sought to capture its spirit in order not to consider as similar those cases with real differences or to overlook differences in those that appear similar.” (SL Pref.) The maxim can apply to all the societies analyzed in Spirit of the Laws. Book 29, which, before the late addition of Books 30 and 31, was to serve as a practical conclusion to the work, educates legislators “on the way to compose laws.”8 Montesquieu enunciates the rules of comparison there: “in what way two different laws can be compared” (SL 29.11). The warning is thus sounded over the danger of concluding too quickly that there is similarity: “that laws that appear the same do not always have the same effect” (SL 29.6), nor “the same motive” (SL 29.8). The difference therefore prevails: “that the laws that seem alike are sometimes really different” (SL 29.12). But the symmetrical error is equally significant: “that the laws that seem contradictory are sometimes derived from the same spirit” (SL 29.10). “I find myself strong in my maxims, when I have the Romans on my side” (EL 6.15). Such an exclamation certainly does not introduce an example to be followed, but it expresses all the benefit that the study of Roman laws has, when it comes to establishing a point that Montesquieu considers to be as important as it is ignored: “to show the relationship that civil laws have with political laws.”9 The question, then, is what makes the laws and institutions of the classical world an object of study to such a privileged point that “one can never leave the Romans.” (SL 11.13)10 With problems of method thus specified, we will consider the place of the study of republics in Spirit of the Laws. Are the days of republics really over and is republican virtue not, for Montesquieu, the object of a normative choice? What are the reasons for this rejection? We will thus, thirdly, be prepared to consider the significance of the study of the classical world in Montesquieu’s political thought.
The theory of governments, to which Montesquieu devoted the first two parts of Spirit of the Laws (Books 2 to 13), is introduced (SL 2.1) by a typology that uses two criteria of classification: that of number, and that
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of legality. The first criterion makes it possible to distinguish between governments by many, by few, and by one, while the second criterion applies only to governments by one. Montesquieu regroups governments by many (democracy) or by few (aristocracy) into a single category, that of republics, while within governments by one, he distinguishes between monarchy (“in which one alone governs but by fixed and established laws”) and despotism (where “one alone, without law and without rule, draws everything along by his will and his caprices”). There are therefore “three kinds of government: REPUBLICAN, MONARCHICAL, and DESPOTIC” (SL 2.1) Classified this way, the different regimes are thereafter studied, each according to its “nature” (“that which makes it what it is”: their fundamental institutions), then according to its “principle” (“that which makes it act,” the passion which is proper to each: virtue for republics, honor for monarchies, fear for despotic governments). Constituted by its nature, energized by its principle, each government represents a sufficiently independent unity so that, from Books 2 to 10, which tackle different themes (education, private law, civil law, corruption), and then, with Books 9 and 10, the relations, warlike or peaceful, with other governments, the separate chapters deal successively with each kind of government. These three governments are divided according to two axes: one temporal, setting republics against monarchies; the other, geographic, separating despotism, clearly identified as “of the East” and located in Asia (SL 5.14, p. 235), from European governments, monarchical or republican. Montesquieu insists on the modernity of monarchies, little known to the ancients,11 and all the references he gives of them (Spain, France, England) are taken from the modern world. For republics, on the contrary, the examples are mainly taken from the classical world, especially for democracies: If, among the aristocracies he studies, he devotes rather long passages to Venice, or to Holland, which are modern governments, all the references to democracies are borrowed from Greek or Roman history. The classical world is therefore that of republics, or more precisely that of democracies. The Nature of Democracy Antiquity, which Montesquieu refers to when presenting democracy, provides the model, that “of a people assembled on a forum, capable of being at the same time legislator and magistrate.”12 This “people as a body,” (SL 2.2) is not the manifestation of a pre-existing social fact, but
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instituted by a certain number of laws that Montesquieu calls “fundamental” (SL 2.2). These are those that fix the number of citizens that should comprise the assembly, the manner in which they give their vote, and, when they do so by class, the composition of these classes and the way in which they take part in the vote. This class division was particularly important in Rome, where a law was adopted once a sufficient number of citizens from the upper classes had assented to it, even if the citizens from the lower classes had not yet voted. These “fundamental” laws therefore make the difference between democracy and aristocracy. Thus, Athens and Rome are presented as democracies, but the division of classes that Solon made in Athens pertains to the spirit of democracy, whereas those that Servius Tullius made in Rome “followed the spirit of aristocracy” (SL 2.2, p. 12). This shows that there are no pure forms of government, but equally that these, even in principle, do not have to serve as a benchmark against which to assess existing governments. Montesquieu, in fact, does not express any attachment to a pure or original form of power that cannot be deviated from without distortion. The benchmark for legislation is rather a matter of artisanal perfection for him: He compares a wellconstituted government to a “masterpiece of legislation” (SL 5.14, p. 63), which implies multiple adjustments. One can therefore “correct” the nature of a government and “regulate” it without altering it (SL 2.2, p. 13). This is the case, for democracy, with “voting by lot” (SL 2.2, p. 13). This, Montesquieu comments while citing Aristotle, is suitable for democracy, because it realizes its basic idea, that of political equality: “The casting of lots is a way of electing that distresses no one; it leaves to each citizen a reasonable expectation of serving his country” (SL 2.2, p. 13). But, Montesquieu continues, “as it is imperfect by itself, the great legislators have outdone each other in regulating and correcting it” (SL 2.2, p. 13). To do this, they were inspired by the other mode of voting, which is of the nature of aristocracy, voting by choice. Instead of drawing lots for just any citizen, one could make sure that those with the greatest merit were chosen. Thus, in democracies, where “the people as a body have sovereign power,” they exercise it only partially: If they vote in assembly, they designate their “ministers, that is, their magistrates” (SL 2.2, p. 11). Popular power is not exercised but delegated; one is in a democracy because all the people participate in the appointment, but those who are in charge of the magistracies come from a minority, or a social aristocracy.
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This division of tasks appeals to a principle of competence, “A people having sovereign power should do for itself all it can do well, and what it cannot do well, it must do through its ministers” (SL 2.2, p. 11). Indeed, the people are good spectators – they can judge “facts that are evident to the senses” – but they are bad actors. In tasks that require decision, initiative, diverse knowledge, and capacity to grasp a situation, they know how to observe those who act, and renew those who do it well, but are unable to act in their place, having no firm control of the momentum, or rhythm, of politics. This distinction of competences is social: It separates the “plebeians” (SL 2.2, p. 11) from the elites (by wealth or birth). An additional skill must be added to the plebeians; they know their limits and allow the most capable to act in their stead: “If one were to doubt the people’s natural ability to perceive merit, one would have only to cast an eye over the continuous series of astonishing choices made by the Athenians and the Romans; this will doubtless not be ascribed to chance” (SL 2.2, p. 11). In other words, the aristocratic rule of voting by choice, which is recognition of “merit,” prevailed over the democratic rule of voting by lot, which leaves things to chance. Hence democracies function, in fact, like aristocracies: This analysis may be seen as the somewhat naive expression of a social prejudice (the conviction of the superiority of elites, real aristocracies), or, more brutally, a form of cynicism. But it also shows the limits of the definition of democracy (what Montesquieu sometimes qualifies as “popular government”) as self-government. This selfgovernment is maintained only by a constant aristocratic correction. This characteristic is confirmed by the study of the principle.
Virtue, as the principle of democracy, is introduced on the basis of what the Ancients said, “The political men of Greece who lived under popular government recognized no other force to sustain it than virtue” (SL 3.3, p. 22). According to Pierre Vidal-Naquet, historian of antiquity, Montesquieu’s “source” is a passage from the funeral oration that Thucydides ascribes to Pericles: “It is not belonging to any segment (of society) that gives you access to collective honors, but virtue (arete).”13 Arete – virtue – can also be translated as merit. Montesquieu, in referring to “the political men of Greece,” endorses the Athenians’ representation of their own democracy: the government of excellence, of merit or of virtue, rather than that of the drawing of lots, or the struggles for power.
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This confirms what emerged from the study of nature: that democracy is less the self-government of the people than its self-submission. At once sovereign and subject, the people in a democracy are not subjected to an external authority, whether it be, in a monarchy, that of laws that they did not make, or in a despotic government, that of the physical violence of being placed under constant threat. It must repress itself, and that is why democracy needs “an additional spring,” virtue (SL 3.3, p. 22). Virtue is admittedly the “love of the laws and the homeland,” and this stems from the nature of the government that “is entrusted to each citizen” (SL 4.5, p. 26). But worrying about public affairs is less a joy (that of collective attention to the common good, of living together) than a burden: “A continuous preference of the public interest over one’s own” can be heavy to bear. The critical point in democracy is the obedience to laws and public authorities. How can it be achieved? It cannot be achieved by violent police repression, but by the weight of social order. Virtue is the love of democracy, and love of democracy being love of equality, virtue is the love of equality. This political equality can be maintained by an equality of goods and, more precisely, by a division of land (SL 5.5), but as this cannot always be the case, one has recourse to other social provisions for maintaining virtue. Democracies find themselves set in a very restrictive social regime. It is a hierarchy which, far from being elaborated and assented to by those who submit to it, is presented as being derived from nature: children to parents, especially fathers; women to men; young to old. It is also a very conservative regime: “Much is to be gained by keeping the old customs” (SL 5.7, p. 49). Hence the importance, in democracies, of education that socializes children by inserting them into tradition. This supposes a great unity, a great coherence of democratic societies, a unity dominated by the mores which ensure this coherence. In the chapter devoted to “the general spirit” (which, in each society, gives rise to a determining authority, that varies according to the geographical and historical circumstances) it is said that in Rome what dominated were “the maxims of government and the ancient mores” (SL 19.4). This importance of mores allows Montesquieu, in Book 19 which is devoted to them, to make, between China and Sparta, a connection that a comparison of their governments (despotic and republican) would preclude, but which is made possible by the importance attached to mores in both cases (SL 19.16). The study of government corruption, that is, the situation where the weakening or disappearance of the principle prevents a government from
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functioning according to its nature, confirms the determining role of mores and their rigid social hierarchy. The corruption of democracy is marked by the degradation of the “spirit of equality” into “the spirit of extreme equality” (SL 8.2, p. 112). Challenging the limits of political equality, which delegates the exercise of power to a chosen elite, “each one wants to be the equal of those chosen to command. So the people, finding intolerable even the power they entrust to the others, want to do everything themselves: to deliberate for the senate, to execute for the magistrates, and to cast aside all the judges” (SL 8.2, p. 112). This results in a dissolution of the social order, which spreads like contagion: Then there can no longer be virtue in the republic. The people want to perform the magistrates’ function; therefore, the magistrates are no longer respected. The senate’s deliberations no longer carry weight; therefore, there is no longer consideration for senators or, consequently, for elders. And if there is no respect for elders, neither will there be any for fathers; husbands no longer merit deference nor masters, submission. Everyone will come to love this license; the restraint of commanding will be as tiresome as that of obeying had been. Women, children, and slaves will submit to no one. There will no longer be mores or love of order, and finally, there will no longer be virtue. (SL 8.2, p. 112)
Democracy is no doubt also threatened by the loss of the spirit of equality, but this leads to an aristocracy, which is a government capable of sustaining itself, while the spirit of extreme equality puts democracies on the verge of anarchy, in the proper sense of the absence of government, and the dissolution of the political and social bond. Montesquieu announced this disintegration that the loss of virtue leads to, in the first chapter which he devotes to it (SL 3.3): When that virtue ceases, ambition enters those hearts that can admit it, and avarice enters them all. Desires change their objects: That which one used to love, one loves no longer. One was free under the laws, one wants to be free against them. Each citizen is like a slave who has escaped from his master’s house. What was a maxim is now called severity; what was a rule is now called constraint; what was vigilance is now called fear. There, frugality, not the desire to possess, is avarice. Formerly the goods of individuals made up the public treasury; the public treasury has now become the patrimony of individuals. (SL 3.3, p. 23)
This picture of the rupture of political unity into a multiplicity of individuals who are each in search of their sole satisfaction corresponds to Plato’s presentation of democracy: It is a motley fabric in which individual desires are juxtaposed.14 But what is, for Plato, the only possible form of democracy, which he ranks at the bottom in the scale of governments, represents corruption for Montesquieu.
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There are thus stable forms of democracy, whose existence Montesquieu admits, while for Plato, democracy is always on the verge of anarchy. Unlike Plato, who for Jacques Rancière embodies the “hatred of democracy,” Montesquieu concedes it as an “inescapable fact,” as Madison later would.15 Whatever democracy’s faults may be, they do not call into question the very principle of popular government. As Judith Skhlar shows, Montesquieu advances in the Romans a virulent critique of the warlike policy that led Rome to its destruction (that of the Republic which disappears into the Empire), but in this account of the suicide of an expansionist State, “we are not led to believe that the popular basis of republican rule was at fault.”16 It is not the people who corrupt their leaders, but the other way around. “Once the people have good maxims, they adhere to them longer than do those who are called honnêtes gens . . . [F]rom their middling enlightenment they have often derived a stronger attachment to that which is established” (SL 5.2, p. 42). The democracies of antiquity are conservative and traditionalist regimes that one might call holistic, or, in the words of anthropologist Louis Dumont, “hierarchical,”17 in the sense that individuals find themselves doubly caught in an all-encompassing relationship: that which renders each citizen a part of the political whole, who lives only for this whole, and that which incorporates the political equality of citizens in a heavily unequal social order. It is the paradox of democracy as a political regime that the equality which characterizes it exists only in a complex of unequal social relations. This inequality is reflected even in the way in which virtue is experienced and practiced. While easy for the common people, who experience it in the immediacy of feeling, because by loving the country they love themselves, it is hard for the elites to bear. Montesquieu then multiplies the comparisons that bring out the forced aspect of virtue, whether it is the utopia of Jesuit reductions in Paraguay (SL 4.6) or monastic orders: “Why do monks love their order? Their love comes from the same thing that makes their order intolerable to them” (SL 5.2, p. 43). This shows the difference between Montesquieu’s account of virtue, and the culture of excellence and self-perfection that it represents in Aristotle18 and in the tradition of civic humanism.19 This way of linking virtue to Christian ascetism, to show its difficulty and its unattractive nature, draws attention to the impossibility of making it a reference in present reality.
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It is in its opposition to trade that virtue is introduced: “The political men of Greece, who lived under popular government, recognized no other force to sustain it than virtue. Those of today speak to us only of manufacturing, commerce, finance, wealth, and even luxury” (SL 3.3). Strikingly, this opposition does not so much affirm a complete incompatibility between virtue and commerce (Montesquieu will show in Book 5 that virtue and commerce can coexist), as it excludes the virtue of monarchies, as indicated in the title of Book 3, chapter 5: “that virtue is not the principle of monarchical government” (SL 3.5, p. 25). He explains, “The state continues to exist independently of love of the homeland, desire for true glory, self-renunciation, sacrifice of one’s dearest interests, and all those heroic virtues we find in the ancients, and know only by hearsay” (SL 3.5, p. 25).
Monarchies and Virtue To those who are worried about what may appear to be a critique of monarchy, Montesquieu adds a positive argument. Honor, which is the principle of monarchy, makes up very well for a vanished virtue as it produces the same effects as virtue: to unify the social body and to lead to the common good (SL 3.7). The same explanation is given to explain the venality of offices in monarchies: “It provides for performing as a family vocation what one would not want to undertake for virtue” (SL 5.19, p. 70). Virtue, however, retains its prestige for many of Montesquieu’s readers. That he deprives monarchy of a virtue that he recognizes in republics risks outraging these readers. This is no doubt due to the fact that many of Montesquieu’s contemporaries do not see virtue as a “spring,” but a source of legitimacy. It is that which the French monarchy sought by claiming the heritage of Roman virtue and aligning itself with Rome, in the continuity of the republic and the Empire. This allowed the monarchy to make the emperor’s absolute authority its own, all while enjoying the prestige of republican virtue. It is this “ideology” that, as Shklar says, Montesquieu endeavors to “delegitimize.”20 In the Romans, the overall questioning of the traditional image of Roman virtue, as Jean Ehrard has shown, reaches the heroic figure ascribed to Augustus, and the position of savior of the Roman Republic that he simulates.21 It is not the
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heroes who make history; rather, the causes are structural and go back to institutions: those of the Republic are not those of the Empire. Whichever way we consider the question, Rome cannot serve as a model for modern monarchies. This applies to war: What allowed Rome to dominate the world no longer exists in modernity where “it is wealth that makes power” and where it is better to develop commerce, of which “the natural effect (. . .) is to lead to peace” (OC 2:342–43; SL 20.2, p. 338) than to wage war. On the conflict between the two accounts of the origins of the French monarchy – the Germanist one by Boulainvilliers and the Romanist by Abbé Dubos – Montesquieu virulently criticizes Dubos, accusing him of “exercise[ing] arbitrary power over the facts” (SL 30.12, p. 631). If he does not completely align with the Boulainvilliers “system” (which traced the French monarchy to the Frankish conquest of Gaul, reducing the Romans to servitude), he seeks also to cut off any relationship of legitimacy between Rome and the monarchy, and inscribes the latter (like the other European monarchies) in a history coming from northern Europe. The Modernity of Republics Around Rome and the stakes that its legacy represents for absolutist monarchy grows a clear separation between the classical world and the modern world, ancient republics and contemporary monarchies. Aristocracies appear to be divided between these two blocs. When he presents republican government in Books 2 to 8, Montesquieu treats the two subspecies, democracy and aristocracy, separately, and always begins with the first. This is because aristocracy can only be understood by reference to democracy. It is the power of the people, whereas in aristocracy it is only a “part of the people” (SL 2.2). Its principle is not virtue, but moderation that may appear to be a diminished form of virtue, since only the part that governs must self-repress. The rest of the people are subjected to aristocrats as subjects to a king. Hence there is ambiguity in aristocracy because it derives simultaneously from democracy and monarchy. This ambiguity must be resolved: “The more an aristocracy approaches democracy, the more perfect it will be, and to the degree it approaches monarchy, the less perfect it will become” (SL 2.3, p. 17). It achieves this by broadening its base, and by reducing the part of the people that is in subjection. Moderation can also help the nobles not to oppress their subjects excessively, while moderating their mores and restraining them from showing excessive arrogance. But this can make
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regimes fragile and not very appealing, even for those who hold power. Thus, the image that Montesquieu presents of Venice, the archetypical aristocratic republic for many modern authors,22 is hardly attractive. There the nobles are harsh toward the people and one another, to the point that the regime must, in order to maintain itself, have recourse to “means as violent as in the government of the Turks,” that is to say despotic means (SL 11.6, p. 157).23 The conclusion that appears to emerge is that it is better to have a democracy corrected by a few aristocratic traits, than an unstable aristocracy. Aristocrats who are proud of their lineages (as is the Venetian aristocracy) will enjoy more freedom in a monarchy. The existence of aristocracies in modernity, however, precludes the assertion that the days of republics have completely passed. This is especially so when it comes to commercial republics.24 These exist in the classical world; they can even be democracies, as in Athens where the “spirit of commerce” overcomes the opposition between virtue and commerce: Certainly, when democracy is founded on commerce, it may very well happen that individuals have great wealth, yet that the mores are not corrupted. This is because the spirit of commerce brings with it the spirit of frugality, economy, moderation, work, wisdom, tranquility, order, and rule. Thus, as long as this spirit continues to exist, the wealth it produces has no bad effect. The ill comes when an excess of wealth destroys the spirit of commerce; one sees the sudden rise of the disorders of inequality which had not made themselves felt before. (SL 5.6, p. 48)
The “spirit of commerce” substitutes for virtue, as it produces the same effects: Like virtue, the spirit of commerce is disposed to obeying rules while controlling one’s desires and inclinations. This does not establish a relation of internal necessity between commerce and the republic, but the two can be compatible: “The good merchant can make a good citizen because both roles involve the same aptitude towards preserving the rule over one’s inclinations.”25 It is this same regulatory capacity of the spirit of commerce that allows republics such as Holland to engage in commerce, while escaping the luxury and inequalities that it brings: “In republics where equality is not altogether lost, the spirit of commerce, of work, and of virtue makes each one there able and willing to live from his own goods; consequently, there is little luxury” (SL 7.2, p. 98). There may thus be not only commercial republics, but also a republican way of engaging in commerce. This is what allows Montesquieu, in Book 20, to make a distinction between economic commerce, which is made of small
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and regular gains and which is essentially a commerce of intermediaries, and, on the other hand, the commerce of luxury, “done by a people among whom luxury is established who spend much and who see only great objects” (SL 20.4, p. 340). This distinction “is related to the constitution”: Economic commerce is, in fact, more suitable for the government by many, whereas monarchies lend themselves to commerce of luxury. By following the commercial republics and the kind of commerce that characterizes them, one crosses the temporal barrier. Among the peoples who engage in economic commerce, we find ancient cities, such as Tyre and Marseilles, as well as modern republics: Venice and the cities of Holland. In addition, the republic of Holland (or the United Provinces), like Switzerland and the German principalities, are to be classified as “federal republics,” which Montesquieu studies in Book 10 (1–3). These are defensive alliances, most often bringing together republican states, examples of which can be found in antiquity (Montesquieu refers to Lycia) as well as in modern times. These alliances are oriented towards peace: “The spirit of republics is peace and moderation” writes Montesquieu on this subject (SL 9.2, p. 132). This shows that the right way for a republic to overcome the obstacle of its small size is not by military expansion (as was the case with Rome, which led to its demise), but perhaps by federal alliance, which is guaranteed to last: “Holland, Germany, and the Swiss leagues are regarded in Europe as eternal republics” (SL 9.1, p. 131). One of the main reasons why democracies belong to the past is that they are eliminated due to their small size. Federation could be republics’ way of existence in modernity.
The Opposition between Republics and Monarchies Can Be Overcome The days of republics are therefore perhaps not definitively over, any more than monarchies and republics are completely contradictory governments.26 This is revealed as Montesquieu adds to the tripartite distinction of governments introduced in Book 2 – without ever annulling this first distinction – a new distinction between moderate governments and despotic governments, which is central in the second part (Books 9–13) and especially in Book 11, which is devoted to political freedom.27 If the unity of nature and principle makes each government an entity that can be studied separately from the others, the successive presentation of governments throughout the first part (2–8) does not preclude comparisons. Those who compare governments by many and by few
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(democracy and aristocracy) show how each form can borrow from another in order to correct or perfect itself. Conversely, as the first part of Spirit advances, the opposition between governments by one (monarchy and despotism) grows, making it clear that the numerical criterion is ultimately formal, while that of legality is decisive: It is a matter of two completely opposite kinds of government. From the first series of comparisons emerges the reality of the republic, which is not merely an abstract category of classification. From the second series of mostly negative comparisons between monarchy and despotic government, emerges the opposition between moderate governments and despotic governments. The expression of moderate government appears in Book 3, in the title of chapter 10: “The difference in obedience between moderate governments and despotic governments.” It designates monarchical governments as moderate by a contrast with despotism. But soon after, republics are also branded moderate governments. From that point on, monarchy and republics would be brought together, as moderate governments, in common opposition to despotic governments. Considering republics as moderate governments transforms first and foremost the relationship they have with freedom. This must not be confused with the exercise of power. Democracy, which is the power of the people, is not a regime of political freedom: “Democracy and aristocracy are not free states by their nature” (SL 11.4, p. 155). But, Montesquieu immediately continues, “Political liberty is found only in moderate governments.” And republics are moderate governments. One can find political freedom there. Their common opposition to despotic governments reveals similarities between the two types of moderate government, monarchies and republics. This is of course no reason to miss their differences. But it shows that there is no radical exclusion between these two types of government. From republics to monarchies, and from Ancient to Modern, bridges and transitions exist as can be seen with federations of republics, or with commercial ones. There is no reason to set the Ancients’ freedom of political participation against the Moderns’ individual freedom of pleasure. The two can coexist as the English constitution (SL 11.6) as well as the political mores of the English citizen (SL 19.27) bears testimony. If the days of democracies, in their classic form, are over, there is a present and even a future for republics, as long as they can be corrected to stay in conformity with their spatial and historical context, as any government requires to be sustainable.
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In his Letters Written from the Mountain, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, calls out to his fellow citizens: You are neither Romans, nor Spartans; you are not even Athenians. Leave aside these great names that do not suit you. You are Merchants, Artisans, Bourgeois, who are always occupied with their private interests, with their work, with their gain; people for whom every liberty is only a means for acquiring without obstacle and for possessing in safety.28
The opposition between the virtue of the Ancients and the commerce of the Moderns which animates this interrogation can all the more be referred to Montesquieu given that the sentence in Book 3, which sets the political men of Greece against those of the present, had sufficiently struck Rousseau such that he reproduces it faithfully in the Dissertation on the Policy of the Romans Regarding Religion: “Ancient politicians spoke incessantly about mores and virtue; ours speak only of commerce and money.”29 Cut off from its context in Spirit of the Laws (where it was a question of demonstrating that virtue is not the principle of monarchical government), the opposition between virtue and commerce regains its republican character and allows Rousseau to make virtuous antiquity into a critical mirror for a modernity led astray by the satisfaction of particular interests. There is nothing like this in Montesquieu, who neither idealizes a bygone antiquity nor treats the Ancients and the Moderns as an exclusive alternative. But beyond the formulas that Rousseau (who is a very good connoisseur of Spirit of the Laws) was able to borrow from him, we can presume that he also found in Montesquieu’s presentation of antique governments good reasons to admire them, as did other readers of Spirit of the Laws, after him. Unlike the tradition of civic humanism or monarchical thought which mainly sought in antiquity something to affirm the continuity of a tradition or to bring forward elements in justification of the present, Montesquieu was interested in the ancient world for itself, not for its contemporary applications. He makes it a real object of study for political theory (and not just for historical inquiry). This may explain why Robespierre and Saint-Just borrow their descriptions of republican institutions, and even their definition of virtue, from Spirit of the Laws30: Like Montesquieu, the French revolutionaries relate directly to antiquity in their vision of the republic, and, by reading Montesquieu, they find a
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sufficiently precise study of ancient democracies to nourish their reflection. To this can be added that they saw in Montesquieu a steadfast opponent of despotism, which commended him to their attention.31 It must also be said that, for them, the heroism of ancient virtue returned to the agenda, whereas it seemed to have disappeared from modernity for Montesquieu, which made his admiration for the beauties of ancient virtue largely rhetorical. But what is important is that he neither praises nor rejects ancient democracies. He accepts their occurrence as a fact of politics. And that is no doubt the reason he begins his study of governments with that of ancient republics, and more precisely with that of democracies. To place the study of democracies at the head of the theory of governments is to set as a goal the autonomy of politics, a power of humans for and over humans. To begin with the power of one would have been a reference to paternal power, and to its model, the divine figure. This would have been tantamount to raising the theological-political question, of the inability of humans to govern themselves on their own, of the necessary reference to a divine authority, that makes the people a simple flock entrusted to the care of a pastor, as Plato considers in The Statesman and The Republic. To begin with democracy is to express the immanence of power to the human community. This is what the postulate of political equality affirms, an equality that voting by lot implements, even if, for Montesquieu, it must be corrected. The first four parts of Spirit of the Laws are devoted to exploring the political, both as a mode of organization for the government or the commandment of the collective – what the Greeks called a regime, constitution, politeia – and as a way of life for the entire community (from climate to mores, and to commerce, in the third and fourth parts). This is the study of human, civil, and political laws. It is only in the fifth part (Books 24–25) that the question of religion and how laws can be related to it is taken up. “The Christian religion,” declares Montesquieu at the end of the first chapter of this part, “which orders men to love one another, no doubt wants the best political laws and the best civil laws for each people, because those laws are, after it, the greatest good men can give and receive” (SL 24.1, p. 459). The remark can be read as a precaution against a threatening censorship: Does Montesquieu not protect himself by asserting that the first good is religion? Moreover, the remark is of little significance, at first glance: Can we imagine that the Christian religion would want bad laws? But the assertion is less anodyne than it seems because the political good
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was defined independently of any relation to religion, during this study of human, political, and civil laws, which begins with the presentation of the democracy. Any claim by theological authorities over the political is therefore neutralized. Religion – Christian or otherwise – can only want what political men have previously developed. And these men do not act on the basis of transcendent norms, or a universal rule, but in relation to a context. The reference here is to Solon, cited in Book 19: Solon was asked if the laws he had given to the Athenians were the best; ‘I have given them the best laws they could endure,’ he replied: this is a fine speech that should be heard by all legislators. (SL 19.21 p. 322)
This is to assert that the good in politics comes, not from a single source, but from the knowledge of the nature of things, in a diversity of situations. The political good is therefore plural, unlike the religious good. Thus Montesquieu introduces the distinction between human laws and divine laws: “Human laws enact about the good; religion, about the best. The good can have another object because there are several goods, but the best is one alone and can, therefore, never change” (SL 26.2, p. 495).32 To speak of the plurality of the good in politics is to establish the possibility of acting and transforming a situation. Even if this should be done with prudence, it is a task that humans can perform aright. Montesquieu can rightly declare that he practices the “human sciences,”33 that he speaks humanely about human things,34 as he is not a “theologian” but “one who writes about politics” (SL 24.1, p. 459). And to achieve this ambition, what better reference can there be than that of “the political men of Greece”?
Notes 1 Brunet, Fantaisies bibliographiques, 11. 2 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, II, p. 521 (note 22). 3 Considérations sur les [. . .] Romains, Camille Jullian ed. Paris, Hachette, [1896] 1918, p. . 4 Benrekassa, “Le problème des sources dans les Considérations,” 32. 5 Ehrard, “Rome enfin que je hais,” 23–32. 6 Althusser, Montesquieu, 59. 7 Pangle, Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism. 8 Title of Book 29. 9 Cf. the remark from the manuscript (Book 1, fn. 253): “j’ai du plaisir quand je trouve l’occasion de faire voir le rapport que les lois civiles ont avec les lois politiques, chose que je ne sache pas que personne ait faite avant moi” (cited EL 1, p. 449).
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10 We are interested here in Montesquieu’s political reflection. On his historical work, see Volpilhac-Auger, Montesquieu, une brève histoire de temps, and de Senarclens, Montesquieu, historien de Rome. 11 See the title of 11.8: “Why the ancients had no clear idea of monarchy.” 12 Definition given by Rosanvallon, Le siècle du populisme, 151. 13 Thucydides, II, 37, cited by Vidal-Naquet, Myth and Tragedy, 26. 14 Plato, The Republic, VIII 526d–63d. 15 Rancière, La haine de la démocratie, 8, 9. 16 Skhlar, “Montesquieu and the New Republicanism,” 247. 17 Dumont, “Vers une théorie de la hiérarchie,” 396–406. 18 Pangle, Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism, 53. 19 See Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, and Skinner The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. 20 Skhlar, “Montesquieu and the New Republicanism.” 21 Ehrard, “ Rome enfin que je hais”; Skhlar, “Montesquieu and the New Republicanism.” 22 Machiavelli and Guicciardini, notably. 23 Carrithers, “Democratic and Aristocratic Republics,” 140–7. 24 Manin, “Montesquieu, la république et le commerce,” 573–602. 25 Ibid., 585. 26 For a different study of the opposition between republics and monarchies in Montesquieu, see de Dijn, French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville. 27 See Larrère, “Les typologies des gouvernements chez Montesquieu,” 157–72. 28 Kelley, Letter to Beaumont, 881. 29 Rousseau, The Basic Political Writings, 16. 30 In his speeches of 1793, Robespierre takes up the definition that Montesquieu gives of republican virtue, “love of the laws and the homeland.” 31 On the admiration – that might appear surprising – of the Montagnards for Montesquieu, see Manin, “Montesquieu,” 315–38. 32 On the significance of this judgment and Montesquieu’s pluralism, see Larrère, “Montesquieu and Liberalism.” 33 Montesquieu employs the expression in the Défense de L’Esprit des lois, to oppose theology, divine science. See Montesquieu, Défense, III in Derathé, Montesquieu, L’Esprit des lois, vol. II, 455: “. . . ceux qui traitent les sciences humaines.” See also in Pensées: “Il y a cette différence entre les religions et les sciences humaines” (Pensées : Edition Desgraves, Montesquieu, Pensées, Le Spicilège, Paris, Robert Laffont, 1991, 46, p. 199). 34 “Comme ces choses sont humaines, l’auteur en a parlé d’une façon humaine.” Montesquieu, Défense, II in Derathé, Montesquieu, L’Esprit des lois, vol. II, 436.
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6 Montesquieu’s Guiding Principles and Foundations C. P. Courtney
Readers in search of these principles and foundations will take as a starting point the preface and the first book of the Esprit des lois. In the preface Montesquieu rejects the opinion that “the infinite diversity of laws and manners” found in human societies signifies that mankind are ruled solely by fantasy (la fantaisie) and declares boldly that he has discovered principles which make this diversity intelligible. These are defined in Book 1, but in terms which, to the modern reader, are unfamiliar, beginning with the definition of laws as “the necessary relations derived from the nature of things” and following with a demonstration of how the laws of each form of government (republic, monarchy, and despotism) are logical deductions from its “nature” and “principle.” For a full understanding of these methodological pronouncements it is necessary to place them in the context of two philosophical traditions, skepticism and natural law. The view that cultural diversity is a product of la fantaisie refers to a tradition of skepticism which could be traced back to ancient Greek philosophy and had been renewed in France by Montaigne, Charron and Pascal, who regarded the baffling variety of laws, customs, and religions as a confirmation of what they considered mankind’s inability to discover or to be ruled by universal principles of justice and morality. As for references to “the nature of things” and “necessary relations,” Montesquieu is here speaking the language of Cartesian rationalism, and particularly of natural law, as found in the works of Grotius, Pufendorf and Barbeyrac. This does not mean that he intends to write a treatise on this subject; his originality would be to adapt the deductive methodology (based on the concept of “the nature of things”) of the natural law thinkers to the study of positive laws. 94
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The guiding principles referred to above are, of course, those of Montesquieu’s maturity. That they were a late discovery is clear from the preface: Often have I begun and often have I laid aside this undertaking. I have a thousand times given the leaves I have written to the winds; I every day felt my paternal hands fall. I have followed my project without any fixed plan: I have known neither rules nor exceptions; I have found the truth only to lose it again. But, when I had once discovered my first principles, every thing I sought for appeared; and, in the course of twenty years, I have seen my work begun, grow up, advanced and finished.1
Thus, though the project which became the Esprit des lois dates from some twenty years before its publication in 1748, Montesquieu, by his own admission, was not immediately in possession of those “first principles” which made it possible for him to write the work; indeed, the words “but, when I had once discovered my first principles, every thing I sought for appeared,” seem to refer to a sudden moment of inspiration when a new perspective opened before him. Traditionally, however, scholars have preferred to stress what they consider a certain continuity in Montesquieu’s intellectual itinerary. Thus, it is noted that many ideas found in the Lettres persanes (1721) reappear in the Esprit des lois; similarly, the historical method of the Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence (1734) is seen as prefiguring much that is found in the later work. As for the Spicilège, Pensées, Voyages, Geographica and other compilations of notes, extracts, and drafts of abandoned projects, they have frequently been fitted into the general teleological picture as reports of work in progress or collections of source material for the major enterprise. However, rather than seeing Montesquieu as a writer whose career is blessed with a sort of calm continuity or majestic progress towards the Esprit des lois, it is appropriate to stress that his life, as man and author, offers many surprises. The first surprise is that whereas in the Esprit des lois he seeks to demonstrate that mankind are not ruled solely by la fantaisie, in the Lettres persanes he had done precisely the opposite and in this respect, the early work is firmly in the tradition of skepticism and relativism.2 The next surprise is that, instead of consolidating his reputation as a satirist, he published, in 1725 Le Temple de Gnide, a pastoral prose poem and in the same year read to the Bordeaux Academy a work entitled Traité des devoirs. But the greatest surprise was when in 1726 he sold his office as président à mortier and in April 1728 set out on a tour of Europe which would last until the spring of 1731. Another surprise was
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his ambition to become a diplomat; there is nothing to suggest that at this stage of his career he had a coherent idea of those principles which would shape the Esprit des lois.
, : What exactly were those “first principles” which, after such a long period of uncertainty, concentrated Montesquieu’s mind, possibly in the late 1730s, and are the foundations of the Esprit des lois? The answer is given in Book 1 (“Of laws in general”) or more precisely, in chapter 1 of this book (“Of positive laws”), which follows sections on the general definitions of laws (chapter 1) and on the state of nature (chapter 2). Unfortunately, for many readers Montesquieu’s meaning in Book 1 is found confusing, unrelated to the main body of the work or, indeed, quite simply unintelligible. To recover his meaning, it is necessary, as mentioned above, to study his pronouncements in the context of the traditions of skepticism and natural law, particularly with regard to the ideas and terminology of Grotius and Pufendorf, thinkers to whom he pays tribute: “I give thanks to Messrs Grotius and Pufendorf for having so well accomplished what a large part of this work required of me, with a height of genius to which I could never have attained” (MT 1863).3 Grotius, Pufendorf and their learned commentator Barbeyrac, in opposition to the skeptics, upheld the belief that there was a universal and absolute law of justice accessible to human reason and by which positive laws should be judged.4 While these thinkers frequently draw on the ideas of Plato, the Stoics and Cicero, they adopt a more modern approach based on Cartesian logic to demonstrate that the precepts of natural law can be deduced from “the nature of things,” that is to say from the (ideal) nature of man defined as “a rational and sociable being” (“un être raisonnable et sociable”). Thus, Grotius writes: To begin with Natural Right, it consists in certain principles of Right Reason, which enables us to know whether an action is morally honest or dishonest, according to the necessary fitness it has with a reasonable and sociable nature and consequently, whether God, who is the Author of Nature, orders or forbids such an action. (Book 1, chapter 1, §10)
Similar definitions can be found in Pufendorf and Barbeyrac and the latter offers, for uninformed readers, an elementary introduction to this philosophy by citing an analogy from geometry: Just as one can deduce from the nature (or definition) of a triangle that the three angles are the
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equivalent of two right angles, so one can deduce from the nature of man (“a reasonable and sociable being”), certain “necessary relations” (rapports nécessaires), “of fitness and unfitness” (de convenance et disconvenance) which are moral relations or laws analogous to those of mathematics.5 Thus the principles of natural law are not simply the command of God or a superior, but a rule of reason. Variations on the same theme, using the same terminology, can be found in all the natural law thinkers, including not only those cited, but also in Cumberland and Burlamaqui, as well as in the rationalist philosophers of the period, particularly Malebranche, Leibniz and Samuel Clarke. In the general definition of laws opening Book 1 of the Esprit des lois we encounter this familiar terminology: Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense, all beings have their laws, the Deity his laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws. (SL-N 1.1)
Montesquieu may seem to diverge from the natural law philosophers by making his definition include both the laws of morals and those of science or the material world; but this was not an uncommon assumption in the eighteenth century, when both kinds of laws were seen as inherent in “the nature of things” (the rational structure of the cosmos); thus Locke could declare in his Essay concerning Human Understanding that it was possible “to place morality amongst the sciences capable of demonstration” (I, iii, 18). If Montesquieu chose this anti-voluntarist definition it was no doubt to indicate that his enquiry would be along strictly rationalist lines. Unsurprisingly, his conflation in the first chapter of the laws of morals and those of science, along with his omission of any clear analysis of the concept of moral obligation, attracted objections from religious critics, who regarded his principles as essentially a form of naturalism or “spinozism,” which implied that the material world, mankind, and even God, were all bound by invariable “necessary relations.”6 However, Montesquieu insists that man is not merely a physical being: Man, as a physical being, is, like other bodies, governed by invariable laws. As an intelligent being, he incessantly transgresses the laws established by God, and changes those which he himself has established. [. . .] He is left to his own direction, though he is a limited being, subject like all finite intelligences, to ignorance and error even the imperfect knowledge he has, he loses as a sensible creature, and is hurried away by a thousand impetuous passions. (SL-N 1.1)
In defiance of Hobbes, he rejects the idea that there is no higher law of justice which transcends positive laws and, by the end of chapter one, he
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has attempted to distance himself from any affinity with materialism or naturalism, but without providing the kind of supporting argument that would satisfy logicians.7 In fact, he simply makes the bald statement that humans, as free intelligent beings, but subject to ignorance and error, do not always act in perfect conformity with the laws of either the material or the moral universe. In the next chapter (“Of the laws of nature”) Montesquieu, unlike the natural law thinkers, makes no reference to a social contract; we are simply informed that the state of nature is one of peace, where natural man, whose basic needs are those of preservation of himself and the species, is (or rather will become), a creature endowed with rationality, sociability and religious sentiment. The formation of civil societies, in all their diversity, is a creative response to the anarchy or “state of war” which came about on leaving the state of nature. In all this Montesquieu differs from Hobbes, who had portrayed the state of nature as already one of war; he differs also from Pufendorf and Locke, who had assumed that natural man was already a fully developed “reasonable and sociable being.” Montesquieu, in this respect anticipating Rousseau, transforms the theory of the state of nature by introducing the concept of temporal development: Man, in a state of nature, would “have the faculty of knowing before he had acquired any knowledge” and, with regard to religion, “The law, which, impressing on our minds the idea of a Creator, inclines us toward him, is the first in importance, though not in order, of natural laws.” Chapter 3 of Book 1 is devoted to positive laws. Grotius and his successors believed that natural law provides the standard by which these laws are to be judged; but this does not mean there should be absolute uniformity, indeed, it was agreed that positive laws, while respecting the basic rules of justice, and morality should take into account time, place and general circumstances. As for the problem of diversity, the natural lawyers believed that the skeptics had overstated their case and that the existence of revolting or absurd laws (for example, those permitting cannibalism or human sacrifice) merely proved that in some countries people are ignorant and have no awareness of any higher moral law; thus, it was argued, the examples quoted by the skeptics no more invalidate the rules of eternal justice than the inability of some people to count invalidates the rules of mathematics. In fact, the natural lawyers agree that the precepts of natural law can be embodied successfully in positive laws.8 Thus Barbeyrac states that these principles are inscribed in the hearts of all human beings, to whom the Creator has given naturally virtuous
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inclinations, and he quotes Bayle, who had written that “no legislator has been able to pass laws which were all bad.”9 While these thinkers anticipate Montesquieu in rejecting the skeptical view that diversity indicates that mankind are governed solely by la fantaisie, they do not believe that positive laws can be treated systematically in the same way as natural laws. Grotius writes: For Natural Laws being always the same, can easily be brought under the rule of art: But those that owe their origin to some human establishment, and changing often in the same place, do not lend themselves to systematic treatment, any more than other ideas of particular things.10
Similar views are expressed by Pufendorf, for whom positive law “is not founded on the general constitution of human nature but purely and simply on the will of the legislator.”11 Barbeyrac agrees and concludes that the will of a superior “is the only basis of this kind of law which, for this reason, is called arbitrary.”12 Thus, it was generally agreed that, whereas from “the nature of things” it was possible to deduce natural laws, this was not possible for positive laws. It is at this point that Montesquieu claims that he can, in fact, do what the natural lawyers thought impossible: to deduce not only natural laws but also positive laws from “the nature of things.” Montesquieu now presents, in chapter 3, his fundamental principles, or rather two sets of principles which involve two complementary perspectives on his subject, which, for clarity we designate as (A) and (B). The first, (A), is as follows: [Laws] should be relative to the nature and principle of the actual or intended government; whether they form this principle, as in the case of political laws, or whether they support it, as may be said of civil institutions.
The second, (B): [Laws] should be relative to the climate whether hot or cold, of each country, to the quality of the soil, to its situation and bigness, to the manner of living of the natives, whether husbandmen, huntsmen or shepherds; they should have a relation to the degree of liberty which the constitution will bear, to the religion of the inhabitants, to their inclinations, riches, number, commerce, manners and customs. In fine, they have relations amongst themselves, as also to their origin, with the object of the legislator, and with the order of things on which they are established, in all which different lights they ought to be considered.
And he concludes, offering a definition of what is to be understood by the term “Esprit des lois”: “This is what I have undertaken to perform in the following work. These relations I shall examine, which form all together what we call the Spirit of Laws.”
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That perspective A (on the nature and principle of each government) is more important than perspective B (devoted to what he calls “other more particular relations”) is made clear in the concluding paragraph of this chapter: I shall first examine the relations which laws have with the nature and principle of each government; and as this principle has a strong influence on laws, I shall make it my business to understand it thoroughly; and, if I can but once establish it, the laws will soon appear to flow from hence as from their source. I shall proceed afterwards to other more particular relations.13
There would also be a historical perspective (C), when, at the last moment, Montesquieu decided to add four books (27, 28, 30, 31) on the origin and history of Roman and French laws.
How exactly did Montesquieu hope to achieve what had been deemed impossible by Grotius, Pufendorf and Barbeyrac? The answer is that while accepting that the definition of natural man as a rational and sociable creature is a valid starting point for the discovery of general natural laws, a new set of definitions was needed to explain positive laws. Thus, natural law, while remaining the criterion of justice and morality, recedes into the background of the enquiry, while the foreground is occupied by definitions of different forms of government (monarchy, republic and despotism) from which Montesquieu deduces by the rules of logic the laws appropriate to each. It is to this procedure that he refers in the preface: I have laid down the first principles, and have found that the particular cases follow naturally from them; that the histories of all nations are only consequences of them; and that every particular law is connected with another law, or depends on some other of a more general extent.
Montesquieu defines each of the three forms of government first in terms of its “nature” or structure: In a republic, power is in the hands of the few (aristocracy) or the many (democracy); in a monarchy, it is in the hands of one person, but there are fixed laws, and the power of the monarch is limited by intermediary bodies and a depository of laws; in despotism power is exercised by one person who rules according to personal caprice. Each of these forms of government has its “principle,” or springs of action, a “passion” which can be deduced from its “nature”: In republics it is virtue (good citizenship and love of one’s country), in monarchy it is
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honor (a code derived from the ancient tradition of chivalry and which includes respect for ranks and distinctions)14 and in despotism it is fear. The wealth of factual information that accompanies these descriptions can give the impression that Montesquieu works from facts to principles. This is, however, a misunderstanding; his definitions and descriptions, though obviously inspired by his knowledge of real republics, monarchies and despotisms, have the status, not of empirical generalizations, but of abstract models or ideal types. This he makes clear at the end of Book 3: Such are the principles of the three forms of government: which does not imply that in a particular republic, they actually are, but that they ought to be, virtuous: nor does it prove, that, in a particular monarchy, they are actuated by honor, or, in a particular despotic government, by fear; but that they ought to be directed by these principles; otherwise the government is imperfect.
Montesquieu’s method is to construct abstract models or ideal types, and it is here we find those long sought-after principles which he mentions in the preface and which in fact constitute one of his most important contributions to political philosophy.15 The construction of abstract models enables him to understand the inner logic of each form of government and to deduce from its nature and principle the whole series of political and civil laws which follow. Thus, in republics, where the people have the supreme power, it follows that the laws establishing the right of citizens to vote are of supreme importance as are the ideals of equality and frugality and these have implications for laws covering education, the distribution of wealth, taxation and inheritance. Similarly, in monarchy the rules of logic dictate certain consequences that follow from the definition, for example that education should teach respect for social rank and that luxury, rather than frugality, is to be encouraged. At the same time this methodology explains how a republic or monarchy can collapse into despotism, if the principle of virtue in the first or of honor in the second is corrupted and ceases to function. As for despotism, it has its own simple, but terrifying logic, which is that the strong rule by brute force while the weak simply obey. While Montesquieu works in terms of abstract models, his conclusions are relevant to the real world and he proudly gives examples from past and present of how positive laws confirm his deductions; thus, he can write, “What I have here advanced is confirmed by the unanimous testimony of historians and is extremely agreeable to the nature of things” (SL-N 2.3). When he finds cases which are atypical, his theory permits him to explain these in terms of the factors enumerated in perspective (B),
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or in terms of corruption of the principle, to which he devotes Book 8 (“Of the corruption of the principles of the three governments”). In addition to the types of government described above, Montesquieu adds a chapter (SL-N 11.6) on the English constitution, where he demonstrates how political liberty is achieved by laws which protect the citizens from the abuse of power. This comes about, first by a system of balance between King, Lords and Commons and secondly by the functional distinction and separation (which admits of certain exceptions) of the executive, legislative and judicial powers.16 That Montesquieu is once again setting up an ideal model is confirmed at the end of chapter six: “It is not my business to examine, whether the English actually enjoy this liberty, or not. Sufficient it is for my purpose to observe that it is established by their laws; and I inquire no further.” It is not, however, a model in the same sense as his descriptions of the three forms of government; whereas, in the ancient and modern worlds, he could find abundant examples of republic, monarchy and despotism, the English form was unique – “a republic disguised under the form of a monarchy” (SL-N 5.19) – and there was no suggestion that it might be reproduced elsewhere; its significance was that it taught that liberty was endangered if one person or one body accumulated two or all of the executive, legislative and judicial powers. He will return to the English model in a later chapter (SL-N 19.27). In the meantime, he completes this section on political liberty as determined by the constitution, in two books (12 and 13) devoted to personal liberty, which consists in security, or in the opinion people have of their security (SL-N 11.1). The first concentrates on criminal law and procedure in the different forms of government, the second on economic policy and taxation.
éé Following the books on the different types of government, Montesquieu moves to perspective (B), devoted to “more particular relations”: Books 14–18, on climate and physical environment, followed by Book 19 in which he presents the important theory of the Esprit général. There is an enormous amount of factual information here and it is tempting to assume that Montesquieu has now abandoned his deductive methodology, particularly since Book 14 opens with an account of an experiment on the effect of hot and cold on a sheep’s tongue. However, this crude isolated experiment is presented as no more than a confirmation of his theory regarding the effects on humans of hot and cold
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climates according to which people are more vigorous and more independent in the north than in the south and that republic and monarchy are normally found in countries with cold or moderate climates, whereas there is a connection between hot climates and despotism. It is obvious that there is frequent divergence between the theory and the facts; for example, Russia, a northern country which has a cold climate, is a despotism. Such divergences do not necessarily invalidate the general theory, or at least such was the opinion of Rousseau, who writes, in Du Contrat social with reference to the Esprit des lois: Let us always distinguish general laws from particular causes, which can alter their effect. If the whole of the South were covered with republics, and the whole of the North with despotic states, it would be no less true that by the effect of climate, despotism is best suited to hot countries, barbarism to cold countries, and good government to the intermediate regions. I can see that in accepting the principle, there can be disagreements about how it is to be applied: It can be said that there are cold countries which are very fertile and southern ones that are very arid. But this is a difficulty only for those who do not take all the different relations between things into account. (III, 8)
Montesquieu would have agreed: His simplified models are valid only for “pure” cases and it was essential to take account of what Rousseau calls “all the different relations”; this he does, for example in the case of Russia, which is a despotism, not on account of its climate, but because of its size and isolation from the rest of the world, along with the heavyhanded policy of Russian rulers who imposed from above reforms incompatible with established customs and manners. It is obviously a mistake to interpret these books as a rigid theory of environmental determinism, according to which life in society is shaped entirely by factors over which human beings have no control. It is significant that chapter 5 of Book 14 is entitled “That those are bad legislators who favored the vices of the climate, and good legislators who opposed those vices.” As an example of bad legislation he refers to slavery, which though it can be related to environmental factors (particularly to a hot climate, which saps human energy and makes men reluctant to work) is contrary to “the nature of things,” that is to say to natural law, not to the natural law of revealed religion, but to that universal secular natural law deduced logically from “the nature of things,” that is to say from the nature of mankind as endowed with rationality and sociability17 (SL-N 15.2). Montesquieu’s strategy in his study of environmental factors is first to examine the influence of climate and terrain separately and then to
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attempt a synthesis (including other factors) in his theory of the Esprit général. The Esprit général is shaped over a period of time by a multitude of interrelated factors, some physical, some moral. Any sudden change imposed by the government and which shocks the habitual ideas of a nation is a form of tyranny (SL-N 19.3); the duty of the legislator is defined as follows: “It is the business of the legislator to follow the spirit of the nation, when it is not contrary to the principles of government; for we do nothing so well as when we act with freedom, and follow the bent of our natural genius” (SL-N 19.5). The words “when it is not contrary to the principles of government” indicate that far-reaching reforms are sometimes necessary. In establishing guidelines for such reform Montesquieu distinguishes laws from customs and manners: The first are precise enactments made by the legislator, the others are products of human sociability, and reflect human values at the time and place in which they appear. While laws can be changed by new laws, customs and manners should be changed, not by laws, but by the example of other customs and manners. Montesquieu’s ideal legislator is Solon who, being asked if the laws he had given the Athenians were the best, replied, “‘I have given them the best they were able to bear.’ A fine expression that ought to be perfectly understood by all legislators” (SL-N 19.21). In the final chapter of the book on the Esprit général (SL-N 19.27) Montesquieu returns to the subject of the English constitution. In the earlier chapter (SL-N 11.6) he describes the “nature” or formal structure of the English system but says nothing of its “principle,” the human passions that make it function. That Montesquieu was aware that it was insufficient simply to describe the English system as a piece of constitutional machinery is clear from the following comment: “I have spoken in the eleventh book of a free people, I have laid down the principle of their constitution: Let us now see the effects which ought to follow, the character which may be formed, and the manners which result from it” (SL-N 19.1).18 What is unusual here is that, instead of describing the influence of the Esprit général on the laws, Montesquieu is reversing his usual approach and examining the influence of the laws (the constitution) on the character of the people. This makes sense, however, if one takes into consideration that the English were immensely proud of their constitutional history which they saw in terms of the defeat of the Divine Right philosophy of the Catholic Stuart kings followed by the triumph of parliamentary government and Protestantism. There can no doubt that the Revolution Settlement, as a symbol of liberty, had a considerable influence on English public opinion and everything it
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stood for was reinforced by the defeat of the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745. This chapter also contains a description of how, in practice, the relation between the legislative and executive powers actually works. Montesquieu presents a power struggle between two rival political groups, those who habitually support the government and those who, mainly for selfish reasons, are more or less permanently in opposition. This touches on an important constitutional issue: the relations between King and Parliament. It was normal practice at this time for offices and pensions to be distributed by the King or his ministers to members of the legislature in return for their support. This was frequently denounced as a form of corruption which increased the power of the Crown and tended to reduce Parliament to a rubber stamp. However, officeholders were never so numerous that ministers could always rely on an automatic majority in favor of government policy and a serious effort had to be made to win the support of those members who had no party allegiance. It is to this aspect of parliamentary practice that Montesquieu refers: These parties being made up of free men, if the one takes too much upon them, the effect of liberty will be, that this very party will be humbled whenever the citizens, as the hands which succor the body, shall combine to relieve the other.
This passage, with its reference to the moderating influence of “the citizens,” uses the same arguments as Hume’s essay “On the Independence of Parliament,” where it is explained that the balance of the constitution is preserved thanks to the support of those public-spirited members of Parliament, who have no party allegiance.19 It is obvious that something more than the confrontation between two hostile factions is required to preserve the balance of the constitution and English liberty. In his Notes sur l’Angleterre, Montesquieu writes: “A true Englishman must seek to defend liberty equally against attempts to subvert [the constitution] by the Crown and by Parliament.” What motivates a “true Englishman” to defend the constitution is neither the principle of honor of monarchies nor the virtue of republics; it is the love of liberty; liberty is the supreme value, but it is not seen as an abstract principle; it is deeply embedded in the natural affections, in the Esprit général of the English, and in their customs, manners and traditions. It is not a mere word or a grand political theory but a way of life and set of values embodied in the English system of government. These general considerations on the Esprit général are followed by books on commerce, population and religion. Book 20 opens with three
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brief chapters devoted to the paradoxical nature of commerce, which on the one hand widens people’s outlook, destroys harmful prejudices, encourages peace between nations and inspires gentle customs and manners, while on the other hand, it can lead to the subordination of morality to the desire to make a profit. These observations are not deduced from a general theory of political economy; indeed, Montesquieu has no such theory, though he is familiar with the traditional principles of mercantilism and on the other hand seems at times to anticipate the liberal free-trade theories of writers of the next generation (Gournay, Quesnay and Adam Smith). In fact, he treats political economy not as an autonomous subject, but in its relation to government and society.20 In Book 20 (“Of laws in relation to commerce, considered in its nature and distinctions”) Montesquieu, in his usual manner, establishes the “necessary relations” between commerce and different forms of government, along with the influence of physical and moral factors, not least of religion, which in some cases inhibits commerce by condemning credit and usury. In Book 21 (“Of laws relative to commerce, considered in the revolutions it has met with in in the world”) we find a broader approach; realizing that commerce is not a static phenomenon but something which must be studied in the context of changes brought about by conquests, colonization, discoveries and advances in technological knowledge, Montesquieu presents a historical survey of commerce from the ancient to the modern world. This is followed by Book 22 (“Of laws in relation to the use of money”) which offers considerations on the use of money, including various aspects of banking and rates of interest. Book 23 (“Of laws in the relation they bear to the number of inhabitants”), written on the widely held (false) assumption that the population of the world was decreasing, is a straightforward example of Montesquieu’s methodology. Factors favoring and disfavoring both depopulation and overpopulation are listed and examined. In the two books devoted to religion (24 and 25) Montesquieu’s assumption is that religion, like sociability, has a foundation in human nature, and just as sociability, influenced by environmental and other factors, leads mankind to create customs and laws, so it is with religion.21 Unsurprisingly, Montesquieu finds in religion just as much diversity as in political institutions, and he believes that this can be explained, at least in part, by those factors which make up the Esprit général. Thus, he can write, with reference to the north-south division of the Christian religion into Protestant and Catholic, “the people of the north have, and will
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forever have a spirit of liberty and independence, which the people of the south have not; and therefore a religion, which has no visible head, is more agreeable to the independency of the climate than that which has one” (SL-N 25.6). Montesquieu informs the reader that his concern is not to distinguish true from false religions, but to concentrate on their moral, political and social influence, and it is to tolerance (with certain reservations) that he gives his support. While he attacks various Christian institutions (such as monasticism) as harmful he is generally favorable to Christianity, the principles of which “deeply engraved on the heart, would be infinitely more powerful than the false honor of monarchy, than the humane virtues of republics, or the servile fear of despotic states” (SL-N 24.6).
The most interesting of these books are those devoted to the origins of the French monarchy, a highly controversial subject on which the leading authorities at this time were Henri, comte de Boulainvilliers and JeanBaptiste Dubos. Montesquieu rejects the view of the first that the French form of government, if it were to be true to its origins, would offer places in government and administration only to the descendants of the ancient nobility; he rejects likewise that of Dubos, who claimed to demonstrate that France was, and should remain, a pure absolute monarchy. Montesquieu’s view is that the origins of the French (as of the English) monarchy are to be found in the German tribes described by Tacitus, where the organization was of a leader and free men who were his companions. Eventually hereditary fiefs were established, and it is here that Montesquieu finds the origin of a class of nobles (less exclusive than in Boulainvilliers) who form an intermediate power which is a legitimate component of this form of government. He could feel, therefore, that his historical research confirmed his theory of monarchy as described in the first section of his work.
Book 26, entitled “On the manner of composing laws,” highlights two major, related themes: moderate government versus despotism and diversity versus uniformity.
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Moderate governments are those where power is limited and the citizens protected from arbitrary rule, but for a fuller understanding of moderation it is necessary to refer back to earlier sections of the work: Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments, and even there it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power: but constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry its authority as far as it will go. Is it not strange, though, to say, that virtue itself has need of limits? (SL-N 11.4)
Republican government is moderate insofar as power is shared by all those who qualify as citizens and the principle is civic virtue. On the other hand, the judiciary is not independent, and in its democratic form a republic is “not by its nature free,” since freedom of the people can easily be confused with “the power of the people” and equality taken to extremes can lead to anarchy or despotism (SL-N 11.2–11.3). Montesquieu also has reservations about aristocracy, where the minority in power can abuse their privileged position at the expense of the majority. As for monarchy, he believes that the European monarchies with which he was familiar had been corrupted. In France he attributes this corruption to the centralizing policies of Richelieu and Louis XIV, which had weakened the intermediary orders and the parlements. Montesquieu’s theory implies approval of the restoration measures which followed the death of Louis XIV, when the parlements recovered their right of remonstrance and aristocratic councils were created in an attempt to involve the nobility in administration. However, these new arrangements were unsuccessful: The nobles were incompetent and the parlements were constantly at loggerheads with the government. Nonetheless, Montesquieu persists in referring to “the excellence of a monarchical government” and writes the following hyperbolic appreciation: It is in monarchies we behold the subject encircling the throne, and cheered by the irradiance of the sovereign; there it is that each person, filling, as it were a larger space, is capable of exercising those virtues which adorn the soul, not with independence, but with true dignity and greatness. (SL-N 5.12)
Again, he writes: The monarchies we are acquainted with have not [. . .] liberty for their direct view: the only aim is the glory of the subject, of the state, of the sovereign. But from hence there results a spirit of liberty, which in those states is capable of achieving
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as great things, and of contributing as much, perhaps, to happiness as liberty itself. (SL-N 11.7)
As for the English model, Montesquieu has certain reservations: The abolition of the intermediary powers brings with it considerable risks by strengthening the power of the monarch (SL-N, 2,4), and the corruption of the legislative power would lead to the collapse of the whole delicate system. With regard to despotism,22 in an earlier chapter Montesquieu had written: After what has been said, one would imagine that human nature should perpetually rise up against despotism. But, notwithstanding the love of liberty, so natural to mankind, notwithstanding their innate detestation of force and violence, most nations are subject to this very government. (SL-N 5.4)
This passage should be read alongside the following, referring to how, in fact, human nature, can “rise up against despotism”: Jornandes the Goth called the North of Europe the forge of the human race. I should rather call it the forge where those weapons were framed which broke the chains of southern nations. In the North were formed those valiant people who sallied forth and deserted their countries to destroy tyrants and slaves, and to teach men, that, nature having made them equal, reason could not render them dependent, except where it was necessary for their happiness. (SL-N 17.5)
However, this is no more than a rhetorical flourish; Montesquieu was not hoping that barbarian liberators would arrive at the gates and, in a more sober mood, he notes that such external intervention would not reform despotism: Despotism, being totally corrupt, can be succeeded only by another despotism. Does this mean that some countries will be permanently locked into despotism? Montesquieu, it seems, believes their only hope lies in enlightenment and this is encouraged by the growth of commerce which, though it can lead to various forms of corruption has a beneficial effect: Let us not be astonished, then, if our manners are now less savage than formerly, commerce has everywhere diffused a knowledge of the manners of all nations; these are compared with one another, and from this comparison arise the greatest advantages of commerce. (SL-N 20.1)
Not unrelated to the benefits of trade and commerce are improvements which have made the laws of nations: “I leave the reader to judge how far we have improved upon the ancient. We must give due commendations to our modern refinements in reason, religion, philosophy and manners” (SL-N 10.3).
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While Montesquieu cannot find a ready and easy way of reforming despotic states, he can at least offer advice on how to resist tendencies which endanger moderate governments, particularly the ideas of uniformity: There are certain ideas of uniformity, which sometimes strike great geniuses, (for they even affected Charlemagne) but infallibly make an impression on little souls. They discover therein a kind of perfection, because it is impossible for them not to discover it; the same weights in the police, the same measures in commerce, the same laws in the state, the same religion in all its parts. But is this always right, and without exception? Is the evil of changing always less than that of suffering? And does not a greatness of genius consist rather in distinguishing between those cases in which uniformity is requisite, and those in which there is a necessity for differences? In China, the Chinese are governed by the Chinese ceremonial, and the Tartars by theirs, and yet there is no nation in the world that aims so much at tranquility. If the people observe the laws, what signifies it whether these laws are the same. (SL-N 29.18)
This passage reflects Montesquieu’s hostility to projects to simplify and systematize the mixture of customary and Roman laws which existed in France, but his observations also have a broader application, condemning legislators who do not take account of that diversity which is the result of historical development where laws have been tailored to fit local circumstances, a point already stressed in Book 1: Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth; the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied. They should be adapted in such a manner to the people for whom they are framed, that it is a great chance if those of one nation suit another. (SL-N 19.3)
As has been seen, Montesquieu regards imposing laws from above as a form of tyranny and for his view on this topic one must refer to the chapters on the Esprit général, where he argues “that it is necessary people’s minds be prepared for the reception of the best laws” (SL-N 19). Indeed, such is his disapproval of this kind of tyranny that he writes a chapter entitled “That everything ought not to be corrected” (SL-N 19.6), for since everything is interconnected rashly to change a law may have unpredictable effects on the whole legal system. This does not prevent him from deciding that, in certain cases, it is legitimate to appeal to (secular) natural law and to demand direct intervention from the legislator.23 Indeed, mankind can behave in a way which is “unnatural,” that is to say which is inspired by the non-rational side of their nature and contradicts their natural sociability. It is in terms of this theory, that
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Montesquieu denounces despotism as a monstrous or “unnatural” form of government in which, all traces of humanity (including reason, sociability and moral values) are destroyed and where humans, deprived of freedom of choice, are no longer thinking, valuing or creative persons, but mere dehumanized subjects of naked power. A moderate government is one wherein by trial and error in the course of history, there have emerged diverse regimes which are appropriate to time and place and where humans, defined as creatures endowed with reason, sociability and creativity, can flourish. It is here, in this definition and its implications for our common humanity, that we find the foundations of Montesquieu’s political philosophy.
Notes 1 Citations are from the translation by Thomas Nugent, The Spirit of Laws, 2 vols. (London: Nourse and Vaillant, 1750). Translations from other works are my own. 2 Courtney, “Montesquieu and the problem of ‘la diversité,’” 61–81. 3 Quotations from Mes Pensées are from the following edition: Montesquieu, Pensées (1991). For the natural law background to Montesquieu see Courtney, “Montesquieu and Natural Law,” 41–67; see also Waddicor, Montesquieu and the Philosophy. 4 The relevant works, translated by Barbeyrac, with his introductions and notes, are as follows: Grotius, Le Droit (1724); Pufendorf, Le Droit de la nature. Quotations are from the Barbeyrac editions and adapted from the following English translations: Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace (1738) and Pufendorf, Of the Law of Nature and Nations (1749). 5 Pufendorf, Translator’s Preface, p. vi. 6 For the hostile reception by theologians see Montesquieu, (OC 1:300). 7 Montesquieu, in his Défense de l’Esprit des lois (1750) rejects with contempt the objections of his ecclesiastical critics, whose arguments made, in fact, many valid points in attacking what they regarded as the logical incoherence of Book one. For an examination of this book from the logical point of view, see Binoche, Introduction à “De l’Esprit des lois,” 31–40. 8 Natural law provides abstract general rules by which concrete cases can be judged; it does not provide detailed blueprints for forms of government. 9 Pufendorf, I, ii, §4. 10 Grotius, Le Droit, “Preliminary Discourse,” §31. 11 Pufendorf, I, vi, §18. 12 Grotius, I, i, 13 note 1. 13 Similarly, in his Réponses et explications données à la Faculté de Théologie (1752–4) he will speak of the theory of the principles of the different forms of government as “of a fecundity so great that they form my book almost in its entirety” (OC 1:255).
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14 How the principle of honor functions is not quite clear. It is a traditional code of behavior which applies most obviously to the nobility, but in the final analysis it is beneficial to society as a whole. In times of war the nobility earn admiration by their readiness to sacrifice themselves for king and country, and in times of peace they stand for a certain tradition of polite manners which enhance social life. Particularly important is that their code of honor reduces the power of the monarch who, though absolute, would be ill-advised to force them to perform anything dishonorable. For discussion of Montesquieu’s concept of honor see Mosher, “Monarchy’s Paradox,” 159–230 and Krause, Liberalism with Honor. 15 See Cassirer, The Philosophy. According to Cassirer, Montesquieu “is the first thinker to grasp and to express clearly the concept of ‘ideal types’ in history,” 209–16. See also Raymond Aron who makes a distinction between the understanding of historical development and of diversity: “We make development intelligible when we reveal the underlying causes which have determined the general direction of events. We make diversity intelligible when we organize it within the compass of a small number of types or concepts,” Aron, Main Currents, I, 20. 16 These exceptions are the following: The King had certain legislative functions (the right to veto, or refuse to veto bills); the House of Lords and House of Commons had judicial functions (impeachment of servants of the Crown) and the House of Lords had the right to act as a court of law to try its members. See Gwyn, The Meaning, and M. J. C. Vile, Constitutionalism. 17 According to Montesquieu, slavery is contrary both to civil law and natural law (SL-N 15.2). 18 For a more detailed analysis see Courtney, “Morals and Manners,” 31–48. See also Rahe, “Forms of Government,” 69–108. 19 Hume, Political Essays, 505 20 For Montesquieu on commerce, see Larrère, “Montesquieu on economics,” 335–74. 21 See Kingston, “Montesquieu on Religion,” 375–408. 22 Krause, “Despotism,” 231–72. 23 See the chapter entitled “Of natural modesty,” “When [. . .] the physical nature of certain climates violates the natural law of the two sexes, and that of intelligent beings, it belongs to the legislature to make civil laws, with a view of opposing the nature of the climate [qui forcent la nature du climat] and reestablishing the primitive laws” (SL-N 16.12).
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7 Montesquieu on Virtue David W. Carrithers
When we think of moralists, Montesquieu does not spring immediately to mind,1 and it is true that he did not compose a treatise on morals on the scale of Shaftesbury’s Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit (1699), Hume’s Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (1748), or Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). But in writing his magisterial treatise, The Spirit of the Laws (1748), he clearly had a moral purpose in mind, affirming in his Preface that he would be “the happiest of mortals” if the result of his work would be that “everyone had new reasons for loving his duties, his prince, his homeland and his laws.” It is in “seeking to instruct men,” he continued, “that one can practice the general virtue that includes love of all.” Moreover, in a discarded fragment of his Preface he described his work as “a treatise on morality” that would be useful in educating young princes, better instructing them how to rule “than vague exhortations to govern well, to be great princes, [and] to make their subjects happy” (SL Pref., p. xliv; MT 1864, 1865). The need for moral virtue frequently surfaced in Montesquieu’s writings. Virtue, he contended, should be “the eternal object of our pursuits” and “should be rewarded much more than it has been” (MT 1259). While he praised progress in the “natural” sciences, he expressed regret at the lack of advancement in the “moral” sciences, noting that “[s]ince the Greeks and Romans, moral good and evil have become an opinion rather than an object of knowledge” (MT 1871). He singled out Abbé Saint-Pierre as an exception to the modern practice of valuing science above morality, lauding him for continually emphasizing the importance of morality in politics. The “illustrious abbé,” he observed, deserves great praise for his proposals of “various schemes, all designed to bring good.” He was “the best good man who ever was” (MT 1295, 1876).2 113
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In a number of writings that have received comparatively little attention Montesquieu addressed ethical themes.3 In his In Praise of Sincerity (c. 1717) he stressed the importance of speaking candidly to our friends in order to make us their moral tutors.4 In Letters from Xenocrates to Pheres (1724) he criticized Philip, Duke of Orléans, libertine regent of France (1715–23), for failing to reward virtue, remarking that the Duke “does not believe in virtues” and is “wholly unaware of the infinite distance that exists between the honest and the wicked man.”5 In his unfinished Treatise on Duties (1725) he analyzed our moral duties and posited, contra Hobbes, the existence of eternal absolutes of justice traceable to nature while warning against acting on self-interest, a base “animal instinct” undermining benevolence.6 It is benevolence, he explained in his Discourse on the Equity that Must Determine Judgments and the Execution of the Laws (1725), that enables us to display “humanity, decency, and affability” – traits that are particularly important for judges who decide legal suits and punish law-breakers.7 In still other writings influenced by ethical concerns Montesquieu focused on political events and historical personages offering us moral instruction. In his Dialogue between Sulla and Eucrates (1724) he excoriated the Roman general and dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138–78 BC) for paving the way for Caesar by twice marching his armies on Rome and resorting to proscriptions to eliminate his political enemies.8 In his Dialogue between Xanthippus and Xenocrates (1727) he praised the Spartan mercenary general Xanthippus for aiding the Carthaginians after the Romans refused to accept their offer of peace during the first Punic war (264–241 BCE).9 In On Politics (1725) he attempted to dissuade princes from adopting the ruthless tactics discussed by Machiavelli in The Prince (1516), and in his Reflections on the Character of Certain Princes and Certain Events in Their Lives (1731–3) he demonstrated through historical examples that the immoral acts of princes, aside from violating human duties, lessen rather than augment their power.10 In Reflections on Universal Monarchy in Europe (1734) he again emphasized the need to inject morality into international relations while explaining why no modern state could hope to create empire on the Roman scale.11
’ Montesquieu’s interest in moral philosophy can be traced to his classical schooling at the collège de Juilly (1700–5) where he first embarked on close study of Cicero’s life and writings.12 Years later, he wrote a
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panegyrical Discourse on Cicero (1715) stating that it was Cicero, who “always subordinated all his passions, his fear, and his courage to wisdom and reason” and was the Ancient he “would most like to resemble.” Cicero, he noted, surpassed other Romans in “strength and courage,” particularly in delivering his Philippics, those courageous speeches attacking Marc Antony (83–30 BCE) for continuing to push Rome toward autocracy following the assassination of Julius Caesar. Montesquieu also praised Cicero for being a shrewd judge of character who perceived long before others that Caesar posed a dire threat to the Roman republic and should not have been allowed to remain governor of Gaul beyond the legal five-year term or seek the consulship in absentia. It was not only Cicero’s actions, however, that Montesquieu greatly admired. “Reading his works,” he observed, “elevates the heart no less than the mind.” His writings teach us “the scope of our duties, [. . .] what is honorable and beneficial, what we owe to society, what we owe to ourselves, and what we should do as heads of families or as citizens.”13 Montesquieu’s admiration for Cicero caused him to reflect deeply on the importance of moral duties. Drawing inspiration from Cicero’s De Officiis (“On Duties”) and also from Samuel Pufendorf’s work on that subject,14 he composed in 1725 his Traité des devoirs (“Treatise on Duties”), which he read to the Academy of Bordeaux. The manuscript of this unfinished work is no longer extant, but his friend Jean-Jacques Bel published a summary in the March 1726 edition of the Bibliothèque Française, which included quotations from Montesquieu’s text.15 In the first chapter Montesquieu addressed “duties in general,” contending that “God is their universal object, in the sense that he must fill all our desires and occupy all our thoughts.” He also expressed his firm belief, contra Spinoza, in a creator God. “Those who have said that a blind fate has produced all the effects we see in the world,” he concluded, “have uttered a great absurdity: For what greater absurdity is there than a blind fate which has produced creatures which are not blind?”16 In subsequent chapters Montesquieu discussed the importance of prioritizing justice as our highest aim, asserting, contra Hobbes, that “justice is not dependent on human laws.” Justice is “the foundation of society,” and we must make “a habit of that virtue and the ways to acquire it to the highest degree. [. . .] Most virtues are only particular relations,” he continued, “but justice is a general relation” that “concerns man in relation to all men,” rather than being a duty owed to some particular individuals. Montesquieu stressed that “all particular duties cease when one can no longer fulfill them without going against the duties of man.” He also
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surveyed “the principal philosophical schools” of Antiquity, expressing a strong preference for Stoicism. “If I could for a moment cease to think that I am a Christian,” he wrote, “I would not be able to keep from putting the destruction of the school of Zeno among the misfortunes of humankind.” The Stoics rightly taught that man is “made for society” and that the destiny of man is “to work for that society” rather than pursuing self-interest.17 Montesquieu established a rank order of virtues to emphasize his belief that the moral virtues take precedence over political virtues. Since all mankind are our brethren, we must not think “of the good of the fatherland, when the good of humankind is at issue. [. . .] The duty of the citizen is a crime when it makes us neglect the duty of man,” as when the Spanish nearly exterminated the Aztecs and Incas of America in their pursuit of empire.18 Montesquieu drew a sharp distinction between the “noble” Greeks who bravely and justifiably defended themselves from Persian invaders and the rapacious Spanish who conquered the natives of the Americas to satisfy their lust for gold and silver.19 The need for moral virtue to provide a check on political excess became a dominant theme in Montesquieu’s Considerations on the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline (1734) where he expressed strong disapproval of Machiavelli’s praise of Roman virtù.20 According to Machiavelli, the Romans had succeeded in achieving their military goals because they excelled all other peoples in virtù, understood as valor, courage, and military strength rather than as wisdom, moderation, or goodness. It was their “excessive virtue” that enabled them to win victory after victory.21 In contrast to Machiavelli, Montesquieu spoke very critically of Roman virtù. In a chapter of his Considerations entitled “The Conduct the Romans Pursued to Subjugate All Peoples” he remarked that “not even the justice of brigands, who bring a certain honesty to the practice of crime, was to be found among the Romans.” They “inflicted unbelievable evils upon their enemies” (CR 6 p. 74). Because they believed military successes raised them to the rank of gods, they conquered “without motive, without utility. They laid waste the earth to exercise their virtue and show the excellence of their being” (MT 575). They “conquered all in order to destroy all” (SL 10.14, p. 150). Fortunately, modern peoples are a different breed. “Since we have begun to weigh the value of things a little better, heroes have been covered in ridicule, so much so that whoever wanted to defend them” would seem ridiculous (MT 575). Christianity, combined with the explosive growth of commerce, had so transformed attitudes toward war and conquest that a new spirit was discrediting “heroism,” rendering vainglory “a little
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ridiculous.” Glory now “enters only into the calculations of fools.” There will always be a need for “duty, virtue, zeal for the Prince, [and] love of country,” Montesquieu acknowledged, but the world has no need for any more Alexanders (MT 810). As for Machiavelli’s beloved Romans, they did great damage to the world: “[B]efore the Romans, the world was divided into countless small states,” but “the Romans destroyed them all” (MT 1247). They engaged in “the longest conspiracy against the World ever made” (MT 1483), destroying “the finest establishments in order to set up a single one, which could not support itself; they extinguished the liberty of the planet and then abused their own” (MT 1740). Montesquieu’s disapproval of Rome’s ruthless conquests suggests the influence of Cicero who had warned of the wreckage wrought by war and “the desire for glory.” War is a “pestilence,” Cicero wrote in On Duties, that fails to “entice and arouse other men to support what is beneficial to us.” Wars should be undertaken only to ensure “that we may live in peace, without injustice, and once victory has been secured, those who were not cruel or savage in warfare should be spared” and awarded Roman citizenship. The only just wars, he concluded, are those necessary to defend allies and preserve Rome’s dominance over other Latin peoples. Thus, the wars of Julius Caesar that “embraced entire countries and provinces under a single law of war” should not have been waged. And, above all, the Romans should have recognized that it is civic achievements, not military victories, that bring glory.22
Given Montesquieu’s abiding ethical concerns, it is not surprising that virtue became an important theme in his Persian Letters (1721). In letters 11–14 he presented the fable of the Troglodytes, a primitive people so immune to virtue and justice that they murdered, first a foreign king ruling over them, and then the magistrates elected to replace him, all to create opportunity for their destructive pursuit of self-interest which silences the voice of justice (PL 11, 81). Theft and murder were rampant, as was price gouging in the exchange of goods. Those performing services went unpaid, including practitioners of the medical arts, who responded by refusing to treat the sick during a plague. A culture so lacking in concern for the common good proved unsustainable, and nearly all the Troglodytes perished. Just two families survived, prospering because they lived apart, possessed a belief in God deriving from natural religion, and were led by fathers who taught their children that “the interest of the
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individual is always identical with the common interest.” These survivors “thought of themselves as a single family” and devoted themselves to serving the needs of others (PL 12, 13). They tended their flocks in common, caring little for matters of ownership. Unfortunately, however, their devotion to virtue waned.23 Instead of continuing to govern themselves, they chose a king who, in accepting the reins of power, tearfully observed that virtue had become so burdensome to his new subjects that they preferred to “obey his laws” rather than be guided by virtue because they knew that would enable them to “amass riches, and live a life of ease and self-indulgent pleasure” (PL 14). Montesquieu later composed a sequel to this tale in which, after this first grief-stricken king dies, the Troglodytes inform a new king that they wish to introduce commerce and the arts into their agrarian society. This new ruler, greatly alarmed, questions whether virtue can be sustained amidst wealth, only to be told that virtue will not lapse if he continues to bestow offices based on merit and seeks to school his subjects in the need for virtue. The new king approves the introduction of commerce into Troglodyte society, but cautions his subjects: “If you seek to distinguish yourselves solely by wealth, [. . .] I will certainly have to distinguish myself by the same means,” and “I will have to overwhelm you with taxes.” He also pledges to favor only those who display virtue. “O Troglodytes!” he proclaims. “We can be united by a beautiful bond: If you are virtuous, I will be; if I am virtuous, you will be” (MT 1616).24 Montesquieu never published this sequel, perhaps because his reading of Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees, or: Private vices, Public Benefits (1714) convinced him that although commerce is prejudicial to the virtue sustaining republics, self-interested pursuit of commercial wealth greatly benefits monarchies where the motivating passion is honor, not virtue, and where inequality is woven into the economic and social fabric.25 Montesquieu placed his most influential discussions of republican virtue in Books 2 through 8 of The Spirit of the Laws. In these texts his focus is mainly on Greek rather than Roman republics. “Virtue, in a republic, is a very simple thing,” he now asserts. “[I]t is love of the republic; it is a feeling and not a result of knowledge; the lowest man in the state, like the first, can have this feeling. . . . Love of the homeland leads to goodness of mores, and goodness of mores leads to love of the homeland” (SL 5.2). No longer do we encounter Montesquieu’s earlier concern, as in his comments on Rome, that political virtue eviscerates moral virtue. Political virtue, he now attests, lays the bedrock of moral virtue since it requires “a continuous preference of the public interest over
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one’s own,” and this produces all the individual virtues, which “are only that preference” (SL 4.5). Political virtue, like moral virtue inclines toward the “common good” and prevents interests from becoming “particularized” (SL 8.16). Regard for the “public good” does not come naturally, however, and can flourish only where equality and frugality foster a common outlook and where education inculcates patriotic sentiments. Republican citizens need to be trained to practice political virtue since it “is a renunciation of oneself, which is always a very painful thing” (SL 4.5). Moreover, such civic virtue, Montesquieu stresses, can only be sustained when “simple and austere” morals are safeguarded by a senate whose members are chosen for their “age, virtue, gravity and service” and by censors who stamp out “seeds of corruption” (SL 5.7, 5.19, p. 71). Assessing Montesquieu’s true feelings regarding republican virtue has long divided commentators. Some conclude that he was greatly enamored of the ancient political virtue he described, and for evidence they point to his remark that “when that virtue was in full force, things were done in those governments that we no longer see and that astonish our small souls” (SL 5.4) and his pejorative reference to “the dregs and corruptions of modern times” (SL 4.6, p. 37). Today, Montesquieu laments, we speak “only of manufacturing, finance, wealth, and even luxury” (SL 3.3). Other commentators read Montesquieu as a critic of the ancient virtuous republics, and they cite his contention that political virtue is an assault on human nature and involves painful self-renunciation, akin to what monks endure since they are deprived of all love except that of their monastic order (SL 4.5; 5.2). Analyzing Montesquieu’s views on the ancient republic of Sparta can greatly assist us in arriving at an accurate assessment of his true opinion regarding ancient civic virtue. Though the point is frequently missed, Montesquieu ended up a critic of Lycurgus, the legendary Spartan lawgiver, whom he blames for making the same mistake as Chinese legislators in failing to distinguish between laws and manners, customs, and religion.26 What Lycurgus failed to recognize, Montesquieu concluded, is that laws are the “particular and precise institutions of the legislator” whereas “mores and manners [are] the institutions of the nation in general,” and attempting to change them by law is tyrannical (SL 19.14). Lycurgus prohibited Spartan citizens from involvement in commerce, craftsmanship, or agriculture – pursuits he deemed “unworthy of a free man” that leave “no time for one’s friends or for the republic” – and the result was that he produced an idle and bellicose people displaying “roughness,” “anger,” and “cruelty” ‒ not “civility” (SL 4.8; 19.14; 16).
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Montesquieu was willing to acknowledge that “Lycurgus did all he could to make his citizens more warlike” (MT 1248) and that “Sparta was led to greatness and glory” and was “the last to yield to the Macedonians” (SL 4.6, p. 37), but this was only because Lycurgus turned Sparta into a society of “athletes and fighters” whose “ferocity” had to be moderated by tender music (SL 4.8, pp. 40–1). The Spartans were raised like a family, and every citizen was made responsible for monitoring the conduct of his fellow citizens. This custom produced an extremely repressive society where “each father had the right to correct the child of another” (SL 5.7, p. 51). Furthermore, Lycurgus took equality and frugality to such an extreme that, like Romulus in Rome, he equally divided the land (SL 5. 5, p. 44; MT 1748). Montesquieu’s response to this agrarian law was that “[o]ne is not always obliged to take extreme courses” (SL 5.7, p. 49). A less radical approach to achieving equality is to draft laws regulating “dowries, gifts, inheritances, [and] testaments” to ensure the poor are “comfortable enough to be able to work” and that “each rich person [. . .] needs to work” (SL 5.5 p. 45, 5.6, p. 48). Moderation should be the first rule in politics, Montesquieu famously asserted, since “the political good, like the moral good, is always found between two limits” (SL 29.1). Thus republics must avoid the spirit of extreme equality that makes citizens want to be “the equal of those chosen to command” and “want to do everything themselves: to deliberate for the senate, to execute for the magistrates and to cast aside all the judges.” When this happens, “[t]here will no longer be virtue” in the democracy (SL 8.2, p. 112). As in his fable of the Troglodytes in Persian Letters, Montesquieu poses the question whether wealth necessarily corrupts virtue. He now affirms that under the right conditions, such as existed in ancient Athens and Carthage – but not in Sparta – and much later in Marseilles, Florence, Venice, and Holland, a thriving commercial republic can sustain political virtue (SL 20.4). Combined with proper mores, “the spirit of commerce brings with it the spirit of frugality, economy, moderation, work, wisdom, tranquility, order, and rule” (SL 5.6). Moreover, in republics “where equality is not altogether lost, the spirit of commerce, of work, and of virtue makes each one there able and willing to live from his own goods,” and this curbs the desire for luxuries (SL 7.2).27 The corrosive effect of luxuries was one of the crucial lessons Montesquieu drew from Roman decline. “So far as luxury is established in a republic, so far does the spirit turn to the interest of the individual.” A taste for luxuries undermines concern for “the glory of the homeland” and “one’s own glory” and
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makes one “an enemy of the laws that hamper it” (SL 7.2). When the Romans became addicted to luxury, their desires spiraled out of control. “A jug of Falerian wine sold for one hundred Roman deniers; a barrel of salt meat from the Black Sea cost four hundred deniers; a good cook, four talents; young boys were priceless. When everyone, by a common impulse, was carried to voluptuousness, what became of virtue?” (SL 7.2). Luxury corrupts the morals of women, in particular (SL 7.14), and since the licentiousness of women in republics is “the last misfortune and an assurance of a change in the constitution” (SL 7.8), accusations of adultery should be made in public (SL 5.7, p. 50).
Montesquieu had much to say regarding the fate of virtue in monarchies. By the time he composed his Treatise on Duties (1725) he had grown convinced that the French people had for centuries experienced a decline in moral virtue, starting in the reign of Francis I (1515–47) and reaching a crescendo in 1715 following the death of Louis XIV.28 After attending the opening performance of Antoine Houdar de la Motte’s Inès de Castro in Paris in 1723 and viewing with disapproval the audience’s response, he observed: “Everything that has some connection with the education of children, with the natural sentiments, seems to us something low and vulgar. Our mores are such that a father and mother no longer raise their children, no longer see them, no longer nurture them” (MT 143). Years later, he similarly lamented that the French people had “fled” from virtue, the result being that “all family relationships were neglected; all respect was done away with; [. . .] a woman’s virtue was an utter loss for her; it was even sometimes like a sort of persecuted religion” (MT 1272).29 Montesquieu concluded that the behavior of kings is what most greatly influences the extent of virtue their subjects will display. “[T]he prince can make beasts of men and men of beasts,” and “the great art of ruling” is to bring honor and virtue close to the throne, which will “call forth personal merit” (SL 12.27). Yet all too often, the tutors of kings are “intoxicated by their grandeur” and fail to teach them “the great principles of religion, society, [and] natural equality” that can inform them of their duty to “make men happy” (MT 534).30 Kings fill their courts with sycophants lacking virtue – idlers and arrogant supplicants who wish to become rich without work and who resort to “flattery, treachery, [and] perfidy” to advance their interests while scorning “the duties of citizens” (SL 3.5).
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Such base courtiers seek to flatter princes rather than informing them of the needs of their subjects.31 Montesquieu identified honor – not virtue – as the principle of monarchy, and this prompted ecclesiastical critics to accuse him of slandering the people of France by implying they lacked moral virtue.32 This prompted him to add an “Author’s Forward” to what became the posthumous 1757 edition of his work clarifying that the virtue he attributed to republics was “not a moral virtue or a Christian virtue.” It was rather “political virtue,” that is “love of the homeland and of equality.” Moreover, he explained that he had never meant to suggest the absence of “moral and Christian virtues” from monarchy or the complete absence of political virtue. Rather, his point had been that political virtue is “not the spring that makes a [monarchical] government act.” The “good man” of the virtuous republic, he wrote, “is not the Christian good man, but the political good man” (SL Author’s Forward, p. xli). In spite of these clarifications, it is certainly true that Montesquieu had afforded his Jesuit and Jansenist critics grounds for criticism. He had claimed that little “integrity” is needed in monarchy because “the prince’s ever-raised arm [. . .] can rule or contain the whole” (SL 3.3), and he had entitled one chapter “That virtue is not the principle of monarchy,” wherein he observed: “In monarchies, politics accomplishes great things with as little virtue as it can, just as in the finest machines art employs as few motions, forces, and wheels as possible.” The state exists “independently of love of the homeland, desire for true glory, self-renunciation, sacrifice of one’s dearest interests, and all those heroic virtues we find in the ancients and know only by hearsay” (SL 3.5). As Sharon Krause has observed, Montesquieu’s depiction of “honor does not presuppose moral purity or perfection.” Rather, honor involves “following rules and seeking distinction” and “neither requires nor produces complete virtue.”33 Honor teaches “less what one owes others than what one owes oneself” (SL 4.2, p. 31). Furthermore, honor is “eccentric” and “shapes the virtues into what it wants; it puts rules on everything [. . .] according to its fancy,” sometimes extending our duties and sometimes limiting them. Honor “has its supreme rules, and education is obliged to conform to them” (SL 4.2, pp. 33–4).34 Montesquieu opined that “[m]ores are never as pure in monarchies as in republican governments” (SL 4.2, p. 32), and he emphasized that there is “(m)ore love for the public good and the Fatherland” in republics than in monarchies (MT 1760). He also asserted that honor “allows deceit when deceit is added to the idea of greatness of spirit or greatness of business, as in politics, whose niceties do not offend
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it” (SL 4.2, p. 32). Moreover, he suggested that while virtuous princes are not rare, “it is very difficult for the people to be virtuous.” How could they be, he asked, when “the courts of monarchs” are filled with men of “wretched character” who corrupt their subjects through bad example? (SL 3.5). Montesquieu was so firmly convinced that honor is the spring of monarchical government that he believed even the “false honor” prevalent in France, which demands “preferences and distinctions,” serves as an appropriate substitute for the virtue republics require. “Honor makes all the parts of the body politic move. Each person works for the common good, believing he works for his individual interests.” Moreover, honor “can oblige men to do all the difficult actions [. . .] with no reward other than the renown of these actions” (SL 3.7). “[H]onor is a lively passion,” whereas “[d]uty is a cold and studied thing.” Those who “obey their prince because religion and law ordain it are ‘cold people’” while “those who act from their sense of honor are ‘animated’” (MT 1856). Most importantly, honor produces virtuous actions by inspiring nobles to refuse the king’s commands when they are immoral, as when Louis des Balbes de Crillon refused the order of King Charles IX35 to massacre Protestants during the French wars of religion and when the Viscount Orte, governor of Bayonne, disobeyed the order of King Henry III36 to assassinate Henry I, Duke of Guise (SL 4.2). In short, honor, Montesquieu concluded, “can inspire the finest actions” and “joined with the force of laws, it can lead to the goal of government as does virtue itself” (SL 3.6). Honor “reigns like a monarch over the prince and the people” and sets crucial limits to what the king can demand (SL 3.10).
Montesquieu’s portrayal of virtuous republics gave rise to controversy in his own day and beyond. Voltaire complained that he had created a phantasmagoric portrait of self-abnegating altruism bearing no relation to reality. “A republic is not founded on virtue,” he wrote. “Rather, it is founded on the ambition of each citizen, which serves as a check on the ambition of others: on pride which restrains pride; on the desire to dominate. This is what forms the laws that preserve equality as much as possible.”37 Across the Atlantic, James Madison, in Federalist 51, contended that it is not political virtue that sustains republican liberty. Rather, “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” Men are not angels, and self-interest cannot be eradicated. Only checks and balances
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between competing governmental powers ensure liberty.38 In recent times, Pierre Manent has followed Voltaire in terming Montesquieu’s depiction of ancient virtue a “fiction” and “a truly strange thing that has never yet been met with, in this world or the next.”39 And yet Montesquieu’s account of civic virtue in The Spirit of the Laws exerted enormous influence on proponents of republicanism in France, starting with Mably and Rousseau and including Robespierre and Saint-Just, the chief architects of the French Revolution’s republic of virtue. Though this was clearly not his intent, Montesquieu’s depiction of political virtue as the principle of democratic republics helped to inculcate the belief that what France needed to counteract greed, corruption, and privilege, was nothing short of moral regeneration. As David Bell well summed up the matter, the French came to believe that “a new man and a new people had to be created.”40 The aristocratic honor that Montesquieu identified as the principle of monarchy became increasingly suspect in the latter half of the eighteenth century amidst growing dissatisfaction with the corruption and greed of court politics and increasing alarm that French kings, ruling since 1614 without convening the Estates General, were running roughshod over the rights and interests of the third estate. After the outbreak of revolution in 1789, followed by Louis XVI’s attempt to flee France in 1791, the feeling spread that he no longer deserved to be king, and that the door was now open to republican government animated by virtue. Virtue seemed at first to triumph when a republic was declared in September, 1792, soon to be followed by the execution of the former king on January 21, 1793. But given the slow but steady downward spiral of the French Revolution into a reign of terror, we can readily comprehend why “virtue” passed out of the everyday vocabulary of French politicians and citizens by century’s end. Robespierre and Saint-Just blackened the reputation of virtue by assisting the Committee of Public Safety in creating a republic of virtue where it was innocence, not guilt, that had to be proven and where even supporters of the revolution in its early phases were guillotined on the mere suspicion that they lacked pure and patriotic hearts.41 In a famous speech entitled “On the Principles of Political Morality,” delivered to the National Convention on 17 Pluviôse Year II (February 5, 1794), Robespierre began by affirming Montesquieu’s teaching that virtue is “the fundamental principle of democratic or popular government” and asserting that it was virtue that had “accomplished so many marvels in Greece and Rome.” But unlike Montesquieu, he yearned to see virtue produce “astonishing” results in France. He implored the French to
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institute “everything that tends to stimulate love of the country, to purify character, to elevate the soul, and to direct the passions of the heart toward the public interest.” All “private passions,” Robespierre insisted, must be replaced by a “general passion for the public good.” And adding a chilling twist to Montesquieu’s discussion of republican virtue, he insisted: “If the principle of government in peace is virtue, the principle of popular government and revolution is both virtue and terror.” Without terror, he claimed, “virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing else but prompt, rigorous and inflexible justice” needed to vanquish enemies of the revolution at home and abroad.42 Robespierre delivered his famous speech linking virtue and terror just five months before Thermidor, the coup that sent him to the guillotine; and following his demise, any notion that ancient political virtue could be of service in modern France was discredited. As Benjamin Constant explained in his public address “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns” (1819), the “ancient” liberty that Robespierre had sought to revive required “the complete subjection of the individual to the community,” enforced by “severe surveillance” of all private actions, the result being that “individual independence” was extinguished.43 Long before Constant came on the scene, Montesquieu had relegated political virtue to the ancient past. He never intended his description of the self-sacrificing republican virtue of the ancients to be used as a bludgeon to bring down monarchy in France. As George Armstrong Kelly remarked, “[i]t never crossed Montesquieu’s mind” that “France had an aptitude for virtue,”44 and as Céline Spector has observed, Montesquieu by no means regarded “the myth of Spartan virtue or of republican Rome,” based on frugality and simplicity, as pertinent to modern conditions.45 Even Eric Nelson, the strongest proponent of Montesquieu’s attraction to the Greek tradition of republicanism, concludes: “In general, Montesquieu believed that the world of the ancient republics was unavailable to modernity.”46 Montesquieu did not believe ancient political virtue was suited to modern times. In describing the “singular institutions” of the Greeks, he asserted: “These sorts of institutions can be suitable in republics, because political virtue is their principle,” but “they can have a place only in a small state” where a whole people can be raised like a family and where “all citizens pay singular attention to each other. This cannot be promised in the confusion, oversights, and extensive business of a numerous people” (SL 4.7). Montesquieu further affirmed that anyone seeking in modern times to replicate Greek republics would need to “establish the
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community of goods of Plato’s Republic, the respect he required for the gods, the separation from strangers in order to preserve the mores, and commerce done by the city, not by the citizens.” They would also need to ban money, which “fatten[s] the fortune of men beyond the limits nature has set for it” and “multipl[ies] desires infinitely” (SL 4.6, p. 38). Clearly Montesquieu did not believe that the republican virtue displayed in ancient times was transferable to modernity, even if one strongly wished to accomplish that feat. Tragically, however, Robespierre reached a very different conclusion, and his career is a sober reminder of Montesquieu’s prescient admonition that “virtue has need of limits.” “Democracy and aristocracy are not free states by their nature,” he explained. “Political liberty is found only in moderate governments,” where “power is not abused,” and to ensure “that one cannot abuse power, power must check power by the arrangement of things” (SL 11.4). Notes 1 For noteworthy exceptions, see Callanan, Montesquieu’s Liberalism; Mason, Montesquieu’s Idea of Justice; Rosso, Montesquieu Moraliste; Waddicor, Montesquieu and the Philosophy of Natural Law. 2 For an overview of Saint-Pierre’s ambitious proposals, see Clark, Compass of Society, 96–101. 3 For English translations of these works, see Carrithers, Stewart, Montesquieu, Discourses, Dissertations and Dialogues. 4 Ibid., 100. 5 Ibid.,155–6. 6 Ibid., 113. See also Persian Letter 81 where Usbek observes that men act unjustly because “their own interest is always what they see best. Justice raises her voice, but she has difficulty making herself heard amid the tumult of the passions.” 7 Montesquieu, Discourses, Dissertations, and Dialogues, 142. 8 Ibid., 78–85. 9 Ibid., 147–51. 10 Ibid., 187–200. For attention to similar anti-Machiavellian themes, see also SL 10.1–3, 11, 14 on just war and PL 91 lamenting that international law presently merely “teaches princes how far they may contravene justice, without running counter to their own interests.” 11 Montesquieu, Discourses, Dissertations, and Dialogues, 170–87. 12 For documentation of his continuing interest in Cicero’s writings, see his marginal notes (c. 1715) in his copy of a Latin edition of Cicero’s works published in 1564 (OC 17:17–92) and his numerous citations of Cicero’s works in SL. For his explanation of the origins of his intense interest in Cicero and Stoicism, see Montesquieu’s letter of October 8, 1750 to Monsignor de Fitz-James, in Nagel 3:1327–9.
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13 Montesquieu, Discourses, Dissertations, and Dialogues, 72–5. 14 Pufendorf, De officio hominis (1673). 15 For the text of Bel’s summary of this unfinished work and also fragments preserved in MT, see Montesquieu, Discourses, Dissertations, and Dialogues, 106–133. 16 Ibid., 106; Cf. SL 1.1. 17 Montesquieu, Discourses, Dissertations, and Dialogues, 107. 18 Ibid., 107–8. 19 Ibid., 125. For criticism of Spanish barbarity, see also PL 118 where Usbek laments that to ensure the loyalty of the natives, the Spanish “decided to exterminate them,” and “never was a horrible plan more faithfully executed.” 20 This contrast to Machiavelli has not always been detected. See, for example, Montesquieu, Considerations, 1–20. 21 Machiavelli, Discourses, II, 2, 129. 22 Cicero, On Duties, I, 35, p. 15 ; I, 74–6, pp. 29–30 ; II, 26–7, pp. 72–3. 23 Since it was only frequent reminders of the fate of their wicked brethren that sustained virtue among the surviving Troglodytes, Montesquieu seems to have rejected Shaftesbury’s view, expressed in An Inquiry concerning Virtue (1699), that virtue is natural to man. He nonetheless considered Shaftesbury one of four great poets of mankind, the others being Plato, Malebranche, and Montaigne (MT 1092). 24 The impact of wealth on virtue was a central preoccupation of Enlightenment philosophers. Useful starting points are Berry, The Idea of Luxury; Hont, “The Early Enlightenment Debate,” 379–408; and Jennings, “The Debate about Luxury,” 79–105. 25 Both Richter, Political Theory of Montesquieu, 120–2 and Sonenscher, Before the Deluge, 99–100, offer this interpretation. For Mandeville’s influence on Montesquieu, see SL 19.5, 8; MT 1553 where he asserts: “I will gladly conform to the ideas of the man who wrote the fable of the Bees, and I will ask to be shown grave citizens, in any country, who do as much good there as their dandies do for certain commercial nations.” The positive evaluation of luxury in Montesquieu’s treatment of monarchy was well summed up in Louis Sébastian Mercier’s pronouncement, late in the century, that luxury is “the spur of labour, the animator of empires, and the comforter of the human race” (quoted in Sonenscher, Sans-Culottes, 137). 26 Pace Roberts, Athens on Trial, 167 and Nelson, The Greek Tradition, 169– 70, 173. 27 For a broader discussion of Montesquieu’s views on the potential compatibility of commerce and virtue, see Carrithers, Democratic and Aristocratic Republics, 128–34, and Manin, “Montesquieu,” 582–94. 28 Boulainvilliers similarly observed in his Essays on the Nobility of France (1732) that Francis I seduced French nobles into gathering around him at court by introducing luxury and Italian customs that “soften all hearts.” (Smith, Nobility Reimagined, 39). Prior to that, Archbishop François Fénelon in his Examination of Conscience on the Duties of Kingship (1711) had blamed Francis I for introducing “scandalous license” at the French court
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by allowing “women of the highest rank, and above all those who were young and beautiful” to appear at court. Fénelon, Moral and Political Writings, 147. Though Montesquieu here channeled Cato and displayed a decidedly moralistic tone, there is ample evidence that during the 1720s he took advantage of the many pleasures offered by Parisian society during which time he published his mildly erotic The Temple of Gnidus (1725) whose authorship he declined to acknowledge (Volpilhac-Auger, Montesquieu, 90–3). For Montesquieu’s fulsome praise of the French for greatly valuing the freedom of women, see SL, 19.5–19.6 and Mosher, “Monarchy’s Paradox,” 215–16. For discussion of the need for kings to display virtue, see Keohane, Philosophy and the State, 332–57; Linton, The Politics of Virtue, 25–31; and Shovlin, The Political Economy of Virtue, 26–30. The need to speak truth to power was a key theme in Montesquieu’s In Praise of Sincerity (c. 1717) and also in his Persian Letters where Usbek relates that he had fled Persia because, as a courtier of the Persian Sultan, he had dared to unmask vice and had “brought truth to the very foot of the throne” (PL 8). The clerical attack that most offended Montesquieu was that of the Abbé Jean Baptiste Gaultier in the Jansenist Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques (OC 7:23–37), which he rebutted in his Défense de L’Esprit des lois (1750). For an English translation of this work, see Montesquieu, Discourses, Dissertations, and Dialogues, 224–63. Krause, Liberalism with Honor, 52. The Faculty of Theology of the Sorbonne strongly objected to this statement, which seemed to denigrate the importance of religion in forming character. Therefore, Montesquieu added the following footnote to what became the posthumous edition of 1757: “These comments refer to what is and not to what should be; honor is a prejudice, which religion sometimes works to destroy and sometimes to regulate.” Charles IX (1550–74) authorized the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, August 23–4, 1572. Henry III (1551–89). The Duke of Guise (1550–88), founder of the Catholic League, was assassinated by his own bodyguards at the Château de Blois on December 22, 1588. Voltaire, Pensées sur le gouvernement (1752). In Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, éd. Louis Moland, Paris: Garnier, 1877–85, XXIII, 531. Carey and McClellan (eds.), The Federalist, 268–9. Madison was well aware that Montesquieu had said much the same thing in his pronouncement that political liberty “is present only when power is not abused. [. . .] [P]ower must check power by the arrangement of things” (SL 11.4). In SL 11.6 and 19.27 Montesquieu explained that the English had found a path to liberty that did not rely on virtue. In England, “all the passions are free,” including “hatred, envy, jealousy, and the ardor for enriching and distinguishing oneself” (SL 19.27, p. 325). Manent, City of Man, 24. Bell, The Cult of the Nation, 142–3, citing Ozouf, “La Révolution française,” 116–57. Relevant here is Rousseau’s assertion in his Discourse on Political Economy (1755) that “[i]t is good to know how to use men taking them as
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they are, but it is much better still to make them what it is needful that they should be” (quoted in Rousseau, The Discourse on Political Economy, trans. Betts, 13). Revelatory of the extremely negative post-Revolution appraisals of Robespierre are the words François-Xavier Pagès invented for him in his Nouveau dialogues des morts entre les plus fameux personages de la Révolution française (Paris, 1800): “But didn’t I experience sweet pleasures? I slaked the thirst for blood that was devouring me. I needed blood always more blood [. . .] and I quaffed it unhindered. Was I not happy?” (quoted in Kelly, Mortal Politics, 95–6). For the text of this speech, see Goldstein, Social and Political Thought, 562–8. Constant, Political Writings, 311. Kelly, Mortal Politics, 308. Spector, Montesquieu et l’émergence, 161. Nelson, The Greek Tradition, 193.
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8 Internationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and Empires Michael Mosher
Which goods were at stake in assessing relationships between states? In the eighteenth century that question centered on which regimes were sturdy enough not to buckle under the pressures of competitive economies, public debt, war, and unequal economic outcomes. Montesquieu entertained different answers to these questions, putting them on trial, so to speak, and finding incongruities that led to reformulations. His was a world-making claim, an attempt to establish which rearrangements in global political architecture would reward a pacific discourse of moderation. Sometimes reluctant to discuss them, he was also aware of the grimmer scenarios. The international terrain of eighteenth-century Europe featured familiar entities such as the sizeable and for the most part monarchical territorial states of France, Spain, Holland, and Great Britain. The latter two exhibited quasi-republican features. Less familiar were the small city states, mostly republican, not necessarily “democratic,” mainly in Switzerland and Italy; and the literally thousands of multiply entangled principalities, bishoprics, and duchies that made up the mostly Germanspeaking Holy Roman Empire. Add to this the old “Republic” of Poland and the Ottoman Turkish Empire. In addition, we ought to consider the rise of Prussia, the formation of Austria, the expansion of Russia to the west, the decline of Sweden, and the eventual partitions of Poland. Looking beyond Europe, its colonies, conquests, and concessions formed extensive, rival trading networks – from the Americas to Asia and Africa – whose volatility finally erupted into war between France and Britain. It carried the modest name of the Seven Years War (1756–63) even though it was the first global conflict. It was a violent contest over 130
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trade and territory on three continents which resulted in the near bankruptcy of both states and set a course for even more consequential and violent upheavals from 1775–83 and 1789–1815. Historians refer to the years spanning 1688 – when Dutch king William on the English throne turned England against France – to 1815 as the Second Hundred Years War. Montesquieu traveled through some of this terrain – Italy, Germany, Austria, and most significantly, England (1729–31). His Persian Letters was a novel about the philosophical perspective of the traveler. It reversed the typical European plot device and had Asians commenting sardonically on Europeans. Montesquieu’s was a cosmopolitan mind that focused on the point of view of the other. The habit aided him in composing a magisterial mid-century global inquiry, The Spirit of the Laws. Conceiving Europe and the world as a whole lent itself to a certain utopian outlook, too, one that reframed historical possibilities by thinking through the conditions for international peace. From this effort emerged two distinctive themes. The first theme asserted a gap between the morals of antiquity and modernity. Such a declaration ignored the cruel sixteenth-century Spanish conquest of the new world. For Montesquieu, these terrible episodes belonged to the past. By the eighteenth century, modern warfare and international law had transcended the cruelties of Roman and Greek Antiquity when, as he put it in the Spirit of the Laws, the ancient conquering state either “destroys the society and scatters [its citizens] into others; or. . .exterminates all the citizens.” By contrast, in modern times the conquering state “continues to govern its conquest according to [the latter’s] own laws” or where reform is called for, “gives its conquest a new political and civil government.” The booty of ancient predation was replaced by the duties of modern government that included improving the lives of the conquered; for all of which Montesquieu claimed we must pay “homage to our modern times, to contemporary reasoning, to the religion of the present day, to our philosophy, and to our mores” (SL 10.3, p. 139). The second theme focused on the rise of modern “commerce.” Manufacture and trade within and between countries taught the civilizing habits of peace: “Everywhere there are gentle mores, there is commerce. . .everywhere there is commerce, there are gentle mores,” How did buying and selling yield douceur, gentleness, softness? The answer was that “commerce cures destructive passions” (SL 20.1). With the rise of commerce, merchants were able to make princes realize that the interests
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of both were aligned. Letters of exchange and other financial instruments reduced the power of the state to tax or to steal: “The richest trader had only invisible goods which could be sent everywhere and leave no trace anywhere.” Being unable to impose confiscatory taxes led to greater prosperity for people and prince: “Princes have had to govern themselves more wisely. . .for it turned out that [their] great acts of authority were so clumsy that experience itself has made known that only the goodness of government brings prosperity” (SL 21.20, p. 389). In addition, the gentleness of domestic trade had an international counterpart in the promise of peace: “The natural effect of commerce is to lead to peace” because in this way nations become “reciprocally dependent” (SL 20.2, p. 338). In the next generation the Seven Years War over trade and colonial territory appeared as a rebuke to these utopian promises. So it also seemed in the nineteenth century to Karl Marx. About Dutch atrocities in Southeast Asia, Marx wrote, “wherever [these men] set foot, devastation and depopulation followed.” Marx interjected into this grim narrative a sarcastic comment whose target was Montesquieu: “Das is der doux commerce!”1 One could interject that De l’esprit des lois appeared at a moment when the subterranean tensions that had led to global trade wars were not yet predestined to turn in this direction. However, these tensions were not invisible. “In the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War. . . interlocking dynastic and colonial rivalries produced conflict that stretched around the world.”2 Montesquieu already knew things were not going well when in 1746 he wrote to his friend Cerati that the Austrian conflict was “a war that I detest” (OC 19:293). On the long view, the significance of the Treaty of Utrecht that ended the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–13) was that it “marked the end of the first round in the struggle for the control of the world between France and Great Britain.”3 From Montesquieu’s perspective, it may have been more significant that France and England had in 1716 agreed to an alliance which, while ridden with flare-ups, extended to 1739.4 For the Abbé de Saint Pierre, a diplomat in the Utrecht negotiations that concluded the war, Europe was plausibly ready for a “Project for Perpetual Peace.” Montesquieu was a critic of such “projects,” but he, too, saw reasons for optimism. He resisted the standard narrative for the war which claimed that Louis XIV was a danger to the Protestant powers if he succeeded with a dynastic claim that would have united France and Hapsburg Spain thereby creating “universal monarchy,” i.e., a new Roman Empire. In
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“Reflections on Universal Monarchy in Europe,” Montesquieu admitted that if Louis had succeeded, it would have been “fatal to Europe” (OC 2:358). But Louis did not succeed, and, Montesquieu insisted, he could not have done so. Because of shifts in international law and morality, universal monarchy has become “morally impossible” (OC 2:339). The wars marginally changed only a few boundaries: “It is not wars which for over four hundred years have effected great changes in Europe, but dynastic marriages, successions, treaties, edicts.” Wars were “less decisive” (OC 2:343–4). Commerce was its peaceful replacement. If in the past, poor and ferocious peoples had conquered wealthier nations, today there were only civilized peoples which, combined, were “members of a great republic” where “wealth makes power,” where the advantages of rich countries were never constant, and where “whatever success a conquering state can have” was steadily reversed (OC 2:342–3). For John Pocock, Montesquieu “wrote in the benign afterglow of the Treaty of Utrecht which was held to have established the European state system on a firmer footing.” Doux commerce, he suggested, “belongs to the first half of the century.”5 The colonial wars of succeeding generations affirmed this judgment although one might calculate that there would be future international moments of “benign afterglow” where doux commerce would re-assert itself, most recently under the heading of post-1989 globalization. It is not irrelevant that Montesquieu’s own view was that such judgments were not borrowed from the opinions of the day. They were, he believed, based on science.
In 1725 Montesquieu delivered an address at the Academy of Bordeaux “On the motives that ought to encourage us in the sciences” (OC 8:495–502; MT 1265). Robert Shackleton was dismissive: “an intrinsically unimportant exercise because it shows Montesquieu more concerned now with the utility of the sciences than with the sciences themselves.”6 His complaint appealed to nineteenth- or twentieth-century views of value-free science. It missed how Montesquieu seems to have thought about the sciences as part of a big normative system.7 The sciences, especially what were later called the social sciences, were not truth claims detached from morals and human involvement, but partnered with, and on occasion rivals to, the law of nations and natural law.
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If a linkage of calculable truth and allied norms had not been Montesquieu’s project, he would never have introduced his essay on science with a subject of such political and moral importance, the memory of Spanish depredations in the new world and the destruction of its native inhabitants. What explained how these events entered at all into an essay about why we study science? Among other answers, science taught the avoidance, minimizing, or channeling of destructive and self-destructive motives – for instance, those which unleashed the predatory instincts inherent in a certain idea of empire. The question is whether any empires were ever benign. Here we need to distinguish three overlapping meanings to the term “empire.” The first identified the typically malign politics of one of the three kinds of government defined by the extent of the territory over which rule was maintained. In this typology, small republics and larger monarchies were more plausible candidates for the development of free states (SL 8.16–20), whereas the extent of imperial government usually condemned very large states to despotic rule. Only fear could induce faraway administrators and subjects to comply with orders and only fear could hold together a government where size had multiplied “accidents,” that is to say, the accidents of bad government, arbitrary policy change, and incoherence (SL 8.19). However, as Montesquieu’s Considerations on the Romans showed, republics were not always free of the predatory impulses that led to this despotic empire. A second meaning to empire was a right of command over territory, or sovereignty. The territory itself was sometimes named “empire,” for instance, when Montesquieu refers to the “peoples who conquered the Roman empire” (SL 30.2). This sense of empire works in conjunction with imperium. Imperium may or may not extend to the property, customs, or manners of variously divided peoples who may be said to exercise dominium or control over property understood as a limit to imperium. That there was a distinction between imperium and dominium – and an accommodation to the allied theme that imperium left considerable if historically variable space for dominium – was to become the main idea of the “liberalism” that was to subsume Montesquieu and other eighteenth-century figures in capacious embrace. A third meaning to “empire” is suggested when Montesquieu claims that Roman laws “checked some of the defects of the most durable empire of the world, that of virtue” (SL 19.25). Empire here is authority, in this instance, of one of the three regime “principles” – virtue, honor, and fear. Each is a vast and comprehensive system of norms and practices.
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In another example, when “Peter [ruler of Russia] found it easier to give the mores and manners of Europe to a European nation,” it was because the climate of all Europe was the same and “the empire of climate is the first of all empires.” Similarly, there were peoples whose “religion has. . .empire [that is to say, authority] over them” (SL 21.1) This authority could be despotic as in the first meaning of empire. “Beauty” is a “fragile tyranny” but also as a form of empire: “Beauty demands empire” but “reason refuses it” (SL 19.25, 16.2). Reason’s refusals point to the empire of science or enlightenment. In the Discours sur les motifs, Montesquieu asked how the “Mexicans” and “Peruvians” – the “Americans” – could have resisted the conquistadors (OC 8:495–502; MT 1265). Here Montesquieu made an extraordinary move. Survival and victory over the foreigners depended on philosophy and science – philosophy as worldly social science – and not on the capacity of science to invent new weapons but on its promise to reorient minds, a move as stunning as that of Plato in the Republic when he exhibited the turning of imprisoned souls toward the light of philosophy in the cave/city of false beliefs. Montesquieu proposed a counter-factual history. Imagine that a century before the Spanish arrived on the shores of the Americas, the philosopher René Descartes had emigrated to become the teacher of the Indians. Descartes would have taught the Indians skepticism – how to throw doubt on what we believe in order to reconstruct belief on a worldly basis. For the young Montesquieu, this translated into materialism and skepticism about the gods. So instructed, no American would have believed that the Spaniards, with their strange horses and beards were irresistible gods. They were only mortal “machines.” They could be worn out. The Indian nations could have starved the invaders or killed them on the beaches from a thousand hiding places. It is marvelous to see the proclaimed herald of “moderation” – which really is the theme of the Spirit of the Laws – appear before the reader’s eyes as the theorist of asymmetrical guerilla warfare. When Montesquieu wrote in 1748 that interlocking commercial interests would discourage coups d’état and teach moderation, he concluded that now nations will begin “to be cured of Machiavellianism” (SL 21.20). The 1725 lecture suggested that Montesquieu had first to cure himself of Machiavellianism, for the invasions of the Spaniards were in Montesquieu’s calculation to be met by a well-planned countercoup. Descartes in Mexico is rich in symbolism about enlightenment as both a state of awareness and an eighteenth-century narrative. The story of a
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European philosopher whose teachings led to the Mexican defeat of the still half-barbarian European conquerors is in effect a projection onto the colonial frontier of an internal European “struggle of enlightenment with superstition,” as Hegel once put it in describing the internal tensions that led to the French Revolution.8 There was cultural loss to be recorded, too, on the side of the Mexicans and Peruvians. For Cartesian science to turn the minds of the Amerindians toward the light, it had to undermine traditions, religion, and culture: everything that had made them susceptible to illusions about their situation. These peoples faced an “unhappy choice” – ruin in military defeat or victory through cultural self-repudiation.9 An empire of science which did not involve colonial annexation or oppression was, if not the ideal, an acceptable arrangement, even if it involved – as the empire of Cartesian science for the Peruvians and Mexicans would have involved – a decline in cultural diversity. Montesquieu cherished diversity, but not the kind that involved destructive illusions and prejudices. Montesquieu’s science pointed to “curing people of destructive prejudices,” a line that is taken from the Discourse of 1725 and inserted into the Preface to the Spirit of the Laws as an indication of the drift of the argument to come (OC 8:498). It paralleled another remark from the Preface: “It is not a matter of indifference that the people be enlightened.” Imperial government doubled as a legitimate rule when it successfully managed the economic security of a people. Montesquieu did not ostensibly celebrate the Chinese bureaucratic state, which Leibnitz and Voltaire had praised, but he expressed sympathy with the vector of difficulties that this state addressed: China’s singular vulnerability, a huge population threatened by starvation when the fragile rice harvest failed. Singling out two prosperous Chinese provinces, Kiangsu and Chekiang, Montesquieu likened them to modern Holland and ancient Egypt, “countries which have been made inhabitable by the industry of men.” Environmental fragilities demanded dikes against the ocean, the firm management of the Nile, and the maintenance of canals for rice fields. The societies that maintained these institutions would have collapsed without “moderate government.” The inhabitants of “oriental despotism” turned out to be just as responsive to the need for good government as seventeenth-century Dutch burghers: “The continuous care necessary to protect such an important part of the empire from destruction required the mores of a wise people rather than those of a voluptuous people, the legitimate power of a monarch rather than the tyrannical power of a despot” (SL 18.6).
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: Where, the enthusiasts for human rights ask, can we find Montesquieu’s empire of human rights? This would be an anachronistic request. However, Montesquieu found a kind of equivalence located in antiquity itself. After defeating its warriors, Gelon the king of Syracuse wanted only for the people of Carthage “to abolish the custom of sacrificing their children.” It was the “finest peace treaty in history.” Gelon had “exacted a condition useful only to the Carthaginians, or rather, he [had] stipulated one for mankind” (SL 10.5). Already in play was the motive of pity or compassion that was to have such a remarkable future history. Another figure from antiquity foreshadowed for Montesquieu the rise of modern commerce, namely, Alexander the Great, the impossibly young Macedonian general who, after unifying Greece, conquered all the territory of Asia Minor up to the Indus River. One might have suspected that this tale of pillage and destruction across Asia would have aroused anticolonial indignation in Montesquieu. Instead, Alexander illustrated the dependence of the merchant on an empire of rational conquest. Alexander consolidated his conquests into a utilitarian space for trade, unlike the aims of the rival Persian prince. “The voyage that [King] Darius made [the Persians] make down the Indus and the Indian Sea was the fancy of a prince who wants to show his power rather than the orderly project of a monarch who wants to use it” (SL 21.8). Montesquieu felt compelled to ask, since the answer might threaten the standing of peaceable commerce, “must one conquer a country in order to trade with it?” A trading zone was not self-assembling but depended upon statecraft and military force. Alexander, Montesquieu wrote, wanted “to conquer all in order to preserve all” (SL 10.14) – which indicated the author’s confidence that preserving a country might well involve increasing its commercial prosperity. Conquering a country to create a trading zone was not all that inclined Montesquieu to admire Alexander. In addition, the conqueror had established an empire that did not destroy the way of life of the conquered peoples. He insisted that his commanders adopt the customs of those they defeated as a means of acknowledging their worth and urged intermarriage of conquered and conqueror as a sign of equivalence between cultures (SL 10.14). Montesquieu’s science did not point to the one right way, but to the plurality of customs.
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One can generalize the actions of Gelon and Alexander as the duty to repair the damage of a country’s actions in war. It was preferable, Montesquieu claims, to govern a conquered people according to their own laws. Restoration sometimes required more so there was another way – to give the conquered “new political and civil government” (SL 10.3). This was the third of Montesquieu’s good enough empires: an empire of state intervention that preserves and does not destroy. It universalized what the empire of human rights did in demanding humane treatment for children and what the empire of rational conquest did in constructing a trading zone where none had existed. We know that Montesquieu disapproved of indigenous reformers transforming local custom. It was a violation of a customary constitution for Peter the Great to require Russian men to go beardless (SL 11.2; 19.14). Nevertheless, conquest demanded change whenever customs or habits disabled a people from defending themselves. Descartes in Mexico was the agent of enlightened intervention that prevented a far worse intervention. For Montesquieu there was also the question of local tyranny. A state suffered defeat typically when it had become “corrupted,” which usually meant that “the government has become an oppressor.” For Montesquieu, the victorious state must not vainly exaggerate its own prowess but consider that its success depended upon the decadence of its adversary which – counterintuitively – it has a duty after the war to reverse. Every victor owes the conquered a good government: “Who can doubt that there would be gain for such a state and that it would draw other advantages from the conquest itself, if the conquest were not destructive.” Republics should renew themselves, but Montesquieu seemed happy to commend an external push: “What would the government lose by being recast [refondu] if it had reached the point of being unable to reform itself?” Two symptoms pointed to reform paralysis. First, “the rich by a thousand ruses and a thousand tricks imperceptibly practiced an infinite number of usurpations.” Second, “the unhappy people seeing what they believe to be abuses become laws” nevertheless hesitated to act since, strangely, they “believe they [were] wrong to feel” this way (SL 10.4). Montesquieu called the phenomenon la tyrannie sourde, deaf or muffled tyranny. The rulers were “deaf” to legitimate complaint. A cheated people were “muffled” in their awareness of oppression. A people were sometimes unable to trust their own opinions and depended on external judgment. It sounds strange but we must suppose that Montesquieu formulated a doctrine that was to have a future in the
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socialist movement of the next century, that a people might suffer from “false consciousness.” It is true, remarkable clarity sets in when one recognizes that there are people who cannot speak for themselves. Yet this also sets up a power imbalance and a new potential source of manipulation and exploitation by the reformers themselves. Montesquieu’s science runs the risk of making judgements which are difficult or impossible for ordinary “unenlightened” people to assess. The tricks of the rich may be “imperceptible,” but so sometimes are the remedies of reformers. Who to trust if an ordinary person can see neither in one direction nor in the other? The potential defects of “science” return us to the character of Usbek from the Persian Letters. The empire of enlightened science – whose possibilities the two Persians Rica and Usbek came to Paris to study – foundered in part on Usbek’s incapacity to get beyond self-regard and pride. Usbek lived with the promise of knowledge beyond his capacity to integrate into duties to those for whom he bore responsibility. The distance over which Usbek, the husband in faraway Paris, pretended to rule his seraglio in Persia served Montesquieu as an early indictment of empire as a species of despotic territorial or tyrannical spiritual governance. Persian Letters points to the limitations of the non-oppressive empire of science if it cannot take into account the prejudices and weaknesses of its practitioners, again represented in the character of Usbek. The hand of the liberal interventionist, indignant at la tyrannie sourde, was stayed by the skeptic who doubted anyone was sufficiently self-aware to acknowledge the “prejudices” that distorted action (SL Pref., xliv).
“”: There is another vast normative system of international relationships and understandings on trial in the Persian Letters and that is political economy, more specifically the relations between international trade and a French experiment in public credit and finance referred to as simply the “system.” Janus-faced public debt was an economic topic of high anxiety in eighteenth-century Europe. Well-managed public debt, illustrated by the Bank of England, was a power multiplier. By enabling Britain to borrow at relatively low rates of interest, it financed England’s wars and built its intimidating navy. By contrast, the wars of Louis XIV had nearly bankrupted the French state. The Regent of France, Philippe d’ Orleans, adopted the radical economic ideas of an exiled, scandal-ridden Scottish
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gambler named John Law, who was also a brilliant monetary theorist, mathematician, and political manipulator. In the years 1716–20, Law succeeded in monetizing French public debt by creating two huge public corporations. One was effectively a central bank. It assumed debt and issued paper money to its creditors. The other was a leviathan trading company that monopolized French foreign trade and went under the name of the Mississippi Company. Those holding government debt and owed (very high) interest would be paid in new paper money instead of in gold. The promise of keeping the exchange rate (paper to gold) steady was eventually broken as were the promises to make every economic decision voluntary. The Mississippi Company was automatically an attractive investment because taxes were still owed in gold which trading company profits promised.10 There were two motives. The first was to reflate a moribund economy and to develop underutilized resources by creating a flow of cash to be invested. The second motive soon became apparent. Since the economy did take off, inflation set in as intended. The original government liabilities were reduced in value and could be more easily retired, much to the displeasure of politically powerful holders of government debt. Given the initial incentive to purchase, the price of trading company assets rose dramatically. This attracted many other investors, domestic and foreign. Soon enough inflated assets no longer inspired confidence in their capacity to pay off. The bubble burst and the shares plummeted as quickly as they had risen. The British South Seas Company met the same fate. There was a related collapse in Holland, a European wide crisis. “Everyone who was rich six months ago now lives in poverty” (PL 132). The bubble was built from assets – including slaves – promised by foreign trade in the colonies. The “system” would have connected the global south with a developed Europe, poor nations to rich nations. Each country sought mercantilist trading advantage over neighbors and hoped for a decrease in the burden of domestic debt, thus linking foreign and domestic policy. Voltaire thought that John Law had saved France. Despite the bankruptcy, commerce had revived. Reducing debt and stimulating the economy were the two principal defenses of Laws’ reforms. In addition, the French could have benefitted from a bank that consolidated the finances of the monarchy, but its failure to do so led to the unsustainable public debt that was one of the causes for the calling of the Estates General, which transformed itself into a National Assembly and inaugurated the French Revolution.
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Montesquieu’s summary judgment was that “Mr. Law, equally ignorant of the republican and of the monarchical constitutions, was one of the greatest promoters of despotism that until then had been seen in Europe” (SL 2.4). For the author, large territorial monarchies depended upon sustaining the authority of social hierarchies. The sudden bankruptcy of elites gambling in volatile markets undermined any authority the intermediary bodies had earned from their responsibilities to resist the crown. In addition, by challenging the authority of the Parlement de Paris to approve or dissent from these schemes, John Law undermined the structure of monarchical government. The global reach of the trading company would have pressured the republican constitution as well. It reenacted on the economic plane the political weakness of republican government as recorded in the Considerations: The more it expanded its reach, the less capable it was of republican rule. Trading companies were at least a net gain if they reduced the violence of colonization. When he returned to the topic of the 1725 lectures, namely, the depredations of the Spanish in the Americas, Montesquieu’s outrage was muted. He noted merely that “at first the Spanish considered the newly discovered lands as objects of conquest” (SL 21.21). The author hastened past the original scene of violence to highlight the “more refined” peoples who saw these lands instead as “objects of commerce.” The new vehicle for refinement was the previously maligned trading company. It avoided “encumbering the principal state.” The colonizing state was exempted from expending revenue to support colonial endeavor and freed of moral responsibility for it. One might wonder why there was no book on colonization since unpublished material pointed in this direction (“Dossier 2506/6” in OC 4:770–81). What the author had to say, however, was already there piecemeal in Spirit of the Laws. Gathered in one book, it might have threatened the world re-making project of Montesquieu’s text whose appeal to readers today is how it conjured an image of peaceful globalization. A hard-hitting chapter on colonization might have come closer to capturing the spirit that congealed around the global trade wars in the rest of the century. The Persian Letters, a more radical text, had satirically depicted such a spirit in John Law, the confidence man who sold bags of wind – paper money – in exchange for gold and exhorted bewildered audiences to enter into “the empire of imagination,” which meant not an imaginative life, but an imaginary existence (PL 136). Law was a classic Machiavellian actor who sowed chaos in the hope of staying on top of the confusion and reaping its advantages.
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From comments excluded from the Spirit of the Laws, we detect the doubts of the author. Commercial communication, the keynote metaphor for peaceable commerce, was also a potential avenue for catastrophe. “The great communication among peoples has spread and is spreading every day destructive diseases” (MT 1813). European alcohol “destroyed an enormous number of Caribbeans.” Arabs brought smallpox to Europe and the Europeans in turn communicated it to the native inhabitants of the Americas (MT 86). In the Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu commended exchanges between cold and hot countries, that is to say, between rich and poor nations (SL 21.3). Privately Montesquieu wrote, “with the wealth all the climes, we have the diseases of all climes” (MT 86). Sketches of peaceful international commerce and alternative images of coercion and domination were palimpsests that fitted neatly over one another, one a happy vision of a world in harmony, the other of the same in conflict. Privately, Montesquieu observed, “Europe which has created the commerce of the other three parts of the world has been the tyrant of these other three parts” (MT 658). The Spirit of the Laws translates this into a relatively benign image: “Europe carries on the commerce and navigation of the other three parts of the world, just as France, England, and Holland carry on nearly all the navigation and commerce of Europe” (SL 21.21, p. 393). By contrast, in the Persian Letters Rhedi deplores the technology that had led to European domination: “Of what value has been the invention of the compass and the discovery of so many people?” The results universalized the terrible work of the Spanish conquerors: “Entire nations have been destroyed: And those men who escaped death were reduced to such harsh servitude that the accounts have made Muslims [like Rhedi] tremble” (PL 102). The hero-villain Usbek replies that, in his view, many peoples should be held in contempt. They needed enlightenment: “There still exist peoples on the earth among whom a fairly well-educated monkey could live and be respected” (PL 103). This fascinating exchange between a would-be colonial rebel and a race-baiting enlightenment colonizer naturally disappears, and we are left in Spirit of the Laws with the anodyne remark: “The compass opened the universe, so to speak” (SL 21.21). The “system” repudiated in the Persian Letters found multiple institutional means for financing commerce and military might. The afterglow of Utrecht did not blind the author to what was happening. “Each monarch keeps ready all the armies he would have if his peoples were in danger of being exterminated.” The budgetary pressures were
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unsustainable: “We are poor with the wealth and commerce of the whole universe, and soon as a result of these soldiers we shall have nothing but soldiers” (SL 13.17).
Montesquieu made an unusual analytical distinction between two types of commerce that matched his distinction between two kinds of potentially non-despotic government, namely republics and monarchies – a republican “commerce of economy” versus a monarchical economy of “luxury.” Although unnamed, the former points to Holland but would also include England in its guise as a kind of republican monarchy – a republic that hid behind the throne (SL 5.19, p. 72). The latter, an economy that depends on luxury manufacturing, indicates France. The two political rivals also pursued rival kinds of economy with rival styles of life. The analytical distinction is unusual, because it separates what should describe different aspects of every market economy. In one model, the English and Dutch “commerce of economy,” entrepreneurs compete on price, the “practice of gaining little and even of gaining less than any other nation and being compensated by gaining continually” (SL 20.4). In the other model, the French luxury economy, they compete on novelty, that is to say, innovation. Luxury is, of course, a relative term. What is new is rare and high-priced, but that soon changes: “It is the nature of commerce to make superfluous things useful and useful ones necessary” (SL 20.23, p. 353). It was a normal sequence. “The effect of commerce is wealth; the consequence of wealth, luxury; that of luxury, the perfection of the arts” (SL 21.6). For modern economists, cycles of innovation and price competition need to be thought of in tandem. Distinguishing them, however, brings out the different spirits that animate each, which points to the difficulty of their combination. Dynamic though the English economy was, it depended upon a culture of innovation that was alien to cutting corners on price. Montesquieu’s salute to English economic prowess contains several notes of ambivalence. For one thing, there was no insulation from the effects of “gaining little. . .less than any other nation.” Cutting corners meant a low-wage economy. Second, republican commerce was not insulated from international price changes. Third, there was no buffer zone where, protected from the constant necessity to cut prices, entrepreneurs could find or fund a space for the discovery of new ideas.
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In France, that is to say, in a monarchical luxury economy, the prestige of a non-commercial nobility established respect for motives that were not immediately commercial and were a means for resisting the rationalizing profit incentives that threatened to marginalize every other societal interest in a republican economy. This concern about the expansionary character of the profit motive has been an enduring theme. A successor argument along these lines now condemns it as “neo-liberalism.” Institutional restraints upon purely commercial motives included, or once included, colleges and universities supported by private wealth and professions whose practitioners were not governed exclusively by monetary standards. Beyond doux commerce was a “soft” landing into a society that included safe spaces for slow, reflective thinking, which acknowledged the productivity of leisure and, for Montesquieu (as we shall see below), promoted the genderintegrated habits of conversation rather than only the fast-paced transactional communications of commerce (SL 19.5–6, 8, 12). The French luxury economy was not a contrast to English egalitarianism, but a description of a different kind of inequality. In republican commerce, low-wage workers stand in contrast with the wealth of owners and entrepreneurs for whom “one commerce leads to another, the small to the middling, the middling to the great, and he who earlier desired to gain little arrives in a position where he has no less of a desire to gain a great deal” (SL 20.4). In a luxury economy, the artisan classes commanded high wages because, with status goods, there was insulation from international competitive price pressures that drove wages down. French luxury meant fashion, la mode.11 In passing, Montesquieu remarked that the “laws, mores, and manners” associated with “the fashion in clothing” may “seem not to matter,” but that was wrong (SL 14.4). Because they were the leaders in fashion, women were leaders in cultural transformation whose wider effect was the establishment of (evidently benign) changes that did not depend on state initiative. One could limit the luxury of women, Montesquieu writes in a famous passage, “but who knows whether one would not lose a certain taste that would be the sources of the nation’s wealth?” (SL 19.5). By way of fashion, a gender-integrated society was a spur to innovation and as a further consequence, an incentive for moral self-transformation. “The more communicative peoples are, the more easily they change their manners” (SL 19.8). Unlike the austere male republican moralist, Montesquieu trusts these gendered agents of change. The result is that – in an astonishing phrase – “arbitrariness is put into what was absolute and manners change every day” (SL 19.12). Montesquieu was not
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unsympathetic to austere republican morality, but it belonged elsewhere, in quasi-republican England where such agents of change, namely, women, “should scarcely live among men” and where one sees not a communicative society, but “a withdrawn people each of whom thought alone” (SL 19.27, p. 332). In this about-face, there is obviously much more to be said.12 England was not on principle “a conquering nation,” but Ireland was nevertheless a conquest, one inspired by the economic “jealousy” of the English (SL 19.27, pp. 328–9). Here we spot another dual structure but not one so happily balanced. Like the North American colonies in which one could predict “the formation of great peoples,” Ireland possessed internally a constitution under which its citizens were free. It was, however, an imaginary freedom. Since Ireland was externally dependent on the arbitrary decisions of English overlords, “the state itself would be enslaved.” Their “prosperity would be only precarious and only a deposit for a master” (SL 19.27, p. 329). Here was the future history of British colonialism whose horizon Montesquieu might have described, and in the same account, the future history of a significantly more oppressive empire of doux commerce built upon the commerce of economy. Montesquieu was not, however, engaged in predicting an unfolding future. Instead, his was an effort to remake the world as it existed. The Spirit of the Laws articulated the unstated assumptions that would have been required to back up a stable and commercial world order, one which rewarded moderation and not “coups d’états” (SL 21.20) and which mediated conflict and integrated interests without appealing to Hobbes’s “idea of empire and domination” (SL 1.2). If Montesquieu had lived into the next century, he might have written a conjectural history in the manner of Hegel in which empires – or authoritative constellations of understanding – succeeded one another, each almost good, or good enough, but each in some sense flawed and, therefore, giving way to a new formation. This is what we have tried to show Montesquieu did anyway. His science was not one time for all time, but a premise and a beginning to the idea of history.13 He would not have suspected he knew how the story ended. Nor do we.
Notes 1 Marx, Das Kapital in Marx Engels Werke, 780. See also the comment in Spector, Montesquieu, 277 n. 1. 2 Stafford, “International Relations,” 206.
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Blanning, Culture of Power, 295. Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies, 1–35. Pocock, “Commerce, Credit, and Sovereignty,” 268–9, 273. Shackleton, Montesquieu, 69. In this section, I am indebted to Michael Sonenscher for at least the thought that an “empire,” among other things, was potentially a big normative system and a social science. The affinities to Hegel’s thought are of course striking. If we assume a Cambridge School perspective, we are not speaking of influence but of a direction to thinking original to Montesquieu and his generation and redeployed or even rediscovered for other purposes in Hegel and his generation. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, 385–406. Mosher, “Montesquieu on Empire and Enlightenment,” 121. Sonenscher, Before the Deluge, 118–19. Sonenscher, Work & Wages, xiii–xix. Mosher, “The Judgmental Gaze of European Women,” 25–44. For an early statement regarding the turn of science toward history, see Trescher, Montesquieus Einfluss auf die philosophischen Grundlagen der Staatslehre Hegels, 10.
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9 Liberty in Montesquieu Céline Spector Translated by Lucas G. Pinheiro
Liberty, that good which makes for the enjoyment of other goods. (MT 1574)
The Spirit of the Laws (1748) is often considered one of the founding works of political liberalism. Commentators such as Emile Faguet, Isaiah Berlin, Raymond Aron, Leo Strauss, Thomas Pangle, and Pierre Manent have all canonized Montesquieu – alongside John Locke – as one of the forefathers of liberal political thought.1 On this reading, the essence of Montesquieu’s philosophy lies in his theory of the separation of powers, which he takes to be a precondition of political liberty. Since “any man who has power is led to abuse it,” Montesquieu contends, “power must check power by the arrangement of things” (SL 11.4, p. 155). Moreover, the liberal reading of Montesquieu goes well beyond his idea of checks and balances. It also emphasizes his rejection of classical republicanism. On this account, liberty as defined in The Spirit of the Laws denotes a rupture with the republican idea of liberty. The liberty of the people does not rely on self-government; it is neither their participation in power nor their collective autonomy but the security of individuals under the law. According to Montesquieu, the participatory liberty of the ancients cannot serve as a model for modern republics. In keeping with this interpretation, Leo Strauss and many of his followers, from Thomas Pangle and Pierre Manent to Paul Rahe, claim to have identified the “secret design” of The Spirit of the Laws. Through a shrewd rhetorical strategy, these critics The author is grateful to Paul Cheney, Annelien de Dijn, Michael Mosher, and Robert Morrissey for their careful reading of this paper.
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suggest, Montesquieu expresses his preference for a “modern republic” that is at once representative and commercial, as in the English model, over the “participatory republic” of the ancients and the absolute monarchy of the French. The Spirit of the Laws casts the English model as the political regime most consistent with human nature. If this is the case, Montesquieu advocated for a negative idea of liberty secured by various institutions and the rule of law inherent to a free commercial society. Yet more recently, a series of interpreters have cast doubt on this dominant reading.2 In order to revisit and assess this debate, I begin in part one by examining definitions of political liberty as distinct from socalled philosophical liberty. In part two, I consider Montesquieu’s “solution” to the threat despotism poses to all forms of government, namely, the distribution of state powers and the division of social forces, while evaluating the status of the “English model.” I conclude in part three by probing the original distinction between political and civil liberty. Finally, Montesquieu’s political theory cannot be integrated into the tradition of republicanism conceived as a theory of participatory self-rule. It challenges the contemporary conception of republicanism (especially that of Philipp Pettit) emphasizing non-domination as the republican definition of freedom. Rather than view Montesquieu as a defender of certain aspects of republicanism (non-domination) but not others (civic participation), we should consider whether the usual distinction between political liberalism and classical republicanism is partly flawed.3 Montesquieu’s understanding of liberty fits neither a standard liberal view nor a civic republican one; it includes elements of both but also reaches beyond them to incorporate features such as a political culture grounded on honor as much as on the love of liberty.
Montesquieu was undoubtedly the first French theorist of “political liberty” and, as I argue below, of “civil liberty” as well. In Book 11 of The Spirit of the Laws, he distinguishes political liberty from “philosophical liberty,” which has led Sharon Krause to discern two opposing “concepts” of liberty in his thought.4 On the one hand, Montesquieu contends, political liberty “consists in security, or at least in one’s opinion of one’s security” (SL 12.1, p. 187).5 On the other hand, philosophical liberty “consists in the exercise of one’s will or, at least (if all systems must be mentioned), in one’s opinion that one exerts one’s will” (SL 12.2, p. 188). Political liberty is thus not defined as an expression of free will. To be sure, Montesquieu did not side with Spinoza against Descartes, who
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defended the existence of a free will (libre arbitre). Rather, his critique of “blind fatality” is not solely a matter of prudence. Still, political philosophy must be able to establish itself on its own terms, independently of contested metaphysical or moral questions. Whether or not the sentiment of free will is an illusion matters little in this case. Montesquieu’s intention is to speak across “all [philosophical] systems”: Philosophical liberty is not the actual exercise of one’s will but the opinion that one experiences freedom and feels it. Political liberty consists in security or “at least” in the opinion one has of one’s security (SL 12.2, p. 188). It is thus the tranquility of spirit which is attended by a social life devoid of fear, or, as Montesquieu put it, the “tranquility of spirit which comes from the opinion each has of his security” (SL 11.6, p. 157). Although political and philosophical liberty are seemingly related, either because free-spirited citizens invariably strive for self-government or because a political regime is “more imperfect to the extent that it is further removed from [our common] philosophical idea of liberty,” it is unnecessary to suppose a power to will that is detached from the physical and moral forces that act upon it (MT 943). Surely, Montesquieu invokes liberty as the obedience to a self-legislated law not in reference to ancient democracies or Italian city-states during the Renaissance, but in regard to the English model of his day and the representative system. “As, in a free state, every man, considered to have a free soul, should be governed by himself,” Montesquieu reasons, “the people as a body should have legislative power” (SL 11.6, p. 159). Liberty is the essence of humanity, which explains why despotism and its machinery of obedience are an “insult” to human nature. Nevertheless, participation in power and civic virtue are not the best instruments of security; political liberty ensues less from the intentions of rulers than from the interplay between political institutions and political parties. As early as 1734, Montesquieu had placed political freedom under the caring hands of the law. In his Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and of Their Decline, he argued that “a free government – that is, a government constantly subject to agitation – cannot last if it is not capable of being corrected by its own laws” (88). The institutions of liberty are those which anticipate the desire for domination on the part of conflicting social groups and neutralize the mischief of factions. The institutional framework should be resistant to factional discord and prevent any abuse of power. Yet a crucial issue remains: How should we define political freedom? With a skeptical tone, the second chapter of Book 11 opens by listing the diverse opinions people tend to hold about liberty, altering and amending its meaning according to their particular customs and inclinations.
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“No word,” Montesquieu writes, “has received more different significations and has struck minds in so many ways as has liberty.” He continues, Some have taken it for the ease of removing the one to whom they had given tyrannical power; some, for the faculty of electing the one whom they were to obey; others, for the right to be armed and to be able to use violence; yet others, for the privilege of being governed only by a man of their own nation, or by their own laws. For a certain people liberty has long been the usage of wearing a long beard. Men have given this name to one form of government and have excluded the others. Those who had tasted republican government put it in this government; those who had enjoyed monarchical government place it in monarchy. In short, each has given the name of liberty to the government that was consistent with his customs or his inclinations. (SL 11.2, p. 154–55)
But while he acknowledges the dizzying plurality of opinions about political liberty, Montesquieu never proposes an unequivocal definition of the term. For him, liberty is first and foremost associated with the absence of any form of coercion beyond the law. Laws allow us to circumvent our dependence on others, to escape their capriciousness and break free from their tyranny. In sum, “Liberty consists principally in not being forced to do a thing that the law does not order, and one is in this state only because one is governed by civil laws; therefore, we are free because we live under civil laws” (SL 26.20, p. 514). Unlike in the state of nature, liberty in civil society is neither license nor independence but freedom under the law; it is “the right to do everything the laws permit” (SL 11.3, p. 155). In this sense, citizens are “really free because they are subject only to the power of the law” (SL 11.6, p. 159). Liberty is the condition that causes people to feel that their person and property are secure. A free polity must therefore ensure that the liberty of its subjects is never arbitrarily restricted, that “no one will be constrained to do things the law does not oblige him to do or be kept from doing the things the law permits him to do” (SL 11.4, p. 155–6). On this account, liberty seems rather negative; in the wake of Isaiah Berlin, it is a matter of not being interfered with.6 But liberty also means more than a lack of interference; it inheres in the absence of arbitrary rule, in non-domination. To make liberty contingent on stable and accepted laws is consequently to exclude it from those states in which a single person or group governs at their whim. Political liberty is the opposite of despotic fear; in order for it to exist, “the government must be such that one citizen cannot fear another citizen” (SL 11.6, p. 157). More generally, liberty as non-domination means that slavery (of men or women) is always unfair: Slavery is “as opposed to civil law as to natural law” (SL 15.2).
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This definition severs political liberty from democratic liberty. Montesquieu’s idea of liberty runs counter to the republican tradition in which political liberty is founded on civic participation.7 Much like Hobbes, he derides democrats for conflating the power of the people with their liberty: “Democracy and aristocracy are not free states by their nature” (SL 11.4, p. 155). Liberty can therefore also exist in alternative, moderate regimes, such as in monarchies like France or in republics that are, like England, hidden beneath a monarchical government (SL 5.19). Far from being slaves at the mercy of a master, the subjects of an uncorrupted monarchy are as susceptible to liberty as the citizens of a republic. In finding that a people or a faction are just as capable of despotism as a single ruler, Montesquieu disavows his earlier, more republican outlook in the Persian Letters: The only advantage which a free people has over another is the security each individual possesses that a single individual’s whim will not take away his property or his life. A subject people who had that security, whether well- or illfounded, would be as happy as a free people – mores [mœurs] being equal, because mores contribute even more to the happiness of a people than laws. This security of one’s condition is not greater in England than in France, and it was scarcely greater in certain ancient Greek republics which, as Thucydides says, were divided into two factions. Since liberty often generates two factions in a state, the superior faction mercilessly exploits its advantages. A dominant faction is not less terrible than a wrathful prince in rage [. . .]. I count for very little the happiness of arguing furiously over affairs of the state and never uttering a hundred words without pronouncing the word liberty, or the privilege of hating half the citizenry.8
Yet Montesquieu’s definition in The Spirit of the Laws also differs from Hobbes’s in Leviathan (1651). In being distinct from democratic selfdetermination, political liberty is not, on Montesquieu’s account, a mere residue of natural liberty in the silence of the law; it is neither the freedom of movement in the absence of external impediments, nor the liberty to do as one pleases in a space abandoned by the sovereign. While Montesquieu concedes that “in democracies the people seem to do what they want,” he maintains that “political liberty in no way consists in doing what one wants” (SL 11.3, p. 155).9 He further contends that, “In a state, that is, in a society where there are laws, liberty can consist only in having the power to do what one should want to do and in no way being constrained to do what one should not want to do” (SL 11.3, p. 155). Laws provide us with goals to be pursued; they shape our spirit and our character. In this respect, The Spirit of the Laws does not endorse individual liberty as an absolute right or judicial immunity that would allow someone to act
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without constraint within the ambit of the law; the legislator may remind the citizens of their duties (SL 1.3). We must therefore come to terms with the exact sense of political liberty as liberty under the law – a law to which even rulers themselves are bound. On the one hand, liberty, as conceived by Locke, is meant to safeguard citizens against the arbitrary and abusive powers of their rulers as well as to protect them from their fellow citizens.10 On the other hand, given that moderate laws educate and empower citizens, liberty can be molded and directed toward positive ends beyond the negative absence of constraints. On this account, to be free is to have “the power to do what one should want to do” (SL 11.3, p. 155). Liberty is related to certain specific objects of the will which may be different in different regimes and different societies, depending on their respective mores (moeurs). Liberty is enjoyed when it fits the spirit of the nation. In France, for instance, liberty is deeply related to the love of glory, whereas in ancient democracies it was related to the love of one’s country.11 The freedom of spirit (liberté d’esprit) associated with French politeness and sociability, the freedom of women and free love are essential to the French nation (PL 34).12 In republics, women are free by law, but captive to mores (captivées par les moeurs). In this regard, the Lockean concept of political liberty, which is entrenched in the laws of a society rather than in its manners, remains insufficient. Through his original conception of liberty, Montesquieu insists on the subjective perception humans have of their freedom, on their feeling or their state of mind. For him, political liberty is a deep assurance of personal security. It is a certain peace of mind that follows from the belief that political power will not be used to coerce and oppress: “The men who enjoy the government I have spoken of [England] are like fish who swim in the sea without constraint. Those who live in a prudent and moderate monarchy or aristocracy seem to be in large nets, in which they are caught, though they think themselves free. But those who live in purely despotic States are in such tight nets that they feel themselves to be caught right at the outset” (MT 828). This applies to the pleasure to follow one’s passions and inclinations, which is essential for the freedom of a people, as Montesquieu constantly reminds us in the Persian Letters as well as in The Spirit of the Laws (SL 19.5). The same goes for taxes, which should not make citizens feel as though they were coerced by the state. Taxes must be proportional to the value of the goods being taxed, otherwise “the prince removes the illusion from his subjects” and “makes them feel every bit of their servitude” (SL 13.7, p. 217; SL13.8, p. 218).
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One might thus ask whether Montesquieu defends a conception of real liberty ensured by the law, or whether he is content with the mere illusion of liberty. Should we define real liberty, through which the feeling of security is justified, by the actual protection of rights and the freedom of opinion? This could be meaningful since Montesquieu opposes real tyranny – such as state violence – to the tyranny of opinion, “which is felt when those who govern establish things that run counter to a nation’s way of thinking” (SL 19.3, p. 309).13 Freedom of opinion is felt once the people are free to follow their traditions and customs; it no longer pertains to the subject of law but to the subject of mores, whose belief in his or her own liberty is contingent on the preservation of his or her customs and traditions. As such, the Romans felt tyranny more strongly when an actor (baladin) was expelled from the state than when they were deprived of their previous laws. This reflects a collective, rather than strictly individual, dimension of liberty. Elsewhere Montesquieu seems even to suggest that liberty can be illusory rather than real. Manipulation handled by a wise government could prevent popular resistance and conceal servitude.
Montesquieu’s theory of political liberty is polemical. In the fragments that have survived from his manuscript On Political Liberty, written in the early 1730s, Montesquieu relates personal impressions from his travels across Europe: disappointment at the Italian and Dutch republics, admiration for English liberty, skepticism toward the civil wars of the seventeenth century.14 As Annelien de Dijn has recently noted, this text documents Montesquieu’s break with the republicanism instantiated by Machiavelli, Harrington, and Sidney, which emphasized popular participation in government: The word liberty in politics is far from signifying what the orators and poets make it signify. Properly speaking, this word expresses only a relationship, and cannot serve to distinguish the different types of government. For the popular state is the liberty of poor and weak persons and the servitude of rich and powerful persons: Monarchy is the liberty of the great and the servitude of the small.15
For Montesquieu, the liberty of a modern people has nothing to do with the self-government of the Swiss, the Dutch, Italian or English republicans. In an earlier version of Political Liberty, Montesquieu went so far as to claim that “this type of state security is more tenuous in England than
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in France, and even more so in the ancient republics of Greece and Italy.”16 While this passage was removed for unknown reasons, the one that follows it conclusively challenges the idea of republican superiority by asserting an equivalence between different forms of moderate government: A free people is not the one that has this or that form of government, it is the one that enjoys the form of government established by Law [. . .]. From this, it must be concluded that political liberty concerns moderate monarchies just as it does republics, and is not further from a throne than from a senate. Every man is free who has good grounds to believe that the wrath of one or many will not take away his life or possession of his property. Just as, in a corrupt monarchy, the Prince’s passions can become lethal to private individuals, so too, in a corrupt republic, the dominant faction can be as rabid as a wrathful prince. (MT 884)
But even if political liberty were not tied to a particular regime, Montesquieu draws the inspiration for its principles from England. He was certainly impressed by English republicans. The publication or re-edition by Whig publicists of the works of Harrington, Milton, Sydney and Henri Neville, as early as 1698–1700, had introduced the French readership to the republican language of the English Revolution.17 Yet Montesquieu did not follow Harrington: “Harrington, in his Oceana, has also examined the furthest point of liberty to which the constitution of a state can be carried. But of him it can be said that he sought this liberty only after misunderstanding it, and that he built Chalcedon with the coast of Byzantium before his eyes” (SL 11.6). This ending of the famous chapter of The Spirit of the Laws on the English Constitution is severe.18 James Harrington failed to appreciate the benefits of the new regime that was taking shape before his eyes; he defended an outdated version of classical republicanism. Harrington’s mistake was to “seek” the perfect Commonwealth instead of realizing that the moderns had “found it” in history.19 England, after the Glorious Revolution, has found the principles of political liberty. Since each state has a peculiar purpose that guides its institutions, from war to commerce and religion, “There is also one nation in the world whose constitution has political liberty for its direct purpose. We are going to examine the principles on which this nation founds political liberty. If these principles are good, liberty will appear there as in a mirror” (SL 11.5, p. 156). In chapter 6 of Book 11, Montesquieu offers his own interpretation of the English institutions. The original title of the chapter in the manuscript of The Spirit of the Laws testifies to the uniqueness of the English model: “Principles of Political Liberty, and How to Find them in the Constitution of England.”
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Nevertheless, the unwritten “Constitution” under scrutiny is not simply a reflection of the England that Montesquieu knew from his travels.20 Rather, it is a sketch of the “system of liberty,” as evidenced by Montesquieu’s omissions, most notably that of electoral corruption mentioned in his travel logs.21 “It is not for me,” he wrote, “to examine whether at present the English enjoy this liberty or not” (SL 11.6, p. 166). We must therefore grasp why Montesquieu resorts to the conditional tense and to normative language. When he writes, for instance, that “all would be lost,” he means to say that liberty would be lost (SL 11.6, p. 157). In order to preserve liberty, that is, the powers of a given government “must” be arranged in a particular fashion (SL 11.6, p. 158). The goal here is to determine the conditions of freedom in terms of political right. If England has a special role in Montesquieu’s political thought, it is because the competing ambitions of its politicians are offset by the state’s complex system of checks and balances. Montesquieu begins with the tripartite division of state power. “In each state,” he notes at the outset of chapter 6, “there are three sorts of powers: legislative power, executive power over the things depending on the right of nations, and executive power over the things depending on civil right” (SL 11.6, p. 156). Against theories of absolute sovereignty, Montesquieu conceives the distribution (rather than the separation) of powers by following Bolingbroke.22 As such, the condition for security inheres in the guarantee that these three powers will be governed by distinct authorities. “All would be lost,” Montesquieu warns us, “if the same man or the same body of principal men, either of nobles, or of the people, exercised these three powers: that of making the laws, that of executing public resolutions, and that of judging the crimes or the disputes of individuals” (SL 11.6, p. 157). In order to avoid the abuse of power and thus preserve political liberty, it is imperative not to entrust two out of the three state powers – and never all three – to one and the same body. As a means of preserving the security of citizens, of maintaining their feeling of being protected by the laws, a single power must be truly “separate” from all others, namely, judicial power. In order to safeguard the feeling of liberty and prevent the citizen from experiencing that fear of magistrates which characterizes despotic states, the power of judging, “so terrible among men,” must be neutralized in some way; it must become, so to speak, “invisible and null” (SL 11.6, p. 158). Finally, the free constitution is able to regulate itself on its own, thanks to different powers which ensure the balance of the legislature through their mutual faculty of vetoing.
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Does this commit Montesquieu to a purely “liberal” view, against Harrington’s republicanism? It does not, if by liberal theory we understand a theory where the representative system exonerates the citizens from any form of political participation. The opposition between positive and negative liberty, political autonomy and mere enjoyment of rights, ought to be qualified. In the chapter on English mores (SL 19.27), Montesquieu claims that a certain level of civic involvement and public awareness is needed. Not only are the English citizens extremely concerned with political matters, but their general awareness is heightened and focused on any possible abuse of power. Politics, far from being forgotten by individuals absorbed by their private affairs, is still the main object of their concern and should be so. Liberty also lies in the mores of a people, and requires a profound love of liberty among citizens. Political liberty is the result of free speech and public deliberation: “In a free nation it often does not matter whether individuals reason well or badly; it suffices that they reason; from that comes the liberty that protects them from the effects of these same reasonings” (SL 19.27, p. 332). In England, the false belief that liberty is under attack would, however, have the beneficial effect of making all citizens attentive to any abuse of power and of warning them against the real dangers to which the regime might be exposed. At the constitutional level, the balance of powers must be subject to the constant scrutiny of citizens. Where partisan interests irrationally fuel fear and insecurity, the vain clamor of the people becomes a safeguard of individual rights against arbitrary power. Egoistic passions or “private vices” become public virtues.
? Is the English Constitution a model worth universalizing? Truly, the English model is anything but ideal; rather, it is singular, exceptional and extreme. Much like Rome’s defective balance of powers (SL 11, p. 9–20), England’s system of checks and balances is precarious. Going forward, the loss of liberty will not result from usurpation by the executive, but from the corruption of legislative power (SL 11.6, p. 166). Montesquieu’s Notes on England, composed during his visit from 1729 to 1731, evokes the uncanny character of English liberty, and the risk stemming from the House of Commons: Of all countries in the world, England is at present the most free, no republic excepted; I call it free because its prince has no power to cause any imaginable
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harm to anyone whomsoever, since his power is controlled and bound by an act; but if the lower House were to rule, its power would be unchecked and dangerous, for it would hold executive and legislative powers at the same time; whereas at present unrestrained power rests only in the hands of Parliament and the king; and executive power is the prerogative of and restricted to the king. Thus, a good English citizen must strive to defend liberty as much against attacks from the Crown as from the House.23
Yet following the publication of Spirit of the Laws in 1748, Montesquieu’s correspondence with William Domville, a mediator between the author and the book’s English translator Thomas Nugent, revealed that while his fears remained, they did not prevail: “In Europe the last sigh of liberty will be heaved by an Englishman.”24 So long as the middle classes associated with commerce and industry continue to cherish their laws and their liberty, the English Constitution will not succumb to this vulnerability; faring better than Rome, England is more likely to preserve its liberty. Above all, the English Constitution serves as a benchmark for assessing the liberty of other regimes, particularly that of France, which seems to have lost its liberty since Louis XI (“The death of Charles VII was the last day of French liberty,” MT 1302). For Montesquieu, the English Constitution is not a political model worth universalizing since each state must dispose of a legislature befitting its particular culture and history. France cannot simply imitate the English model, which has lost the shield of intermediary powers (SL 2.2). The country could, by contrast, adapt the principle of the separation of powers while keeping the power of judging as the prerogative of its higher courts. This is especially true since England’s “extreme” liberty is incompatible with France’s “spirit of liberty,” which is the result of glory and could “perhaps contribute as much to happiness as liberty itself” (SL 11.7, p. 166). In old regime France, the defense of liberty is explained not merely as a matter of political institutions (Parliaments and other decentralized bodies), but also as the effect of honor. Thanks to the code of honor, the nobility can resist the abuse of power and refuse to obey certain orders from the Crown. The nobles’ high ambitions are beneficial to the people, since they undertake risky actions in order to defend their liberties.25 Therefore, moderate monarchies avoid despotism without representative institutions such as the House of Commons and without full separation between the legislative and executive power. Beyond the threat of censorship, Montesquieu seems to believe that they have their own way of implementing political liberty.
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And yet, the freedom of the citizen does not depend exclusively on constitutional law. Montesquieu’s most original claim rests in his distinction between political and civil liberty, the latter being contingent upon penal laws. Importantly, Books 11 and 12 were at first but one book, before the issue of the liberty of “the citizen” demanded a separate treatment.26 Book 11 is about political law (droit politique), meaning the distribution of powers; Book 12 concerns criminal law (droit civil). There are thus two facets of liberty. On the first, from Book 11, Montesquieu discerns that, “the three powers may be well distributed in relation to the liberty of the constitution, though they are not so well distributed in their relation with the liberty of the citizen” (SL 11.18, p. 182). With regards to the second facet of liberty, which is articulated in Book 12, he suggests that it “can happen that the constitution is free and that the citizen is not. In these instances, the constitution will be free by right and not in fact; the citizen will be free in fact and not by right” (SL 12.1, p. 187). Far more than in Locke, the burden of protecting liberty in Montesquieu is certainly “on the shoulders of the judiciary,” as Judith Shklar discerns.27 The liberty of the citizen is founded on due process and on the presumption of innocence: “When the innocence of the citizen is not secure, neither is liberty” (SL 2.2, p. 188). The power to punish at once protects and threatens: It interrogates, accuses, and condemns at times through fearsome means, such as in the preliminary “questioning” destined to extract confessions by force. The violence stemming from this power should be suppressed: “This security is never more attacked than by public or private accusations. Therefore, the citizen’s liberty depends principally on the goodness of the criminal laws” (SL 2.2, p. 188). Here again, England is admirable thanks to its habeas corpus and its abolition of judicial torture: “In England, the man who is being prosecuted, and who will be hanged the next day, is freer than any citizen in the rest of Europe” (MT 651).28 Certain principles must protect citizens from arbitrary laws: “The knowledge already acquired in some countries and yet to be acquired in others, concerning the surest rules one can observe in criminal judgments, is of more concern to mankind than anything else in the world. Liberty can be founded only on the practice of this knowledge” (SL 12.2, p. 188). A man condemned to be hung in a fair trial has more liberty than a Turkish pasha. In The Spirit of the Laws, then, the issue about criminal law no longer concerns the legitimacy of the right to punish, but only its rules. To the principle of homogeneity between crime
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and punishment, Montesquieu adds the principle of proportionality between an infringement of the law and its penalty. To the extent that he secularizes the practice of justice, Montesquieu seeks to diminish the violent exercise of the power to punish.29 Montesquieu did not subscribe to the republican notion of freedom as defended by the radical authors of English republicanism. But neither was he a purely liberal thinker. To be sure, procedural assurances support the liberal reading of The Spirit of the Laws. Commercial society can very well do without virtue, and modern representation is clearly superior to ancient direct participation of the people. The classical model of the mixed constitution is superseded by the modern idea of checks and balances. Social conflicts and even political factions are admitted, so long as the constitution can cope with them by a self-regulating mechanism. The liberal reading is also accurate in emphasizing the importance of criminal law: The citizen must benefit from political arrangements that protect him against the oppressive inclinations of his rulers; he must neither fear the abuse of power nor be arbitrarily constrained. He must be likewise assured that his innocence will be protected and that he will escape the violence or intimidation of judicial power. Montesquieu’s liberal successors agree on this line: Benjamin Constant’s distinction between the “liberty of moderns” and the “liberty of the ancients” is directly inspired by Montesquieu. Yet political liberty, according to The Spirit of the Laws, is not only an expression of “negative” liberty qua non-interference. It is not only immunity in the face of all arbitrary constraint, or the liberty of pursuing one’s private interests in a sphere protected by law. Political liberty is not the simple assurance of having ownership over one’s self and property. No more than he defended the individual as a bearer of rights and property in the form of a sacred natural right, the author of The Spirit of the Laws did not defend a pure form of constitutionalism: Good laws are insufficient to safeguard the liberty of the people. Montesquieu’s emphasis is rather on how people feel their freedom. Political liberty lies in part in our customs and mores: To be free, the individual must not be shocked in his way of thinking, feeling, and acting. The standard liberal reading of Montesquieu seldom does justice to the complexity of the feeling of liberty, which is distinct from the mere protection of individual rights. Liberty is not present wherever liberal institutions, the rule of law, due process, and free speech are enforced. Finally, against universal politics, Montesquieu resists the idea of transforming a nation’s cultural
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life in order to implement free institutions. To better grasp his philosophy of liberty, we must combine the idea of a “liberalism of fear” that conceives the means to avoid the summum malum of cruelty with the desire to keep specific political cultures alive – political cultures notably grounded on honor or the love of liberty.30
Notes 1 Manent, The City of Man, chapter 1 and 2; Pangle, Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism; Rahe, Soft Despotism. See also Shklar, “Montesquieu and the New Republicanism,” 265–79. 2 Spector, “Was Montesquieu Liberal?” 57–72; De Dijn, “Was Montesquieu a Liberal Republican?” 21–41; Callanan, Montesquieu’s Liberalism. See also Larrère, “Montesquieu and Liberalism,” 279–301. And for a republican reading of Montesquieu, Nelson, The Greek Tradition, 127–76. 3 Pettit, Republicanism, 18–19; 40–1. 4 Krause, Two Concepts of Liberty in Montesquieu, 88–96. 5 This definition is repeated time and again throughout the book, which is an exceptional occurrence in his oeuvre. See, for instance, SL 11.6 and 12.1–12.2. 6 Shklar, Montesquieu, 86. 7 Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism. 8 MT 32. This entry was written shortly after the Persian Letters first appeared in print. 9 For Hobbes’s ironic critique of republican liberty, see Leviathan, chapter 13 and De Cive, Book 2, chapter 10, §8. 10 For Locke, “the end of Law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge Freedom: For in all the states of created being capable of Laws, where there is no Law, there is no Freedom. For Liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others.” Locke, Two Treatises of Government, §57, 306. 11 PL 89–90; SL 11.7. Here I cannot develop this crucial aspect: See Spector, Montesquieu. Pouvoirs, richesses et sociétés, and Morrissey, The Economy of Glory. 12 Mosher, “Free Trade, Free Speech, and Free Love,” 101–18. 13 See Binoche, Introduction à De l’esprit des lois, 290–4. 14 On Montesquieu’s manuscript, see De Dijn, “On Political Liberty,” 181–204. 15 De Dijn, “On Political Liberty,” 189–90. See MT 884. 16 MT 884 ; Pléiade, 1.1653, footnote 12. 17 Monnier, “Montesquieu et le langage républicain.” 18 See Hammersley, The English Republican Tradition, 74, against Nelson, The Greek Tradition, 176. 19 See Manent, The City of Man, 13–15; Spector, “Bâtir Chalcédoine, le rivage de Byzance devant les yeux,” 131–48. 20 Whether England and France had a Constitution during the Old Regime is debatable. Montesquieu uses the concept to designate the distribution of the main powers in the state, the political order of the politeia.
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21 As Montesquieu wrote, “The English are no longer worthy of their dignity. They now sell it to the King; and if the king were to return them their dignity, they would sell it once more.” Montesquieu, Notes sur l’Angleterre, Pléiade 1.880. Or, as he put it further down, “corruption pervades all conditions” (877). See Shackleton, Montesquieu: A Critical Biography, 284–301. 22 Montesquieu had noted that “In a constitution like ours, the safety of the whole depends on the balance of the parts, and the balance of the parts on their mutual independency on one another” (Craftsman, 27 June 1730). 23 Montesquieu, Notes sur l’Angleterre, Pléiade 1.884. 24 Letter from Montesquieu to William Domville on 22 July 1749. In Nagel 3.1244–5. For a thoroughgoing analysis of this issue, see Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty, 136–41. 25 Krause, The Politics of Distinction and Disobedience, 469–99. 26 See the notes in Volpilhac-Auger, De l’esprit des loix, 213–24; 283–90. 27 Shklar, Montesquieu, 88. 28 See Halliday, Habeas Corpus. 29 See Ippolito, L’Esprit des droits; Spector, Montesquieu, liberté, droit et histoire, 194–206. 30 Shklar, “The Liberalism of Fear,” 21–38; Krause, Liberalism with Honor, chapter 2.
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10 Political Sovereignty in Montesquieu Sharon R. Krause
Scholars have puzzled over how little Montesquieu seems to say about political sovereignty.1 Jean Bodin first formulated the concept in his Les Six Livres de la République (1576), describing sovereignty as “the most high, absolute, and perpetual power over the citizens and subjects in a commonweale” and emphasizing its unitary, indivisible character.2 Once Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) gave the idea its “classic formulation,” as one commentator characterizes it,3 the notion of sovereignty came to figure prominently in the political thought of modern Europe.4 Interest in the concept extended well into the eighteenth century, as Rousseau’s extensive (and novel) engagement with the idea in Du Contrat Social (1762) shows. Thus in 1748 when Montesquieu published his most mature and comprehensive political work, The Spirit of the Laws, sovereignty was well established as a defining frame for the analysis of modern state power. It is therefore striking that the language of sovereignty figures as little as it does in The Spirit of the Laws. Jean Ehrard has identified just thirty-eight references to sovereignty in the whole of this massive work, which runs more than seven hundred pages. Various explanations for Montesquieu’s “semi-silence” on sovereignty have been suggested, and we shall evaluate some of them in what follows.5 Yet while the concept of sovereignty appears to play only a small role in Montesquieu’s political philosophy, in fact it opens the door to an expansive and innovative analysis of political power, one that runs throughout The Spirit of the Laws. This analysis and the normative recommendations it generates for both princes and peoples go to the very heart of Montesquieu’s project. The limited use of the language of sovereignty in The Spirit of the Laws partly reflects Montesquieu’s refusal to endorse the justification of 162
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political absolutism, understood as institutionally unconstrained power, which was then associated with the idea. This refusal is a familiar feature of his work, embodied in his influential principle of the separation (or distribution) of powers in government, in his defense of the rule of law, and in the ideal of political moderation that he championed. More fundamentally, Montesquieu understood the essence of political power – what it is and how it operates – in a way that stood in some tension with existing notions of sovereignty. In contrast to views that depicted sovereign power as located in a single will with exclusive control over a territory and a population, Montesquieu saw all power, including sovereign power, in plural, relational terms. For him, the extent, efficacy, and character of power are a function of the relations (rapports) that exist among the different parts of a government and between the government and its broader environment, including its history and laws, the mores of the people and their way of life, the prevailing religion, the economic system, and the physical aspects of the country such as its climate and terrain. Considered in the broadest sense, these relations comprise what Montesquieu famously called “the spirit of the laws” but they also shape and even help constitute political power itself. Even in despotic states, power is never the possession of a single agent but a flow of influence between agents, and how it flows (including its trajectory and its efficacy) depends on the wide variety of rapports examined in The Spirit of the Laws. Montesquieu’s ostensibly puzzling stance on sovereignty thus reflects not simply a critique of the prevailing conception but a reconstruction of it based on a distinctive way of understanding power. His relational understanding of power generates a pluralized and constrained conception of political sovereignty. Political sovereignty is one among many concepts that Montesquieu artfully reconstructs – concepts that were key to the philosophical views of his time – such as liberty, law, virtue, monarchy, republicanism, and despotism. In a foreword to the 1757 edition of The Spirit of the Laws, he explains his novel use of terms by saying, “I have had new ideas; new words have had to be found or new meanings given to old ones” (SL Author’s Foreword). Taken together, his artful reconstructions, including his reconstruction of sovereignty, comprise a perspective on political life that deepens and fruitfully complicates the tradition of modern liberalism. Part one of this chapter situates Montesquieu’s treatment of sovereignty in philosophical context and assesses some current interpretations of it. Part two unpacks his reconstruction of sovereign power through an analysis of key passages of The Spirit of the Laws,
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highlighting the place of plurality and constraint within sovereignty and the deeply relational nature of power as he understood it. The conclusion reflects briefly on the value of this alternative perspective both from an historical standpoint and for our own time.
: -, , ? When The Spirit of the Laws was published in 1748, the concept of sovereignty had “for more than a century been at the heart of political theory,” as Ehrard puts it.6 Yet not only does the concept appear in the text relatively rarely, as Ehrard has shown, but the two great theorists of sovereignty, Bodin and Hobbes, are mentioned by name only one time each in the whole of the book, and in neither case is the reference connected to sovereignty.7 Montesquieu owned two copies of Bodin’s Six Livres8 and had clearly read Hobbes,9 so his lack of engagement with their work on sovereignty presumably was not due to ignorance of it. Ehrard attributes Montesquieu’s “semi-silence” on the matter to the fact that “for him the essential problem is no longer that of the foundations of political authority” or its justification, as it had been for Bodin and Hobbes. Montesquieu was interested not in “who ought to have power and in virtue of what” but rather in “its concrete organization and its mode of exercise.”10 There is truth in this assessment. The aspiration to systematically specify grounds for the justification of political power was not one that Montesquieu shared.11 On the contrary, he held that “the government most in conformity with nature is the one whose particular arrangement best relates to the disposition of the people for whom it is established” (SL 1.3).12 His primary concern was to illuminate the structure of power and how it operates in different contexts, not what justifies it. Nor did Montesquieu accept the idea then associated with the theories of Bodin and Hobbes of ruling power as unitary, meaning singular and indivisible, and absolute, meaning free of earthly constraints such as positive law and institutional checks. It is true that he understood the necessity of a strong central authority in politics. As Ehrard puts it, a strong central authority was “necessary to civil peace without which there is no security and therefore [because Montesquieu defines liberty in terms of security] no liberty.”13 Yet a governing power that is strong enough to establish peace inevitably will be strong enough to oppress its subjects as well.14 This “ambiguity of power,” as Ehrard calls it, is “the nodal point
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in Montesquieu’s political philosophy.”15 His innovation vis a vis existing theories of sovereignty was to identify institutional distributions of power that could secure order but that would also constrain power so as to “prevent or limit the risks of abuse.”16 In this regard, Montesquieu was not only uninterested in the question of justification that had animated earlier theorists of sovereignty but he also rejected their accounts of the substance of sovereignty as resting on power that is unitary and absolute.17 Or did he? Ehrard’s acknowledgement that Montesquieu accepted the need for a strong central authority opens the door to readings of his work that are more absolutist in character. Michael Mosher, for example, has argued that despite Montesquieu’s ostensible pluralization of power he ultimately “adopted a version of Bodin’s theory of sovereignty.”18 Mosher’s analysis focuses on the regime of monarchy, which Montesquieu defines as “the government in which one alone governs by fundamental laws” (SL 2.4). Monarchy is distinguished from despotism partly on the basis of its lawfulness, for in despotism “one alone, without law and without rule, draws everything along by his will and his caprices” (SL 2.1). The constitutive role of law in monarchy is sustained through an array of “political bodies” populated by the nobility, including the “depository of laws” whose function is to “announce the laws when they are made and recall them when they are forgotten” (SL 2.4). Montesquieu goes so far as to characterize these bodies as being “of the essence of monarchy, whose fundamental maxim is: no monarch, no nobility; no nobility, no monarch; rather, one has a despot” (SL 2.4; emphasis in the original). Indeed, Montesquieu insists that the pouvoirs intérmediares actually “constitute the nature of monarchical government” (SL 2.4). At the same time, he is quick to add that “in a monarchy, the prince is the source of all political and civil power,” and he characterizes the political bodies not as the prince’s equals but as “subordinate and dependent powers” (SL 2.4). Mosher presses this point and emphasizes that the nobility “do not . . . claim to override” the authority of the prince or aim to supplant him.19 Given their explicit subordination, Mosher concludes, the ostensible pluralism of power found in the regime of monarchy is in the final analysis reducible to the power of one, thus supporting rather than breaking with “the Bodinian absolute sovereign.”20 Although monarchy is “a package deal” in that it incorporates both crown and nobility, without the supremacy of the crown as having “the ultimate power to decide,” the package would be “merely a power struggle,” no better than the mixed governments of ancient Greece and Rome.21
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Mosher is right to think that Montesquieu rejected the ancient tradition of mixed government, which empowered multiple groups with roles in the same political functions.22 It “prescribed that each of the tasks of government be shared by several institutions” or parts of society, such as the people, the nobles, and the crown.23 By giving diverse groups with their countervailing interests a hand in the same functions it sowed conflict and undercut the strength and efficacy of government. Yet we should not assume that the only conceivable alternative to mixed government was sovereignty in the unitary, unconstrained form theorized by Bodin and Hobbes. We might instead consider the possibility that in The Spirit of the Laws Montesquieu was working out a new way to understand sovereign power, one that fit neither the ancient mixed government model nor the existing absolutist one. Notice, for example, that even as Montesquieu names the prince the source of all political and civil power he complicates – even undermines – this ascription by insisting that at least some of the pouvoirs intérmediares that “constitute” monarchy and are “essential” to its “nature” must be, as he puts it, “independent” of the prince (SL 2.4). The ascription of independence is applied explicitly to “the ecclesiastics,” who are said to be “a power” that “checks arbitrary power” in monarchy and hence form a “barrier” against despotism (SL 2.4).24 Yet Montesquieu offers this ascription in the context of defending both “the jurisdiction of the lords and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction” against encroachments by the crown, and more generally laying out the function of all the intermediary bodies in shaping how “power flows” in monarchy (SL 2.4). The role that the ecclesiastics can play in constraining the will of the prince because of their independence is directly mirrored by the role played by the nobility, who are equally charged with checking the power of the monarch. Throughout the chapter Montesquieu runs together the various intermediary bodies in discussing limitations on princely power, as when he insists that “if you abolish the prerogatives of the lords, clergy, nobility, and towns in a monarchy, you will soon have a popular state or else a despotic state” (SL 2.4). The independence explicitly attributed to “the ecclesiastical jurisdiction,” which enables it to act as a constraint, implicitly covers the other bodies in some measure as well, thereby enabling them to constrain the crown. In connection with these constraints, Montesquieu goes on to emphasize the groups that form the depository of laws (SL 2.4), saying that the “prince’s council is not a suitable depository” because “by its nature” it “is the depository of the momentary will of the prince who executes, and not the depository of the fundamental laws” (SL 2.4). A real depository of
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laws must have power that is not simply derived from the will of the prince; it must have (or be) a source of power that is in practice independent, even if nominally derivative, of the crown.25 In addition, the law itself has authority that exceeds that of the prince and even subordinates him. As Montesquieu puts it, “monarchs who live under the fundamental laws of their state are happier than the despotic princes, who have nothing to rule their people’s hearts or their own” (SL 5.11; emphasis added). So the prince is not in practice the source of all civil and political power in monarchy. The pluralism of power evident in this regime is part of the shift in the meaning of sovereignty that Montesquieu means to effect. This shift is not a simple abandonment of sovereignty in favor of mixed government or perpetual power struggles, but neither is it an endorsement of the unitary, unconstrained power envisioned by Bodin or Hobbes. The idea that Montesquieu effects a shift in the concept of sovereignty without simply abandoning it is suggested by Catherine Larrère, whose meditation on “the eclipse” of sovereignty in Montesquieu fruitfully illuminates what she calls the “enigma” of Montesquieu’s position on the matter.26 Larrère acknowledges, with Mosher, that the intermediary bodies so central to the regime of monarchy “do not replace” the power of the crown or fundamentally contest its authority.27 Still, she resists the conclusion that “Montesquieu makes the [existing absolutist] idea of sovereignty his.”28 She invokes Carl Schmitt’s analysis of sovereignty as a secularized theological concept that attributes to the political ruler a form of command and control analogous to that of an “omnipotent God.”29 Both Bodin and Hobbes fit Schmitt’s characterization insofar as they treat political sovereignty as a unitary power with authority not only to make the final decision but to command in a way that is not subject to the constraints of positive law. 30 It is this idea of singular, unconstrained command and control that Montesquieu rejects. Although he does not abandon sovereignty, he means “to strip it of its illusions,” as Larrère puts it, and specifically to “dismantle [. . .] the illusion of omnipotence.”31 Her crucial insight – and the key to what she calls the “demystification of sovereignty” in Montesquieu – is that for Montesquieu “one is never powerful alone.”32 In monarchy, the intermediary bodies guide and check the sovereign’s power but they also help to effect it and even “aid its perfect accomplishment.”33 For example, without registration by the parlements, “royal decrees did not have the force of law” and could not take effect. Similarly, without the pouvoirs intérmediares of local mayors and magistrates, the laws could not be enforced or adjudicated.34 The implication, Larrère says, is that “far from existing ex nihilo” the power
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of the political sovereign “can only rely on [other] already existing powers” for its life and efficacy.35 In this sense, the plural sources of power in monarchy – the fact that the prince is not the source of all civil and political power – supports rather than undermines sovereignty there. This insight is profound, although Larrère stops short of fully developing the relational conception of power that it suggests. Montesquieu’s analysis of monarchy reveals the prince’s deep dependence on others for the composition of his power. To be sure, the prince’s power is also checked by the intermediary bodies with their independent sources of authority, and the balance that results helps make this a moderate form of government, as we shall see. Yet at the same time the prince’s power is itself a function of how influence flows back and forth between him and the intermediary bodies. Political sovereignty is not located exclusively in the will of the prince but depends for its life on how the prince’s will is taken up by and responds to the wills of others, in this case the members of the pouvoirs intérmediares. Far from being tantamount to omnipotence on the part of an absolute ruler, then, political sovereignty is an assemblage of the plural and interdependent, albeit not equal, forces that together comprise the governing power of the “one” who rules.36 This relational way of understanding sovereignty in the regime of monarchy extends to political power more generally and it has normative implications. In the context of monarchy it suggests, as Larrère puts it, that princes “must completely renounce” the quest to become omnipotent “if they want to enjoy the advantages” of their power.37 Instead, they should acknowledge the plural, relational quality of this power and act accordingly, meaning in a way that is respectful of the persons and groups that help compose it and that may legitimately constrain it. The same is true of the popular sovereigns who rule in republics, as we shall see. The demystification of sovereignty brings about what Larrère calls an “eclipse” of the concept, casting a shadow over the ideal of absolute power and dissolving the promise of omnipotence. Yet in truth the concept of sovereignty is not so much eclipsed by Montesquieu as ambitiously reconstructed. This reconstruction is a pervasive if not always explicit theme of The Spirit of the Laws and it goes to the heart of Montesquieu’s political theory.
: , , Despite its dearth of explicit references to sovereignty, The Spirit of the Laws contains many reflections on the exercise of sovereign power in the
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context of a great variety of regimes from ancient Greece and Rome to contemporary Spain, France, England, China, Persia, and Russia, among others. This plurality of sovereign forms is another point of contrast with earlier theories of sovereignty. Bodin and Hobbes had both distinguished political sovereignty from government,38 and while they acknowledged variation in types of government, sovereignty itself was understood in terms of a singular set of functions, entitlements, and rights. Montesquieu did not accept their distinction between political sovereign and government. Instead, as Richard Tuck points out, he consistently and “perhaps quite deliberately” conflated the terms.39 This conflation is evident in the typology of regimes set out in Book Two of The Spirit of the Laws. There Montesquieu defines what he calls “the nature” of each government in terms of who holds sovereign power.40 The nature of republican government is that “the people . . . have the sovereign power.” In monarchical government “the prince has sovereign power, but . . . he exercises it according to established laws; the nature of despotic government is that one alone governs according to his wills and caprices” (SL 3.2).41 For Montesquieu, to govern and to exercise political sovereignty are one and the same. This conflation means that insofar as certain governments incorporate a plurality of powers as part of their “natures,” this plurality will also be a feature of political sovereignty there. At the same time, Montesquieu avoids a simple return to the powersharing of the mixed constitution in which different groups participated in and struggled over the same political functions. He avoids this outcome by showing that the diverse functions of government can be divided and placed in separate hands. Importantly, this means dividing power not between the sovereign and some supplemental set of powers but dividing it within the sovereign power itself. The functions of government/sovereignty include adjudication, for instance, and in monarchy this function is to be carried out by the nobility. Although “in despotic states the prince himself can judge,” Montesquieu says, “he cannot judge in monarchies” because if he did “the constitution would be destroyed” and “there would be no more . . . monarchy” (SL 6.5). Along the same lines, he remarks that the ancients “did not know of the distribution of the three powers in the government of one alone” and consequently “could not achieve a correct idea of monarchy” (SL 11.9). Thus when Montesquieu says that the nobility is of the essence of monarchy he means that the nobility plays a constitutive role in the composition and exercise of political sovereignty in this form. The nobility does not share in the functions of the king – it does not do what he does exactly – but what it does contributes to the
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composition of sovereign power in this regime. Political sovereignty in monarchy is an assemblage, a package deal all the way down, and not ultimately reducible to the possession of one alone.42 The plurality at the heart of Montesquieu’s reconstruction of sovereignty is intended to combine strength with moderation. It supports his famous principle of balanced power, which he describes as a necessary condition of liberty. In discussing “political liberty in its relation with the constitution” he says that “liberty is found only in moderate governments . . . [and] is present only when power is not abused.” To prevent the abuse of power, he continues, “power must check power by the arrangement of things” (SL 11.4). In other words, “one must combine powers, regulate them, temper them, make them act; one must give one power a ballast, so to speak, to put it in a position to resist another” (SL 5.14, p. 63). Talking of the privileges of the nobility and of the “ecclesiastical jurisdiction” in monarchy, he says that “just as the sea which seems to want to cover the whole earth, is checked by the grasses and the smallest bits of gravel on the shore, so monarchs, whose power seems boundless, are checked by the slightest obstacles” (SL 2.4). The sense of honor, which Montesquieu identifies as the “principle” of monarchy, meaning the distinctive passion that “makes it act” (SL 3.1), also contributes to the balanced flow of influence that constitutes sovereign power there.43 Honor motivates both the king and the members of the intermediary bodies to exercise and defend their distinctive privileges, or functions, and thereby it “makes all the parts of the body politic move” (SL 3.7). On the one hand, “its very action binds them” together into a single whole (SL 3.7). On the other hand, it can motivate disobedience and principled resistance to the crown, as in Montesquieu’s example of the Viscount d’Orte, who refused Charles IX’s order to massacre Huguenots (SL 4.2). As Montesquieu puts it, honor prescribes “obedience to the will of the prince, but this honor dictates to us that the prince should never prescribe an action that dishonors us because it would make us incapable of serving him” (SL 4.2). He says that honor “is like the system of the universe where there is a force constantly repelling all bodies from the center and a force of gravitation attracting them to it” (SL 3.7). Together, the “nature” of monarchy (its plural institutional structure and multiple sources of power) and its “principle” of honor establish a balanced flow of influence among the individuals and groups that comprise this distinctive form of government/sovereignty. Thus Montesquieu’s analysis of monarchy shows that sovereign power is not something that is exclusively possessed by the crown and exercised
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via command and control over the rest of society in a manner that mirrors the omnipotent power of God. Sovereign power does direct all of society but in this regime it is a deeply relational phenomenon that emerges through interactions between the crown, the intermediary bodies, and the law. Together they comprise a single sovereign whose authority is not seriously contested by anyone. So while Montesquieu defines monarchy as a regime in which “one alone governs” (SL 2.1), he makes it clear that the power of this one is an assemblage that includes multiple functions carried out by different agents. This power is both effectuated and constrained by its inner multiplicity and the relational flow of influence among its parts. It makes for a form of political power that is, as Montesquieu sees it, both strong and moderate. Monarchy is not the only form that political sovereignty can take, of course. The other two regimes that Montesquieu mentions at the outset of The Spirit of the Laws – republican government and despotism – are less internally plural. In despotism, as we have seen, one alone rules without the tempering (and effectuating) force of fundamental law and the intermediary bodies that sustain it. Similarly, in the ancient democracies and aristocracies that Montesquieu initially has in view when discussing republican government, the people or a part of the people holds sovereign power but in an unmediated way and without reference to fundamental law. As in despotism, sovereignty in republican government is a formally unmediated exercise of will, albeit a collective will rather than a solitary one. Much as a despot follows “his caprices” (SL 2.1), so “the people always act too much or too little. Sometimes with a hundred thousand arms they upset everything; sometimes with a hundred thousand feet they move only like insects” (SL 2.2). The similarity between despotism and republicanism in this regard is one reason for Montesquieu’s sometimes critical stance on the latter. Insofar as republics do not intrinsically include the balance of powers and rule of law that are necessary conditions of political moderation and liberty, he concludes that “democracy and aristocracy are not free states by their nature” (SL 11.4).44 Still, if they are not free by nature they can be made to be free by incorporating a version of the internal balance that in monarchy simultaneously effectuates and constrains sovereign power, supporting the rule of law as opposed to the unconstrained rule of will. Montesquieu’s great example of this – a free but republican political sovereign – is England. There is some ambiguity as to where political sovereignty lies in Montesquieu’s account of the English constitution, the one regime that “has political liberty for its direct purpose” (SL 11.5).45 At least one
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commentator has argued that there is no political sovereign at all in this regime.46 The confusion is understandable because Montesquieu himself described England as a “republic that hides under the form of monarchy” (SL 5.19). There is a sovereign in Montesquieu’s depiction of England but instead of a unitary, indivisible whole this sovereign is an internally differentiated one, which includes the hereditary nobility and representatives of the people along with their monarch.47 On his account, the English constitution divides political power among individuals and groups according to the three primary functions of government in general: legislative, executive, and judicial. The legislative power takes the form of a bicameral assembly “entrusted both to the body of the nobles and to the body that will be chosen to represent the people” (SL 11.6, p. 160). The executive power for its part “should be in the hands of a monarch, because the part of the government that almost always needs immediate action is better administered by one than by many” (SL 11.6, p. 161). The power of judging is to be given to “persons drawn from the body of the people at certain times of the year in the manner prescribed by law to form a tribunal which lasts only as long as necessity requires” (SL 11.6, p. 158). Notably, for Montesquieu there is no hierarchy among the three powers;48 sovereignty lies in the heterogeneous whole composed of these separate functions and the people who exercise them. This whole includes institutional mechanisms that balance its plural powers. Although the king has no power to enact law, he does have a right to veto the laws made by the people in their legislative capacity both for the purpose of “defending himself” (SL 11.6, p. 164) and because “if the executive power does not have the right to check the enterprises of the legislative body, the latter will be despotic . . . since it will be able to give itself all the power it can imagine” (SL 11.6, p. 162). Likewise, the legislative power “has the right and should have the faculty to examine the manner in which the laws it has made have been executed” by the crown (SL 11.6, p. 162). This does not include the right “to judge the person, and consequently the conduct, of the one who executes,” but it does allow the legislature to seek out and punish the prince’s counselors (SL 11.6, p. 162). Finally, each of the two legislative chambers must have veto rights over the other. Thus “as its legislative body is composed of two parts, the one will be chained to the other by their reciprocal faculty of vetoing. The two will be bound by the executive power, which will itself be bound by the legislative power” (SL 11.6, p. 164). It is striking that the various powers are said to be “bound” and “chained” together by their rights of resisting one another. In this respect, England calls to
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mind the balance of powers in monarchy where the principle of honor establishes “a force constantly repelling all bodies from the center and a force of gravitation attracting them to it” (SL 3.7). As in a healthy monarchy, the upshot of England’s well-balanced sovereign is a heterogeneous whole whose “three powers” are “forced to move in concert” and whose authority, as a whole, is uncontested even as its power is moderated (SL 11.6, p. 164). Like the relational form of sovereignty in the regime of monarchy, this relational republican sovereign tempers and refines even as it effectuates state action through its institutionally pluralized flow of influence, and in doing so it protects the liberty of its subjects. Not just any plurality will do, of course. Montesquieu describes the right kind of plurality as “a masterpiece of legislation that chance rarely produces” (SL 5.14, p. 63). It involves both interdependence and mutual resistance among the component parts of the sovereign, a set of rapports that simultaneously effectuates and tempers its power. Montesquieu’s reference to balanced government as a masterpiece of legislation comes in the context of a discussion of despotism, a form of political sovereignty that in contrast to moderate government “leaps to view” because it is so “uniform throughout” (SL 5.14, p. 63). Despotism not only is unconstrained by the rule of law but is internally undifferentiated in terms of political institutions that distribute power. There is no plurality or balance of powers in despotism and hence “no tempering, modification, accommodation, terms, alternatives, negotiations, remonstrances” within the authority that governs. Instead, political sovereignty is a formally unmediated rule of will, and in this regime “man is a creature that obeys a creature that wants” (SL 3.10). One might be tempted to think that its absolutism enhances its strength but this would be a mistake in Montesquieu’s view. The despots he portrays resemble more than anything Plato’s panicky tyrant in Republic Book IX, whose unconstrained will turns out to be shot through with impotence, as the command and control he seeks perpetually elude his grasp and his disavowed dependence on others undermines his own efficacy.49 Even for despots, it turns out, the exercise of power is a relational phenomenon. Although despotism lacks formal constraints on princely power, the composition of this power reflects how the prince’s initiatives interact with the responses of others, including the not-always reliable viziers and other lieutenants charged with carrying out the prince’s wishes (SL 2.5) and the people themselves, whose acquiescence does eventually have limits (SL 8.21). Power also depends on how the sovereign’s initiatives interact with the complex mix of environmental conditions that comprise “the spirit of the
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laws.” A sovereign whose initiatives contravene the country’s mores and culture, its religion, its economic system, or its longstanding legal traditions will be ineffectual over time because power depends in a constitutive way on existing flows of influence like these. Larrère emphasizes that this dependence means that “all power has limits.”50 She cites Montesquieu’s Considerations on the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline, in which he maintains that “it is an error to suppose that there is any human authority in the world that is in all regards despotic . . . the most immense power is always limited on some side”(CR 22).51 These limits may come from “internal and political” checks that force an institutional balance of power, as in moderate forms of political sovereignty, or they may come from the outside, meaning from the forces of religion, culture, climate, and commerce – or both.52 The difference between moderate government and despotism is therefore not the existence of limits on power but the nature of these limits. We might fruitfully distinguish limits from constraints in this regard, where the latter are intentional, institutionalized, and tied to the rule of law, reflecting what Montesquieu calls “a masterpiece of legislation,” rather than based on mere chance and circumstance. Larrère is right to emphasize the inevitability of (some type of ) limits on political power, and right to say that Montesquieu’s insistence on this point was intended to undercut the “illusions of omnipotence” associated with existing views of sovereignty.53 Yet beyond the inevitability of limitations on power, Montesquieu’s analysis illuminates the general nature of political power as a relational phenomenon and hence never reducible to any particular will, including the will of the political sovereign itself.54 The relational quality of sovereign power is evident in the international context as well. Books 9 and 10 of The Spirit of the Laws consider the laws “in their relation to defensive force” as well as “offensive force.” In these passages Montesquieu explores questions of war and peace, conquest and empire, and what today would be called humanitarian interventions. In contrast to doctrines of national sovereignty deriving from the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) that emphasize the independence of states in their relations with one another55 and tend to regard “as illegitimate all interventions that endeavor to correct the internal abuses of another country,”56 Montesquieu allows for some kinds of intervention, even defends an offensive right of conquest in certain circumstances.57 For example, when “corruption has entered” a state and “its laws have ceased to be executed” or when “the government has become an oppressor” and has “reached the point of being unable to reform itself,” a conqueror “can
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change the course of everything” and bring “some advantages for the conquered peoples” (SL 10.4). Provided that it is “not destructive,” conquest can reverse “usurpations” by “the rich,” relieve “oppression by tax-collectors,” and “destroy harmful prejudices” by putting a nation “under a better presiding genius” (SL 10. 4). It is in view of this potential to do good that Montesquieu affirms a “right of conquest,” characterizing it as “a necessary, legitimate, and unfortunate right” (SL 10.4) – unfortunate because its legitimate exercise is occasioned by the suffering of an oppressed people and because of the many ways this right can be abused.58 Yet despite defending a right of conquest under certain circumstances, Montesquieu was no proponent of empire. As Mosher aptly puts it, “antiimperial sentiments are a feature of all Montesquieu’s writings.”59 The grounds Montesquieu offers for avoiding imperial exploits focus on prudential considerations that reflect his relational theory of power. For example, the expansion of a state through empire exposes it to new dangers because of the new relationships that its extended borders entail, relationships that affect the sovereign’s power. First, the relationship between the people and their sovereign is a constitutive component of this power, as we have seen, and it is easily altered by expansion. The allegiance of willing subjects is undercut by distance, as Persian Letters dramatized in the fraying bonds between faraway Usbek and his wives. Likewise, a people that is “faithful only because punishment is at hand are no longer faithful when it is distant” but instead “work for their own particular interests,” the result of which is that “the empire dissolves” (SL 9.6). Second, the expansion of states “exposes new sides from which they can be taken” by an external aggressor (SL 9.6). A state should never increase its size to the point at which it cannot respond effectively to attack. This point is partly a function of “the degree of speed nature has given men to move from one place to another” (SL 9.6) but it is also relative to the power of other states. “All size, all force, all power,” Montesquieu insists, “is relative” (SL 9.9). To illustrate “the relative force of states” he mentions France in “the middle of the reign of Louis XIV,” whose power was sustained, even partially constituted, by the fact that “Germany did not yet have the great monarchs it has since had. Italy was in the same situation. Scotland and England had not formed a monarchy. Aragon had not formed one with Castile” while “Muscovy was as yet no better known in Europe than was the Crimea” (SL 9.9). Taken together, these reflections reinforce the idea, expressed in Montesquieu’s analysis of domestic politics, that the power of any
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political sovereign is not so much a possession of the sovereign itself considered as an independent entity as it is a function of how the sovereign stands in relation to others, now including other states along with its own people and territorial possessions. Every sovereign’s power is a function of the rapports among its constituent parts as well as between the sovereign’s initiatives and the many internal and external sources of influence – culture, religion, economics, climate, neighboring nations – that shape how these initiatives actually unfold in the world and the effects they have on society. Power is not a possession but a flow whose force and trajectories reflect the interaction of multiple rapports and so always exceed or fall short of the will of any single agent, whether individual or collective, unitary or plural, formally unbound or institutionally constrained.
Montesquieu’s “semi-silence” about sovereignty and the ostensible “eclipse” of the concept in his work is part of an artful reconstruction demonstrating that sovereign power can be both pluralized and constrained without sacrificing the strength it needs to establish social order. This plurality and constraint make sovereign power moderate as well as strong, thereby protecting liberty. His treatment of sovereignty also embodies an innovative way to understand what political power is and how it operates. Power is not a function of command and control on the part of a particular agent but a flow of influence with multiple sources both internal and external. This relational conception of power entails that no sovereign, whether prince or people, should think of itself as seul in the exercise of its power. Instead, princes should respect the intermediary bodies that check but also help constitute their power, and a self-governing people should acknowledge its own plurality and should balance its power across multiple sites and functions. Montesquieu’s vision of a sovereign power that is both strong and constrained holds important lessons for us today as we watch the rising tides of authoritarianism and populism at home and abroad, both of which deny the plurality and constraint that sustain liberty. In this respect Montesquieu helps us see ourselves more clearly even now, including the dangers of some of our most forceful contemporary impulses. Yet here as in so many other aspects of his work he also points us to a freer path forward.
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Notes 1 See, for example, Ehrard, L’esprit des mots; Terrel, “Sovereignty;” Catherine Larrère, “L’éclipse,” 199–214 (cited in what follows by paragraph number rather than page number); and Mosher, “Monarchy’s Paradox,” 159–230. 2 Bodin, The Six Bookes, Book 1, chapter 8, p. 84. 3 Hont, “The Permanent Crisis of a Divided Mankind,” 464, cited in Sagar, The Opinion of Mankind, 9. 4 Larrère, “L’éclipse,” para 2. Locke may have been an outlier in this regard, as Ruth Grant points out, noting that Locke avoids referring to political power in the language of “sovereignty” in his Second Treatise of Government. See Grant, John Locke’s Liberalism, 76f. Grant regards this as a telling choice by Locke. 5 The language of “semi-silence” is Ehrard’s in L’esprit des mots, 147. 6 Ehrard, L’esprit des mots, 147–8. 7 Montesquieu criticizes Hobbes in SL 1.2 for attributing aggression to human nature as a basic feature of it; he mentions Bodin in SL 5.15, in connection with the confiscation of goods by the government. 8 Claus, “Montesquieu’s Mistakes,” 425. 9 See, for example, his criticism of Hobbes in SL 1.2: “Hobbes gives men first the desire to subjugate one another, but this is not reasonable.” 10 Ehrard, L’esprit des mots, 154. Sagar also emphasizes that theories of sovereignty traditionally concerned the justification of power (Sagar, The Opinion of Mankind, 135); see also Skinner, “The Sovereign State: A Genealogy,” 26–47. 11 On this point, see also Larrère, “L’éclipse,” para 15; and Goyard-Fabre, Montesquieu adversaire de Hobbes, 31. 12 See the excellent discussion of Montesquieu’s “regime pluralism” in Callanan, Montesquieu’s Liberalism, 102. 13 Ehrard, L’esprit des mots, 153. 14 Ibid.,153. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid.,154. 17 Montesquieu’s treatment of sovereignty thus reflects his affiliation with the “anti-absolutist line” of thought in French constitutional theory, which emphasized what Callanan calls “pluralized power” and “political restraint” (Montesquieu’s Liberalism, 98, 100). 18 Mosher, “Monarchy’s Paradox,” 161, 180. 19 Ibid.,175. 20 Mosher, “Monarchy’s Paradox,” 175. I should note that on Mosher’s reading Bodin himself was less absolutist than often thought insofar as he acknowledged the importance of the king’s taking advice from the parlements and therefore countenanced their countervailing authority. This reading is in line with that of Richard Tuck, discussed below. Still, to the extent that Bodin characterized sovereignty as “not limited in power, charge, or time” and as “not subject to any law” other than “the laws of God and nature,” his view was significantly more absolutist than that of Montesquieu (Bodin, Six
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Bookes, Book 1, chapter 8, p. 85, 88–9). Along these lines, see Callanan, who points out that Montesquieu never uses the key term in Bodin’s definition of sovereignty (absolue) when he describes monarchical power (Montesquieu’s Liberalism, 135, note 79). Mosher, “Monarchy’s Paradox,” 175, 179. Ibid.,175. Hansen, “The Mixed Constitution,” 522. On the differences between the mixed constitution and the separation of powers, see also M. J. Vile, Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers, 33. Moreover, as de Dijn shows, for Montesquieu there should be “no return to the feudal past” with its system of dispersed power any more than to the mixed constitution of the ancients. De Dijn, French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville, 26. See also Hinsley’s richly detailed discussion of modern sovereignty as a response to the dispersion of political power under feudalism, in Hinsley, Sovereignty. Callanan’s account of the multiple ways that power can be pluralized in the context of modern sovereignty is relevant here as well. See Callanan, Montesquieu’s Liberalism, esp. 133–4. Speaking of ecclesiastical power, Montesquieu says that in monarchy “one should not bring together all the powers in the same head” and hence “it is good for the pontificate to be separated from the empire” (SL 25.8). For a robust discussion of the independence of religious authority in Montesquieu, see Kingston, “Montesquieu on Religion,” 375–408. On this point, see Callanan, who argues that the power of the parlements derives from the will of the prince but not from his momentary will (Montesquieu’s Liberalism, 132–5). This reading reconciles Montesquieu’s explicit claim at the outset of SL 2.4 that “in a monarchy the prince is the source of all political and civil power” with the practical reality of the parlements as exercising some independence from the actual wills of particular monarchs. Although nominally sourcing all power in the crown, Callanan’s interpretation would allow for a plurality of powers in practice, one that is compatible with the relational conception of power being developed here and the idea that Montesquieu means to reconstruct the notion of political sovereignty. Larrère, “L’éclipse,” para 5. Ibid., para. 12. Ibid., para. 13. Ibid., para. 24. The relevant passage is Schmitt, Political Theology, 36. As noted above, Bodin depicts sovereignty as “not limited in power, charge, or time” and as “absolute” in the sense of “not subject to any law” other than “the laws of God and nature.” Bodin, Six Bookes, Book 1, chapter 8, p. 85, 88–9. According to Keohane, Bodin’s theory of sovereignty as undivided and unconstrained was a “perfect paradigm of unity and control.” Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France, 71. Tuck (like Mosher, noted above) finds some ambiguity in Bodin in this regard but acknowledges that by the seventeenth century Bodin had come to be treated as a theorist of absolutism. Tuck, The Sleeping Sovereign, 57, 48. Hobbes’s depiction in Leviathan of the political sovereign as a “Mortal God” also fits the paradigm. Hobbes,
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Leviathan, part II, chapter 17, p. 109. As Tuck puts it, the essence of sovereignty for both Bodin and Hobbes was the idea that “the politics of a society must be controllable from a single and specific site.” Tuck, The Sleeping Sovereign, 257. Larrère, “L’éclipse,” para 28. Ibid., para 25. Larrère, “L’éclipse,” paras 12 and 20. Mosher acknowledges this point as well, saying that “sovereign authority must spread itself out over the many institutions that not only moderate but make possible its actions.” Mosher, “Monarchy’s Paradox,” 183; and see 189. In fact, he points out, Montesquieu “thinks that the crown’s authority would diminish, not expand, if the privileges of the nobility and provincial courts were removed” (165). Yet Mosher does not fully reconcile this insight and the deeply relational character of sovereign power it implies with his absolutist reading of Montesquieu. For further discussion of the role of the intermediary bodies in French monarchy, including the parlements, see, for example, Barrière, Un grand Provincial, 119–30; Chaussinand-Nogaret, La noblesse au XVIIIe siècle; Jean Meyer, La noblesse française à l’epoque modern; Rebecca Kingston, Montesquieu and the Parlement of Bordeaux; Callanan, Montesquieu’s Liberalism, 136–9; Mosher, “Monarchy’s Paradox,” 183–92; and Andreas Kinneging, Aristocracy, Antiquity and History, esp. 50–5. Larrère, “L’éclipse,” para 25. Brewer points in this direction when he argues that in Montesquieu “power comes to be seen as lodged not in decrees that express sovereign will but in words and manners, institutions and laws, that form a vast series of ressorts,” or springs, making things happen. Brewer, “Thinking History Through Montesquieu,” 232. Although this passage is suggestive of the sort of relational conception of power envisoned here, the ressorts that Brewer invokes are only one aspect of power’s relationality, and Brewer does not pursue the connection between this relational conception of power and Montesquieu’s understanding of political sovereignty. Larrère, “L’éclipse,” para 26. Tuck, The Sleeping Sovereign, 22, 90. Ibid., 124. It is significant that this key opening passage in Book 2, in which Montesquieu introduces us to his principles, is one of the relatively rare appearances of the term sovereignty in SL. The placement of the concept in this key passage suggests its importance and supports the idea that he means to reconstruct rather than elide it. The idea that in monarchy “the prince has sovereign power” might seem to cut against the relational understanding of power being developed here, but the immediate qualification that Montesquieu offers – “but he exercises it according to established laws” – helps clarify the matter. For, as we learn in subsequent chapters, what it means for the prince to exercise power according to established laws is that this power is in practice divided between the prince and the intermediary bodies and is composed through their interactions. It is precisely in these passages running from SL 2.1–2.4 that Montesquieu begins
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his reconstruction of political sovereignty. The first mention of sovereign power in monarchy in 2.1 may be misunderstood as having a Hobbesian/ Bodinian ring if it is not interpreted in light of the reconstructive work that follows. For an alternative view in keeping with that of Mosher, see Claus, “Montesquieu’s Mistakes.” Claus argues that the Bodinian principle of indivisible sovereignty is satisfied, for Montesquieu, by a “system that establishes separate mechanisms for engaging in different government activities,” as in England where only the Parliament can make the laws and only the monarch can execute them (426). Like Mosher, Claus reads Montesquieu as supporting rather than challenging the “18th-century orthodoxy that no sovereign power can be divided” (420). For this reason, Mosher describes honor as effecting “a distribution of power” in monarchy. Mosher, “Monarchy’s Paradox,” 206–7; see also Krause, Liberalism with Honor, chapter 2. See the analysis of Montesquieu’s critique of republicanism in de Djin, French Political Thought, 26, 32 and “On Political Liberty,” 181–204. See also Spector, “Montesquieu: Critique of republicanism?” 38–53. For more prorepublican readings of Montesquieu see Hulliung, Montesquieu and the Old Regime; and Pangle, Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism, the latter emphasizing modern commercial republicanism. One might argue that monarchies too can fail to be free. As Montesquieu goes on to say in SL 11.4, “political liberty is found only in moderate governments.” Liberty for Montesquieu is associated more closely with moderation than with any of the specific regime types identified in SL Book 2. Nevertheless, the internally differentiated structure of well-ordered monarchy, which tends to produce moderation, does seem to set it apart from the more direct government of ancient republics. Mosher, for example, characterizes the identity of the political sovereign in Montesquieu’s England as “unclear.” Mosher, “Monarchy’s Paradox,” 181. Terrel, “Sovereignty,” 11. See also Bates, States of War, 136, 152. Montesquieu’s depiction of the English constitution should be understood not as a journalistic description but as a theoretical model of what moderate, modern, commercial republicanism could be. Paul Rahe notes, along these lines, the prescriptive tone and use of the conditional mode in Montesquieu’s chapters on England in The Spirit of the Laws (SL 11.6 and 19.27), saying that “one is left with the impression that his England is less a reality than an ideal type suggestive of the potential inherent in England’s laws.” Rahe, “Forms of Government,” 82. This stands in sharp contrast to Locke, who explicitly attributes supremacy to the legislative branch. On this point, see Larrère, “L’éclipse,” para 18. For Locke’s attribution of supremacy to the legislature see Locke, Second Treatise of Government, chapter 11. Along these lines, Hinsley believes that Montesquieu “mistook” what Hinsley calls England’s “mixed government” for a “doctrine of divided sovereignty,” but this reading misrepresents as a mistake what Montesquieu offered as an innovation (Hinsley, Sovereignty, 152).
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49 The character of Usbek in Persian Letters illustrates this point powerfully. In The Spirit of the Laws Montesquieu says that “it has been seen through the ages” that “insofar as the monarch’s power becomes immense, his security diminishes” (SL 8.7). This fact, he continues suggestively, makes it “a crime of high treason” to corrupt a moderate monarchy’s checks on princely power (SL 8.7). Judith Shklar also emphasizes that absolute power is intrinsically “unstable” in Montesquieu, 83. On this point see too Weil, “Montesquieu et le Despotisme,” 201. For more general discussion of despotism in Montesquieu, see Krause, “Despotism in The Spirit of Laws,” 231–72. 50 Larrère, “L’éclipse,” para 24. 51 Ibid., para 24. 52 Ibid. 53 Larrère, “L’éclipse,” para 28. 54 Speaking of law, Larrère points out that for Montesquieu “law is not a command (Montesquieu rejects the voluntarist definition of Hobbes at the outset of The Spirit of the Laws) but a relation” (Ibid., para 17). The same is true, albeit in a different way, for power. Like his account of law, Montesquieu’s reconstruction of sovereignty shifts our thinking about power away from a command-oriented view to a relational one. 55 Hinsley, Sovereignty, 168. 56 Mosher, “Montesquieu on Empire and Enlightenment,” 134. 57 See Mosher’s illuminating discussion of how, for Montesquieu, “a certain sort of conquest promotes enlightenment” (Ibid.,137–8). 58 Montesquieu signals his awareness of this potential for abuse by saying that the right of conquest “always leaves an immense debt to be discharged if human nature is to be repaid” (SL 10.4). 59 Mosher, “Montesquieu on Empire and Enlightenment,” 118.
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11 Montesquieu on Slavery Vickie B. Sullivan
Montesquieu deems slavery a form of despotism; just as political despotism allows masters to exert their wills arbitrarily on those whom they dominate, so too does slavery. Given his keen focus on despotism in the political realm, it is not surprising that he displays a sustained interest in this institution of oppression and exploitation in the civil realm – an interest which he demonstrates most particularly by devoting Book 15 of the Spirit of the Laws to the subject.1 Montesquieu’s treatment of slavery there is ambiguous, as he at some points denounces it categorically, seeming to appeal to a universal human nature, whereas at others he investigates the reasons for its existence, even going so far as to justify its naturalness in particularly harsh geographical environments. In the face of this ambiguity, scholars have reached differing assessments of his ultimate position on slavery.2 Although Montesquieu offers a focused treatment of the topic in Book 15, his interest in how slavery has manifested itself in various cultures through history suffuses the Spirit of the Laws. Of course, during Montesquieu’s lifetime, slavery was not merely of historical interest. The French crown had authorized slavery in its colonies and had undertaken to regulate the institution there when it issued the Code Noir in 1685 during the rule of King Louis XIV. The French crown and French individuals during Montesquieu’s lifetime continued to
The author is grateful for the insightful comments on earlier versions of the editors Keegan Callanan and Sharon Krause as well as of David Carrithers, Robert Devigne, Ioannis Evrigenis, Meredith Sherman, and the participants in the Boston Area Enlightenment Workshop.
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perpetrate and to benefit from the institution of slavery in France’s Caribbean colonies.3 Although Montesquieu does not explicitly denounce the French role in slavery, a careful reading of The Spirit of the Laws reveals a biting satire in the face of the deeply entrenched prejudices and financial interests of his time. As this chapter will argue, he offers in Book 15 of The Spirit of the Laws a satire which ultimately implicates Christian Europeans in atrocious crimes – not only in the inhumanity of slavery but also of genocide. His satire conveys difficult truths in a manner that perhaps could prick European consciences more effectively than outrage and condemnations. Indeed, in the very context of his treatment of slavery in Book 15, he declares his view that “[k]nowledge” and “reason” make human beings more gentle and humane and then notes that “only prejudices cause these [benevolent attributes] to be renounced” (SL 15.3). So subtle an approach to the prejudices and cruelties of his age brings with it the possibility of misunderstanding and of charges of complicity in them in a way that a full-throated denunciation might not. The controversy over Montesquieu’s ultimate stance on slavery is not merely one of scholarly interest, however, as his words and his authority were enlisted on both sides of the incendiary debate in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe and the Americas that preceded the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and the manumission of its victims. As David Brion Davis notes, “Montesquieu’s emphasis on environmental differences played into the hands of proslavery apologists.”4 Just as the proponents of slavery wielded the elements of his thought that supported cultural variation in response to particular circumstances, so its opponents appealed to his criticism of the institution and his appeal to a universal human nature. Writers of the anti-slavery movements in France, Great Britain, and the Americas, eschewed his subtlety but drew directly on Montesquieu’s specific arguments and language in denouncing slavery, making him a key intellectual progenitor of their movement. A scholar of Montesquieu judges that “one cannot truly speak of an antislavery literature or current before Montesquieu,”5 and a historian of political thought declares that he was the “first” writer “in the front rank of reputation, to denounce the wickedness of the whole business [of slavery]; the first to open the struggle which was not carried in final triumph until more than a century after his death.”6 As we shall see, his artful treatment of contemporary slavery does not so much denounce its wickedness as imply it, a fact that surely facilitated the use of his thought not only by those who argued for the eradication of
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slavery but also for its perpetuation. Nevertheless, he warns his readers at the outset of the Spirit of the Laws to “judge” the work “not” “by a moment’s reading” but rather by reflection on the “whole” (SL Pref.). When one, following this guidance, assembles disparate elements of his treatment of slavery – including his expression of sympathy for the pitiful plight of the enslaved throughout history, his satirical excoriation of the prejudices that support slavery and other European crimes against humanity, his declaration that all slavery is against nature, and his proposition that the fault for its continuing existence even in the harshest climates resides with incompetent legislators – his reader encounters a tableau that offers his hope for its eradication everywhere on the globe. Some of his followers acted on his hope as they invoked his name and his very words in the campaign for slavery’s abolition.
’ Montesquieu explicitly evokes the relationship of master to slave when he selects the Greek term, despotism, to designate the rule of one without law or intermediate institutions and where fear provides the motivation for action among the subjects.7 Whereas the despot is the slave master writ large, the slave master is the despot in miniature. Even before he examines slavery in the civil realm in Book 15 of the Spirit of the Laws, therefore, he explores its political manifestation in stigmatizing terms. Indeed, it has been said that for Montesquieu the “absolute evil was despotism, characterized by cruelty and arbitrary power.”8 In addition, Montesquieu does not hesitate to display his passionate sympathy for the suffering of slaves throughout history and in various cultures both in Book 15 and elsewhere in the Spirit of the Laws. Montesquieu begins Book 15 on slavery with the reflection: “Slavery in its proper sense is the establishment of a right which makes one man so much the owner of another man that he is the absolute master of his life and of his goods.”9 Here slavery’s kinship with despotism is evident and, in fact, later in the chapter he makes the point explicit when he comments that in “despotic countries, where one is already in political slavery, civil slavery is more bearable than elsewhere” (SL 15.1). Presumably the denial of freedom in the civil sphere is less stark when all in the political realm are deprived of freedom and hence reduced to the status of fearful slaves. Immediately after his definition of slavery as “a right,” he issues a categorical denunciation of the very institution: “It is not good by its nature; it is useful neither to the master nor to the slave: not to the slave,
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because he can do nothing from virtue; not to the master, because he contracts all sorts of bad habits from his slaves, because he imperceptibly grows accustomed to failing in all the moral virtues, because he grows proud, curt, harsh, angry, voluptuous, and cruel” (SL 15.1).10 Here he denounces slavery, condemning the master in terms he has applied to the despot elsewhere (cf. SL 2). Montesquieu ends this first chapter of his book on slavery noting that the institution is incompatible with both monarchical and republican governments. Elsewhere in the work, however, he acknowledges that despite what he deems a fundamental incompatibility between slavery and both monarchical and republican governments, the real-world manifestations of these governments often contained slaves. Indeed, when treating the virtuous ancient republics of Greece, he not only acknowledges the existence of slavery in them, but he also notes ancient Sparta’s particularly inhumane treatment of the helots when he mentions that Lycurgus mixed the “harshest slavery with extreme liberty” (SL 4.6; on the helots see also 15.10). Elsewhere he lingers on the suffering of the enslaved individuals who lived among the free citizens of Greece and Rome when, broaching the use of torture to extract information, he contemplates the possibility that torture “might be suitable for despotic government, where everything inspiring fear enters more into the springs of government.” He explains, however, that he cannot bring himself to say what he “was going to say,” because, reflecting on the suffering of “slaves among the Greeks and Romans,” he “hear[s] the voice of nature crying out against” him (SL 6.17). He thus makes a point of demonstrating that his great sympathy for the slaves of antiquity renders him incapable of continuing the discussion. Montesquieu also condemns in the starkest possible terms the manner in which the Spanish enslaved and exterminated the native peoples of America. He abandons his generally neutral tone when he declares that “the pillages of the Spaniards” in the Americas are among “the greatest wounds mankind has yet received” (SL 4.6, p. 37). Thus, Montesquieu indicates that a modern nation of Europeans perpetrated one of the greatest atrocities in human history. He returns to these most horrible of events in the Americas when he endeavors in Book 15 to explain why one group believes it has the “right” to enslave another. The second chapter examines “the origin of the right of slavery according to the Roman jurists” and the three succeeding chapters share the title “Another origin of the right of slavery” (SL 15.2, 3, 4; 7). One origin, he finds, derives “from the scorn that one nation conceives for another,
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founded on the difference in customs.” He recounts how that scorn was fostered when the Spaniards discovered that the native people of America considered “baskets” of “crabs, snails, crickets, and grasshoppers” worthy offerings to the revered “Sainte-Marie” of Christianity. The Spanish scorn was only reinforced by the fact that the natives “smoked tobacco and that they did not cut their beard in the Spanish fashion” (SL 15.3). Montesquieu thus illustrates the extreme consequences that arise from harmful prejudices, or what in today’s parlance would be termed ethnocentrism. In this manner, he undermines the socalled “right” of slavery by showing how it is based on nothing more than prejudices. In this way, Montesquieu further encourages sympathy for the enslaved.
In continuing to pursue the origins of slavery, Montesquieu examines the sweep of European history and shows how Christianity served both to enslave free people and to liberate enslaved ones.11 Having remarked that the Spanish were indignant at a perceived insult to the Holy Mother, he pursues in more depth the role of Christianity in the crimes of the Spanish, saying that “I would as soon say that religion gives to those who profess it a right to reduce to servitude those who do not profess it, in order to work more easily for its propagation.” He then explains that “[i]t was this way of thinking that encouraged the destroyers of America [the Spanish] in their crimes.” He continues that “[o]n this idea they founded the right of making so many peoples slaves; for these brigands, who absolutely wanted to be both brigands and Christians, were very devout” (SL 15.4). These particular criminals were also Christians, so despite the scorn they felt for the ungodly people whom they enslaved, they saw themselves as serving the purposes of God, the souls of the natives, and, of course, their own avaricious interests. The chilling result that Montesquieu points to is destruction. Montesquieu also points to the culpability of his own nation in this part of the sad legacy when he continues, “Louis XIII was extremely pained by the law making slaves of the Negroes in his colonies, but when it had been brought fully to his mind that this was the surest way to convert them, he consented to it” (SL 15.4). Thus, Montesquieu reveals the cruel hypocrisy of the right of slavery that can arise from religious motives, specifically the imperative of Christians to convert the heathens to their faith.
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Although Christianity serves for Montesquieu as a key factor in the expansion of slavery in the Americas, he credits the religion with having helped to eradicate slavery in Europe in prior centuries. He points out that “Plutarch tells us in the life of Numa that there was neither master nor slave in the age of Saturn,” thus underscoring the point that for the ancients the freedom of all people could occur only in a mythological age. By contrast, he continues, “In our climates, Christianity has brought back that age” (SL 15.7, p. 252; see also PL 75). In other words, Christianity has made a reality in modern Europe (but not in the Americas) what was only a myth in antiquity. Elsewhere in the Spirit of the Laws Montesquieu emphasizes the stark contrast in customs, passions, and mores between the ancient pagans and the modern Christians in Europe as it relates to warfare and slavery. He reports that among the ancient Greeks “the inhabitants of a captured town lost their civil liberty and were sold as slaves” (SL 29.14). The Romans, whose “purpose” was military “expansion” (SL 11.5), tended to exterminate all the “citizens” of the towns they vanquished (SL 10.3), frequently selling the women and children into slavery. When treating in Book 15 the ideas that human beings have used to justify slavery, Montesquieu turns first to “the origin of the right of slavery according to the Roman jurists” who propounded a “right of nations” that “wanted prisoners” of war “to become slaves so that they would not be killed.” The jurists’ formulation presents slavery as a milder alternative to killing, but Montesquieu forthrightly declares that their reasoning is “not sensible.” Victory in battle conveys only “the right” that “captives” should “be imprisoned so that they can no longer do harm” (SL 15.2). The Roman right of nations was unnecessarily harsh. With the passage of the centuries, Christian teachings had a broad effect on the way the European states approach the consequences of war, Montesquieu observes. Indeed, the “right of nations” operative during his lifetime moves Montesquieu to pay “homage” “to our modern times, to contemporary reasoning, the religion of the modern day, to our philosophy, and to our mores” (SL 10.3). The Frenchman illustrates the contrast between the mores and practices of the pagans and those of modern Christians when he examines the origins of the French monarchy and thus simultaneously the transition from pagan to modern times. He recounts how during the return of King Pepin’s conquering army from Aquitaine “a number of holy bishops” saw “the captives shackled two by two” and “stirred” thus to “tender charity,” these men of the cloth used “the silver of the churches and even sold the sacred vessels to buy back
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those whom they could” (SL 30.11, p. 629). Presumably Christian teachings moved at least some members of the Church to regard slavery as a heartrending condition that should be alleviated where feasible. These reflections show that Montesquieu understands that humane passions can make possible broad societal change on the issue of slavery, however incomplete its realization was during his time.
Just as Montesquieu depicts Christianity as having served as both an enslaving and a liberating force, so too does he portray nature in such a dual light. Indeed, his most ringing condemnation of slavery appeals to nature: “But, as all men are born equal, one must say that slavery is against nature.” He goes on to contrast this conclusion with the view of Aristotle, saying that “Aristotle wants to prove that there are slaves by nature” but “what he says scarcely proves it” (SL 15.7). Thus, Montesquieu appeals to a universal natural equality to proclaim that slavery is illegitimate, explicitly challenging this esteemed ancient philosopher. At the same time, Montesquieu offers another type of appeal to nature in Book 15, one that provides an explanation for the apparent embeddedness of slavery in some locations. He continues in the same sentence in which he issues a categorical condemnation of that slavery that “in certain countries [slavery] may be founded on a natural reason.” The natural reason to which he here refers turns on the natural setting of human beings, particularly regions with a hot climate. He explains that “heat enervates the body and weakens the courage so much that men come to perform an arduous duty only from fear of chastisements” and notes that, as a result, “slavery there runs less counter to reason” (SL 15.7). By linking slavery to certain climates Montesquieu could intend to justify its existence in some circumstances, or alternatively he could merely be indicating those situations in which the vile institution is particularly difficult to extirpate. So striking is Montesquieu’s apparent ambivalence toward slavery in this discussion that recent commentator Dennis Rasmussen uses Montesquieu’s reasoning in this context “as a test case” for the philosopher’s opposition to appeals to universal natural laws and finds that Montesquieu’s apparent refusal to condemn slavery categorically underscores his belief “that morality ultimately springs from people’s sentiments and desires” and thus will be “different in different circumstances.”12 In beginning the succeeding chapter, Montesquieu
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offers what appears to be a definitive conclusion supportive of this characterization of his position: “Therefore, natural slavery must be limited to certain particular countries of the world.” He thus acknowledges a type of natural slavery but then proceeds to declare slavery’s unsuitability for the remaining parts of the globe, saying that in “all the others, it seems to me that everything can be done by freemen, however arduous the work that society requires” (SL 15.8). All this seems to suggest that nature provides different standards for different peoples in different environments. This is not Montesquieu’s ultimate conclusion on the matter, however, as his subsequent musings open up the possibility that all slavery, including what he here terms “natural slavery,” can be eradicated. He turns to another type of “arduous” work, that of mining, which one finds in Europe itself. In examining the history of this industry, he reports that it originally appeared that only those without liberty – “slaves or criminals” – could be induced to undertake the dangerous and frightening work of extracting minerals from inside the earth. Yet a change has occurred such that workers now engage in this labor freely and “happily” in lower Saxony and Hungary. Human invention and ingenuity changed the character of the work in these places for “[w]ith the convenience of machines invented or applied by art, one can replace the forced labor that elsewhere is done by slaves” (SL 15.8, n. 10). Based on this instance of technology liberating human beings from slavery, he ponders the possibility of further manumission, saying that “I do not know if my spirit or my heart dictates this point. Perhaps there is no climate on earth where one could not engage freemen to work.” He here allows his readers to glimpse again his humane passions just as he does when he contemplates the agony of tortured slaves among the ancients. He turns from the mines of Europe, where slavery has been eradicated, to severe climates where it still exists and where nature appears to require it. He contemplates the possibility that it need not exist in any climate, implicitly questioning whether it need exist in the Americas and in territories held by his own nation. He goes further in undercutting the naturalness and necessity of slavery when he says that “[b]ecause the laws were badly made, lazy men appeared; because these men were lazy, they were enslaved.” This passage suggests that Montesquieu holds defective legislation, and hence incompetent political rulers, responsible for the continuing existence of slavery.13 Simply put, in hostile environments one needs more ingenious, farsighted, and humane legislators than elsewhere to prevent the institution of slavery from arising in the first instance. Legislators of this caliber could
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work to eradicate even what may appear to be “natural slavery,” he suggests (SL 15.8). Montesquieu holds out this prospect as a challenge and hence as an inspiration to legislators to attempt to abolish slavery wherever it exists. Elsewhere in the work, as we have seen, he himself displays the humane passions that might motivate their attempt.
’ In examining slavery in extremely hot climates, Montesquieu broaches the practice of his homeland. During his lifetime, France’s most lucrative colony was Saint Domingue where slaves raised sugar cane and other crops such as coffee and tobacco. The prevailing belief in French society at the time held that the sugar harvest and thus the profits derived from it depended on slavery. This type of agriculture in the tropical climate of the French colonies could not exist without slavery because free laborers, it was believed, would not withstand the extreme rigors of the labor required in the searing heat that inflicted disease and death on the slaves.14 According to some, Montesquieu’s “attack on slavery” “has a reputation for weakness.”15 Commentators frequently point to the deeply entrenched character of the Atlantic slave trade in French society as the reason for Montesquieu’s apparent equivocation on the issue. From one perspective, Montesquieu was incapable of having the critical distance to evaluate slavery objectively and to denounce its injustice because he himself as well as his fellow natives of Bordeaux derived financial benefit from the practice.16 From another perspective, however, Montesquieu loathed the institution but was cautious in denouncing it precisely because of the deeply entrenched interests and prejudices of his fellows.17 He feared not only the threat of social ostracism but also the very real judicial penalties that could befall a writer who too forthrightly denounced practices that directly implicated the French crown.18 Given these latter factors, Russell Parsons Jameson emphasizes that Montesquieu offers a “prudent critique” of the slavery of his time and even an “esoteric” approach to the topic in The Spirit of the Laws.19 The possibility that Montesquieu wrote circumspectly about contemporary slavery is powerfully corroborated by the fact that in 1750, two years after the publication of the first edition of the Spirit of the Laws, he emphasized the hypocrisy that inheres in contemporary justifications for slavery when responding privately to remarks that an acquaintance had
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offered on The Spirit of the Laws. His letter notes that this hypocrisy of current slaveowners would be unmasked were a lottery instituted that arbitrarily assigned one-tenth of a population to hold the other ninetenths in bondage (Pléiade 2:1197, “Réponse à des observations de Grosley sur l’Esprit des lois”). Montesquieu subsequently incorporated portions of the letter into the text of chapter 9 of Book 15 of The Spirit of the Laws, which first appeared in 1757 in the second edition of the work, published after Montesquieu’s death.20 In this passage, he notes that if the roles of master and slave were so assigned then “[t]hose who most speak in favor of slavery would hold it the most in horror.” He concludes with a condemnation of his compatriots who “[e]very day” say “that it would be good if there were slaves among us.” Their “cry for slavery is the cry of luxury and voluptuousness, and not that of the love of public felicity” (SL 15.9). When broaching the horrors of the African slave trade in the Spirit of the Laws in its originally published form, Montesquieu does, in fact, use a much subtler approach. In a chapter entitled, “On the slavery of Negroes,” Montesquieu begins by declaring, “If I had to defend the right we have of making slaves, here is what I would say” (SL 15.5). As Diana Schaub notes, Montesquieu’s use of the “conditional form of the sentence” “serves to alert readers to expect some ironic distance” between his own views and those of the chapter.21 In what follows, he invokes his immediate social and political context and then constructs a hypothetical occasion in which he is compelled to defend that which he has already declared to be against nature. This defense proceeds in a most ridiculous manner, offering specious arguments that appeal merely to the differences of cultural understanding and of superficial physical appearance. He begins with a most blood-chilling justification: “The peoples of Europe, having exterminated those of America, had to make slaves of those of Africa in order to use them to clear so much land.” His reference here to extermination in America makes clear that what he describes elsewhere as “one of the greatest wounds mankind has yet received” was, in fact, a genocide (SL 15.5, 4.6). Therefore, what is most insidious about his ironic assertion here of the necessity of the Atlantic slave trade is that anyone who accepts its logic complacently accepts – if not actively condones – a prior genocide.22 Among Montesquieu’s other specious assertions in this chapter are the following: “A proof that Negroes do not have common sense is that they make more of a glass necklace than one of gold”; “Those concerned are black from head to toe, and they have such flat noses that it is almost
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impossible to feel sorry for them”; and “One cannot get into one’s mind that god, who is a very wise being, should have put a soul, above all a good soul, in a body that was entirely black” (15.5). Given the clearly countervailing sentiments expressed elsewhere in The Spirit of the Laws, discussed above, these pronouncements have the ring of biting satire intended for the purpose of reforming prejudices.23 Some readers, however, have taken these ironic pronouncements to be his true views regarding the legitimacy of the enslavement of this population.24 Such readers not only misunderstand the irony of the chapter but also miss the significance of his pronouncement at the close of a preceding chapter of this same book where he speaks with the utmost sincerity of his purpose in composing the Spirit of the Laws. Just prior to bombarding his readers with prejudices about Africans that would rationalize their enslavement, Montesquieu had warned his readers against falling prey to prejudice, saying that “[k]nowledge makes men gentle, and reason inclines toward humanity; only prejudices cause these to be renounced” (SL 15.3). Prejudices are the fundamental obstacles to gentleness and humanity, Montesquieu declares before exposing some of the most insidious and entrenched ones of his time. In considering the role of prejudice in his treatment of slavery, one should also note that he announces at the outset of the Spirit of the Laws that the eradication of prejudices is his fundamental purpose: “I would consider myself the happiest of mortals if I could make it so that men were able to cure themselves of their prejudices” (SL Pref.). Of course, he cannot himself eradicate the prejudices of others but it might be possible, he here indicates, for him to teach people to “cure themselves.” Both incisive satire and encouragement of sympathetic passions are tools of Montesquieu’s subtle curative practices.25 Consideration of the conclusion of his chapter on “Negro slavery” reveals more of his own distinctive satirical approach to the most atrocious practices. He declares there that “it is impossible for us to assume that these people [gens-là] are men [hommes] because if we assumed that they were men [hommes] one would begin to believe that we ourselves were not Christians” (SL 15.5).26 His use of the second person plural implicates the behavior of modern French people, including himself, but then he moves to indict in particular the contemporary rulers of church and state in Europe. Specifically, he complains that “the princes of Europe, who make so many useless agreements with one another,” have failed “to make a general one in favor of mercy and pity” by prohibiting slavery.27 Although some of his contemporaries denounce the “injustice” of slavery as practiced in their time, Montesquieu suggests that Christian
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charity – “pity and mercy” – must become operative in the legislators and the masters who rule the slave state for change to transpire (SL 15.5; cf. 15.4). As we have seen, he is particularly interested in facilitating this change by cultivating the sympathetic passions (SL 30.11), his own included (SL 6.17).
’ It would take more than a century after Montesquieu’s death for the Atlantic slave trade and then slavery itself to be outlawed in the Americas. During that contentious period advocates on both sides appealed to Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws as an authority. Advocates for the French colonies against the imposition of a distant and unyielding force in the form of the Code Noir, the French body of law that governed how the colonists ruled their slaves, claimed the esteemed French philosopher as an authority. They not only made use of the ambiguity in his treatment of slavery but also his tendency to exalt the particular over the universal, thus giving them a means to justify their distinctive way of life.28 Proponents of slavery in the Anglophone world also drew on Montesquieu’s ambiguity about the naturalness of slavery and his defense of a diversity of cultural norms to justify slavery in the Americas. A late eighteenth-century work entitled “An Apology for Negro Slavery: Or the West-India Planters Vindicated from the Charge of Inhumanity” appeals to Montesquieu, conceding that the “animated writer in favor of liberty, the justly admired Montesquieu, allows, that although slavery may be accounted unnatural, since all men are born equal, yet in some countries it is founded on natural causes,” and for corroboration the author inserts Montesquieu’s French into a footnote. The author then proceeds to unmask the tyrannical elements that lurk in universal pronouncements saying, The writers against negro-slavery . . . might as well contend, that every nation should be governed by the same laws; adopt the same habits, customs, and manners; and, in a word, that not only the constitution of every country or kingdom, but the very constitution of the whole universe, should be altered, and new-modelled at their discretion.29
Conversely, the opponents of slavery appealed to the universalist aspects of Montesquieu’s treatment of slavery. Indeed, the anti-slavery elements of Book 15 of The Spirit of the Laws served as a fount from which slavery’s later opponents in Europe and America would draw both inspiration and argumentation.30 In the hands of these successors,
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Montesquieu’s ideas became sharper as they were developed for the purpose of liberation. Montesquieu’s great protégé Louis de Jaucourt (1704–79), the foremost author of the Encyclopédie, served as one of the most direct and influential avenues for the propagation of Montesquieu’s ideas on a multiplicity of topics. Nowhere is Montesquieu’s influence on Jaucourt more evident than in his article “Esclavage,” where he directly acknowledges his intellectual debt to Montesquieu, saying that “in order to sketch [slavery’s] origin, nature, and foundation, I will borrow many things from the author of l’Esprit des lois, without stopping at borrowing the sturdiness of his principles, because I can add nothing to his glory.” Indeed, much of the article is a précis of Montesquieu’s treatment of the subject. Using language from Book 15 of The Spirit of the Laws, Jaucourt declares that slavery is against “natural law,” examines all of its claims to legitimacy, and shows that slavery is inimical to the moderate forms of government that Montesquieu delineates. Jaucourt continues: We should further add with this illustrious author that slavery is not useful either for the master or for the slave: for the slave, because he can do nothing out of virtue; for the master, because he contracts with his slaves all kinds of vices and bad habits that are contrary to the laws of society. He unwittingly becomes accustomed to the lack of all moral virtues and he becomes proud, touchy, angry, hard, voluptuous, barbaric.31
The passage is a near reproduction of Montesquieu’s text in the first paragraph of the first chapter of Book 15. Jaucourt does more than adopt Montesquieu’s words, however, as he turns those passages in which Montesquieu seems to be equivocating on the issue of slavery or even justifying its existence into an unambiguous case for manumission. As seen above, Montesquieu adduces a natural reason, namely extremely hot climates, for the existence of slavery in some places, but after offering this explanation he explores the possibility of a legislator who could induce free people to undertake necessary work without resort to slavery. Jaucourt extends Montesquieu’s reasoning, saying that: In every government and in every country, no matter how punitive the work that the society there demands, everything can be done with free men by encouraging them through compensation and privileges, in apportioning their work to their capabilities, or in supplementing them with machines that art invents and applies according to needs and locales.
In this manner, Jaucourt asserts definitively what Montesquieu offers as conjecture. Thus, Montesquieu’s views on slavery were transmitted and
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transformed in the Encyclopédie, the most paradigmatic and influential literary effort of the Enlightenment, to support the anti-slavery cause.32 British citizens residing both in the homeland and in America also appealed to Montesquieu’s writings in making their own anti-slavery pronouncements. For example, Granville Sharp (1735–1813) one of the earliest opponents of the slave trade in Britain refers his readers in A Representation of the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery to Montesquieu’s Book 15 of The Spirit of the Laws on the grounds that the passage is “much to [his] purpose.”33 Similarly, An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America, upon Slave-Keeping, published in 1773 by Benjamin Rush (1746–1813), who would go on to sign the Declaration of Independence, declares the slave trade to be a “direct violation of the Laws of nature and Religion.”34 Rush makes his reliance on Montesquieu overt as he condemns the notion that the skin color of Africans marks them out for slavery, quoting in a footnote a large portion of the satirical arguments in chapter 5 of Book 15 of the Spirit of the Laws where, to Rush’s mind, Montesquieu “treats this argument with the ridicule it deserves.”35 Thus, Montesquieu’s legacy on slavery replicates the tension in his thought between the promotion of humane universal principles, on the one hand, and an appreciation for cultural diversity, on the other. History ultimately vindicated those who argued and fought for universal manumission. In seeking to make a reality the hope that he had expressed in The Spirit of the Laws that slavery might be eradicated from every part of the globe, some early and incisive abolitionists were much less subtle in their approach to slavery than was Montesquieu. Nevertheless, they revealed themselves to be thoughtful readers of the “whole” of Montesquieu’s great work (cf. SL Pref.) as they deployed the arguments and sentiments that he conveyed on the topic.
Notes 1 After examining “civil slavery” in Book 15, in the following one he treats “domestic slavery,” women’s enslavement in the household. 2 For example, Lafontant, Montesquieu et le problème, highlights Montesquieu’s intellectual and personal hypocrisy in his treatment of slavery; Rasmussen, Pragmatic Enlightenment, reads Montesquieu’s ambiguity on slavery as an instance of his general opposition to universal pronouncements; Courtney offers slavery as an “example of an institution which Montesquieu sees as contrary to natural law” (“Natural Law,” 59); and Schaub emphasizes his ultimate ameliorative hope and intention (“Montesquieu on Slavery”).
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Fieldhouse, Colonial Empires, 34–5. Davis, Problem of Slavery, 403. Derathé, “Notes,” vol. 1, 505; my translation. Vaughan, Studies in the History of Political Philosophy, 1.238; cited in Fletcher, Montesquieu and English Politics, 229. Krause, “Despotism,” 233–5; Schaub, Erotic Liberalism, 19–25. Craiutu, Virtue for Courageous Minds, 64. Many of the ideas Montesquieu expresses in Book 15 appear in his Pensées. See MT 174–6. Parekh, “Vico and Montesquieu,” 68. Sullivan, Montesquieu and the Despotic Ideas of Europe, 85–9. Rasmussen, Pragmatic Enlightenment, 67 and 69. Schaub, “Montesquieu on Slavery,” 75; cf. Rasmussen, Pragmatic Enlightenment, 68. See, for example, Dobie, Trading Places, 2–5; 42. Seeber, Anti-Slavery Opinion, 31; cf. Volpilhac-Auger, Montesquieu, 201–2. Lafontant, Montesquieu et le problème de l’esclavage; Sala-Molins, Dark Side of the Light, 81. Jameson, Montesquieu et l’esclavage, 55. Hunting, “Philosophes and Black Slavery,” 406. Jameson, Montesquieu et l’esclavage, 296, 255; my translation. Davis, Problem of Slavery, 407–8; Jameson, Montesquieu et l’esclavage, 325; Seeber, Anti-Slavery Opinion, 29, n. 68; Volpilhac-Auger, Montesquieu, 255. Schaub, “Montesquieu on Slavery,” 73. Of course, Montesquieu has already made clear his condemnation of that genocide. In this later chapter, however, he implicates in this most grievous crime not just “the Spaniards,” but rather “[t]he peoples of Europe” more generally (SL 4.6, 37; 15.5). Hunting, “Philosophes and Black Slavery,” 417–18. Montesquieu’s hesitancy regarding this chapter is revealed by the fact that he removed and then restored a single paragraph in the manuscript version of the chapter multiple times (Shackleton, Montesquieu, 237; cited in Davis, Problem of Slavery, 403n. 30). E.g., Dossa, “Liberals and Muslims,” 67; for an example of an 18th-century misunderstanding of this chapter, see Dobie, Trading Places, 41. Of course, Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” (1729) notably preceded Montesquieu’s own effort to confront prejudices with satire. Montesquieu reveals his awareness of such satires when, commenting on English society, he writes that “[t]heir satirical writings would be scathing, and one would see many Juvenals among them” (SL 19.27, p. 333). Montesquieu’s approach here is akin to his similarly artful indictment of the Portuguese Inquisition for burning a Jewish girl, in which he has a fictional character condemn the Christian perpetrators as unchristian. The Jewish man, having witnessed the horrifying persecution worthy of Diocletian, charges that “[y]ou want us to be Christians, and you do not want to be Christians yourselves.” SL 25.13, p. 491; Gilmore and Sullivan, “Montesquieu’s Teaching.”
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27 In the context of a discussion of gladiator sports in Rome in Considerations he turns his attention to the French Caribbean: “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. Can the ferocity we find in the inhabitants of our colonies come from anything but the punishments constantly inflicted on this unhappy portion of the human race? When we are cruel in the civil state, what can we expect from natural gentleness and justice?” (CR 15). In drawing this equation between the atrocities in the gladiatorial ring and in the French Caribbean, he undermines the distinction he draws between the morality of the ancient pagans and the modern Christians. 28 Ghachem, “Montesquieu in the Caribbean.” 29 Turnbull, Apology for Negro Slavery, 7–8; cited in Fletcher, Montesquieu and English Politics, 229–30. 30 Davis, Problem of Slavery, vii–viii; Fletcher, “Montesquieu’s Influence,” 416– 17. 31 Jaucourt, “Slavery.” 32 Ehrard, “L’Encyclopédie et l’esclavage,” 127 and Seeber, Anti-Slavery Opinion, 61. 33 Sharp, Representation of the Injustice, 78–9. 34 Rush, Address to the Inhabitants, 9; Winterer, American Enlightenments, 158. 35 Rush, Address to the Inhabitants, 3.
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12 Montesquieu and the Liberty of Women Diana J. Schaub
Montesquieu’s care for liberty, present throughout his writings, is clearest in Books 11 and 12 of The Spirit of the Laws. Examining political liberty first in relation to the constitution, he shows how “liberty is formed by a certain distribution of the three powers” (SL 12.1). Turning to political liberty in relation to the citizen, his concern is with security, especially the threat posed by the process of the criminal law and its modes of punishment. Perhaps not surprisingly, women’s security is more imperiled than men’s; the horrifically inventive examples of abusive punishment that Montesquieu denounces in SL 12.14 all involve sexual violation. Nor is the modesty of women a purely personal or familial matter, as Montesquieu indicates when he describes in SL 11.15 how the sacrificial deaths of Lucretia and Virginia brought down the tyrannies of the Tarquins and the Decemvirs. Throughout Montesquieu’s oeuvre, the condition of women serves as a paradigmatic case for the status of liberty altogether. More than that, Montesquieu’s women become the agents of the liberalizing reforms that he cautiously forwards. Because of his caution, the clues to this political and moral transformation are scattered through a maze of examples, cross-references, and footnotes, requiring patient textual explication before the larger picture of women’s liberty takes shape. A figure described only as “a very gallant philosopher” makes a brief appearance in Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, the epistolary novel that first made his literary reputation. In letter 38, Rica, one of the traveling Persians, reports the position taken by this theorist of the natural law who challenges the prevailing subordination of women to men. Arguing that the natural law authorizes no such subjection, the gallant philosopher 198
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suggests that women’s greater humanity and reasonableness – virtues consequent upon women’s “gentleness” – have allowed men to lord it over women, establishing “an absolute tyranny” (PL 38). Thus, women’s native superiorities have been the paradoxical cause of their conventional inferiority (and this despite the “irresistible” empire they hold: the empire of beauty). Interestingly, the gallant philosopher does not seem to consider the possibility of natural equality; being chivalrous, he seeks to give the honor of the pedestal to women. Nonetheless, the social reform that he recommends – providing scope for the development of female talents through education – would bring about greater equality between the sexes by inspiriting women and gentling men. Scholars, impressed by the roman à clef quality of the Persian Letters, have speculated about the identity of the gallant philosopher: Candidates include Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, François Poullain de la Barre, and perhaps most intriguingly Montesquieu himself.1 Certainly, the harem plot, which revolves on the psychological motivations of male sexual despotism and the modes by which it is maintained, might support the notion that the gallant philosopher is none other than the tale’s inventor. Moreover, the revolutionary denouement of the novel is explicitly framed in terms of natural law. In the dramatic final letter, Roxane, the most favored and least suspected of Usbek’s many wives, reveals the extent to which she deceived her tyrannical master: How could you think that I was credulous enough to imagine that I existed in the world only in order to worship your every caprice, that while you permitted yourself everything, you had the right to torment all of my desires? No! I might have lived in servitude, but I have always been free. I have reformed your laws by those of nature, and my spirit has always remained independent. (PL 161)
Roxane’s “natural law” reformation began with her determined resistance to a forced marriage (including its consummation, which is to say her rape by Usbek) and her refusal to consider her fidelity to her real beloved as an adulterous passion. After her lover is discovered, she brings about the utter collapse of the seraglio by murdering the eunuchs who murdered her lover and then taking her own life as she pens this last missive, intended as a dagger pointed at Usbek’s heart. We cannot help but note that there is no womanly sweet reasonableness here; there is instead justified moral outrage and “all the violence of hatred” (PL 161). Montesquieu may be on the side of the women – in addition to Roxane, Zélis also is a heroine of sorts, as are Astarté, Zuléma, and Anaïs (all of whom challenge oppressive structures) – but his sketch of rebellious wives
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would seem to be mining a very different vein than the lullaby arguments of the gallant philosopher. Montesquieu’s treatment of women, like his treatment of so many matters, is complex and far from doctrinaire. He presents an almost Shakespearian range of female characters. There is variety not only in the contrast between the women of Persia and those of Paris, but also within the seraglio, where the groveling of the sycophant Zachi serves as a foil to the resistance of Roxane. Like the “gallant philosopher,” Montesquieu is interested in human nature – and the societal significance of its bifurcation into male and female; however, unlike him, he seems more aware of the malleability of both nature and convention. Rica testifies to the reversibility of sex-based hierarchy, in that same letter 38, when he asserts that “among the most polished peoples, women have always had authority over their husbands,” citing the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and even the Romans as examples. Then he adds, “I speak not of the Sarmatians, who truly were in the servitude of that sex; they were too barbarous to serve as an example” (PL 38). Thus, Montesquieu lets us know that matriarchy might be associated with civilizational refinement or with Amazonian savagery.2 Evidence from My Thoughts, where Montesquieu is presumably speaking in his own name (rather than through the dramatic interplay of his fictional characters), shows he is not a thinker who flatters women, but instead an acute observer of both sexes.3 In pensée 1622, Montesquieu refers to the instances of female dominance mentioned by Rica, but appends a different conclusion: Had either the Egyptians or the Scythians/Sarmatians conquered the world, then “the human race would be living under the servitude of women, and one would have to be a philosopher to say that a different government would be more in conformity with nature.”4 His point is that “prejudices” can triumph to such a degree that their spread “changes, so to speak, the entire character of human nature.” This susceptibility to custom, which alters the very cast of the human mind, “is what makes man so difficult to define.”5 In this same passage, Montesquieu criticizes the opposite (and more pervasive) brand of chauvinism as well, stating that “if Mohammedanism had subjugated the entire world,” then the confinement of women would have been thought “natural.”6 As things stand, the human world presents both extremes and everything in between, or just about everything, since Montesquieu also argues that perfect equality is not attainable: “It must be noted that, except in cases which certain circumstances have brought forth, women have
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hardly ever claimed equality. For they already have so many other natural advantages that equality of power is always dominion for them” (MT 1726). As to what he means by “natural advantages,” there is a passage in The Spirit of the Laws which bears some resemblance to the gallant philosopher’s account of women’s intrinsic virtues. In a chapter entitled “On administration by women,” Montesquieu indicates that women possess “more gentleness and moderation” than men, although he also finds these qualities to be a function of “their weak state” (SL 7.17). Thus, Montesquieu is more frank (or less chivalrous) than the gallant philosopher who spoke of women’s “gentleness” (rather than their “weakness”) as the source of their greater “humanity and reasonableness.” In a surprising twist, however, Montesquieu turns this physical deficit into an endorsement of female administrators, since gentleness and moderation “can make for a good government.”7 He gives as evidence queenly rule on three continents, from Asia to Africa to Europe. Yet, he also insists that women’s weakness makes them unsuited to rule the household. That caveat, of course, does not mean that he countenances despotic male rule in the domestic realm. Indeed, the one thing that Montesquieu scholars are agreed on is that Montesquieu is a determined foe of despotism in all its permutations and locations. Based on the Greek etymology of the word δεσπότης, which is thought to derive from the same root as the word for husband πόσις, it would seem that despotism finds its origin – is naturalized, so to speak – within the family.8 Montesquieu avails himself of that connection in constructing the Persian Letters, where the sexual despotism of Usbek’s harem stands in for other forms of despotism, both political and theological.9 The work is a far-reaching critique of systemic despotism, with women representing humankind altogether in its longing for liberty. One of the pensées formulates the analogy which serves as the premise of the Persian Letters: “Despotic government constrains the talents of subjects and great men, just as the power of men constrains the talents of women” (MT 596). Montesquieu’s standard is not the unrealizable one of perfect equality (particularly not the radical sort that would deny or abstract from sexual differences), but rather the more moderate standard of liberty. The freedom or unfreedom of women – which is intimately linked to other prominent Montesquieuean concerns, especially commerce (commerce doux) and religion – becomes a marker of regime quality. This “woman question” was at the heart of other early works by Montesquieu, especially the erotic-philosophic tales he wrote shortly after the blockbuster success of the Persian Letters: Le Temple de Gnide (and
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its postscript Céphise et L’Amour), Histoire Véritable, Arsaçe et Isménie, and Voyage a Paphos.10 In the preface to Le Temple de Gnide, Montesquieu (once again posing as a translator) indicates that the intended audience for this rescued Greek manuscript is “young men” (especially “the heads well-curled and well-powdered”) and “the fair sex.” These tastemakers and social influencers are taken on an erotic odyssey, an exploration of jealousy, beauty, modesty, fidelity, and friendship, along with a tour of the sexual mores of various lands, with special attention to specific profanations. Sybaris – an analogue for Paris – receives the most extended treatment. Avoiding any overt moralizing, Montesquieu judges the Sybarites from a hedonistic perspective, showing how their hyper-sensuality and sexual license do not yield pleasure but instead a general coarsening of sentiment and widespread dissatisfaction. Illustrating the links between sexual politics and politics proper, Montesquieu makes clear that the Sybarites – “slaves of softness” – are incapable of the rigors of self-government.11 Through his two model pairs of devoted lovers, Montesquieu presents an attractive alternative – one that makes modesty sexy. He here pioneers a strategy for an idealized religion of love and family that could underwrite a new sort of political order, less repressive than the ancient republics but less licentious than modern monarchy. Jean-Jacques Rousseau will achieve greater success than Montesquieu in popularizing this domestication of eros; still, one could say that Montesquieu’s virtuous beauties, Themira and Camille, are the godmothers of Rousseau’s Sophie. Speaking metaphorically, Montesquieu’s intent is to inaugurate a new cult of Venus, suitable for the emerging commercial, technological age, thereby harmonizing nature and art. In attempting this, he aims to rectify a specific shortcoming of Enlightenment thought, which despite its vast expansion of the private realm had not reflected sufficiently on the nature of human connection. For Montesquieu, we are coupling beings rather than isolatoes. The asocial and sterile formulations of early liberalism needed to be replaced or supplemented with an “erotic liberalism,” attentive to the domestic underpinnings of healthy politics. Montesquieu’s interest in the sexual difference and the difference it makes, socially and politically, leads him to attempt to fashion a poetry proper to modernity – one that would forward but also redirect the project of enlightenment. Rather than fleeing or conquering a hostile nature, Montesquieu speaks more of following and propitiating her. In Montesquieu’s imaginative productions, women are important both as characters and potential audience. That is not true in his work of
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philosophic history, Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence. Women do not seem central, or even peripheral, to his reflections on the causes of Rome’s trajectory. Nonetheless, women do appear at certain points in the text. Despite Rica’s comment about the Romans deferring to their wives, Montesquieu’s Romans are anything but uxorious. Rome is founded on the abduction rather than the defense of women. Women are war booty, kept in “very small” houses (CR 1). Significantly, Montesquieu’s first reference to the “grandeur” of Rome involves a contrast between this lack of care for the private, female realm and the impressiveness of the public edifices that men frequented. There is a touch of mockery, perhaps, in the only example Montesquieu provides of a grand public work: the sewers of Tarquin, the Cloaca Maxima.12 Sextus Tarquinius, the descendant of the great sewer-builder, is also mentioned in the first chapter, along with his victim Lucretia. Continuing his debunking approach, Montesquieu challenges the political importance usually attached to the story of her violation; he declares that “the death of Lucretia was only the occasion of the revolution,” which is to say, not its cause (CR 1). The cause was the character of the Roman people: “proud, enterprising, and bold” (CR 1). According to Montesquieu, monarchic government kept Rome “small and poor” (CR 1). Thus, the overthrow of the Tarquin dynasty reflected the people’s choice for war-based expansion rather than confinement within the bounds of the city, which would instead have entailed becoming “gentler,” presumably as a result of a necessity to adopt a more favorable view of commerce (CR 1). As it was, Rome was “a city without commerce, and almost without arts”; it lived by pillage (CR 1). Montesquieu indicates that the republican system of annual rotation in office vastly favored the acquisition of booty, since ambitious consuls pressed for “endless” war (CR 1). This Roman preference for “the principle of continual war” and “the virtues which were to be so fatal to the world” involved the suppression of all womanishness, in women as well as men: “After the battle of Cannae not even the women were permitted to shed tears” (CR 1, 4). The republican ban on tears did not last. The eventual transition to empire coincided with a shift in temperament from the hardy to the lachrymose, itself a consequence of increasing dependency among the populace. Montesquieu says that the people, no longer participants in government, now “grieved like children and women, who are distressed by their feeling of weakness. They were ill” (CR 14). This petty spirit eventually extended so far that a Roman general, “on the point of giving
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battle, began to cry at the thought of the great number of men who were going to be killed” (CR 22). While women scarcely figured in Montesquieu’s account of the republic, their influence – far from salutary – is more felt in the empire, with Christianity compounding it further.13 Montesquieu’s most significant remarks concern the inordinate religious ardor for icons (“an ignorant and stupid passion”) of the Empresses Irene and Theodora (CR 22). Allied with power-seeking monks, these pious women “brought the icons back” and “reestablished their worship,” thereby defeating the iconoclastic emperors (CR 22).14 Imperial women were thus agents in the fundamental failure of the Greek empire: the failure to understand the “great distinction” between ecclesiastical and secular power – “things that can endure only by being separate” and properly limited (CR 22).15 While Rome in its various incarnations is a subject of sustained reflection for Montesquieu, he is not an admirer; his critical analysis is part of his quest for better political alternatives, a quest that achieves its maximum reach in The Spirit of the Laws, where women turn out to be key to the discovery and implementation of new political modes and mores. Women are present in nearly all of the thirty-one books of The Spirit of the Laws, although they figure in the title of only one, Book 7 on the “Consequences of the different principles of the three governments in relation to sumptuary laws, luxury, and the condition of women.” Thus, women make their thematic appearance in connection with the issue of wealth and what turns out to be its corollary: individual liberty. In later books, these themes will be revisited time and again, from different angles of approach, creating a layered texture, marked by shifts of emphasis and judgement.16 The most important later books for tracing Montesquieu’s views on women include Book 16 on domestic slavery, Book 19 on the general spirit, Book 23 on population, Book 26 on the various orders of laws, and finally many passages from part 6 that discuss inheritance by women under both Roman and French law. As Montesquieu would say: “This material is very extensive. . .I must push things away, break through, and bring my subject to light” (SL 19.1). Doing so will require broad summary intermingled with attention to telling textual details. In part 1, having set forth the nature and principle of each of three regimes (republic, monarchy, and despotism) and stressed the need for law to be in accord with the regime principle (either virtue, honor, or fear), Montesquieu devotes two books to the “consequences of the principles.” The book on the condition of women is one of these
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consequential books.17 The main comparative points can be stated forthrightly. In republics, there must be no luxury which means there must be sumptuary laws and women must be strictly governed. By contrast, both monarchy and despotism require luxury and thus can dispense with sumptuary laws. Despite this similarity, there is a vast difference between the two luxuries. In monarchy, women are prime agents of luxury; under despotism, they are themselves the articles of luxury. In monarchy, luxury “is a use of the liberty one possesses,” a liberty that belongs to women as well as men (SL 7.4). Under despotism, luxury is “an abuse of the advantages of one’s servitude” whereby some slaves (men and even eunuchs) are privileged to tyrannize over other slaves, especially the collectible and “enclosed” women of the seraglio, reduced to “extreme slavery” (SL 7.4, 7.9). In a much later, culminating statement about the connection between domestic and political government, Montesquieu will declare “Everything is closely linked together: The despotism of the prince is naturally united with the servitude of women; the liberty of women, with the spirit of monarchy” (SL 19.15). As is the case throughout part 1, the presentation of the republic is the most complicated, not only because of its two varieties, democratic and aristocratic, but because of the studied ambiguity of Montesquieu’s comments. Along with what could be construed as praise for the ancient republics – their exclusive reliance on “virtue” and their high-hearted devotion to the common good – Montesquieu includes passages that uncover the repressive and downright perverse underside of the ancient cities. Although there are indications of his critique in the early books of part 1 – think especially of the definition of virtue as a passion for self-renunciation born of the monkish deprivation of all “ordinary passions” (SL 4.5, 5.2) – Book 7 on the condition of women (in conjunction with affiliated passages from other books) sharpens his critique and is key to understanding the mores of Greece and Rome. Already in Book 5, Montesquieu had noted the measures by which pure mores were maintained: “The Roman law that wanted the accusation of adultery to be made public maintained the purity of mores remarkably well; it intimidated the women and also intimidated those who kept watch over them” (SL 5.7).18 In 7.8, Montesquieu returns to this topic of “public continence.” Much of the second half of Book 7 examines the panoply of measures by which republican women were intimidated.19 His general statement is that “In republics women are free by the laws and captured by the mores; luxury is banished there and with it, corruption and vice” (SL 7.9). The details, however, complicate the
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picture. In the very next paragraph, Montesquieu speaks of the “Greek towns where a blind vice reigned unbridled” (SL 7.9). That “blind vice” was pederastic homosexuality. Yes, Greek women were virtuous; Montesquieu says the chastity of women was nowhere better enforced. But it wasn’t because of the “particular magistrate who watched over the conduct of women” (SL 7.9 fn 19). It was because “love took only a form one dare not mention, while only friendship was to be found within marriages” (SL 7.9). The sexual virtue of women depended on the sexual vice of men. This is neither Montesquieu’s first nor last reference to Greek preferences in these matters. In an earlier chapter entitled “Explanation of a paradox of the ancients in relation to mores,” Montesquieu blushingly informs his readers that, among the Thebans, catamites were the statesponsored alternative to commerce. Both “soften the mores” (which would otherwise be too cruel among a warrior people), but since commerce was considered disgraceful, at odds with “the spirit of Greek liberty,” the manly Thebans instead opted for “a love that ought to be proscribed by all nations in the world” (SL 4.8).20 What initially appeared as peculiar to the Thebans is soon declared to be characteristic of “the Greek towns” and indeed the entire pre-Christian world, which expected pure mores only of women (SL 7.9). Montesquieu started this debunking train of thought in Book 4 in a chapter that explored how the lawgivers of Greece devised “singular institutions to inspire virtue” – that singularity, Montesquieu pointed out, was achieved by “confusing all virtues.”21 Just as the luxury, corruption, and vice associated with unrestrained women were banished by “a blind vice,” (that is, the substitution of boys for women as objects of sexual passion), a singular virtue (love of the homeland) was inspired by confounding, suppressing, or violating all the other virtues (especially the familial). Begging the reader to pay attention (one of only three instances of “je prie” in the work), Montesquieu describes the shocks administered by Lycurgus.22 What did it mean to transform the city into a single family? It meant that “one had natural sentiments but was neither child, husband, nor father” (SL 4.6). This phrase “les sentiments naturels” is rare, occurring only five times in the text.23 Its first appearance coincides with the first mention of women in The Spirit of the Laws. In a chapter about the nature of despotic obedience, Montesquieu accounts “tenderness for one’s children and women” as one of the “natural sentiments” that can nonetheless be overridden by the demand of a despot (SL 3.10). The second appearance of the phrase, in this passage about the
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Lacedaemonian legislator, implies that what despots do occasionally and arbitrarily is institutionalized in the ancient republic. Natural sentiments were systematically frustrated not only in Lacedaemonia, but in other military republics, real and imagined, like Crete and the regimes of Plato’s Republic and Laws. Although he began with the neglected wives of the Greeks, most of the second half of Book 7 is about Roman women and the evolution in their mores and governance. During the days of the republic, women were under the “domestic tribunal” of their husbands or the “perpetual guardianship” of a male relative (SL 7.10, 7.12). There were sumptuary laws to enforce female frugality. Finally, adultery was “submitted to public accusation” (SL 7.10). Montesquieu’s survey of the legal situation should be compared with what he says about crime and punishment in relation to the three regime principles in Book 6, as well as with his reconsideration of criminal judgments with a view to the security of individuals in Book 12 – a topic that “is of more concern to mankind than anything else in the world” (SL 12.2). What emerges from both books is Montesquieu’s preference for mild and proportionate penalties. Under a good process, with plenty of formalities, “all arbitrariness ends” (SL 6.2, 12.3).24 Yet, Montesquieu stresses that the penalties of the domestic tribunal “had to be arbitrary as, indeed, they were” (SL 7.10). Regarding adultery, Montesquieu expresses profound concern about the puritanical insistence on treating violations of mores as crimes publicly punishable (punishments being a “kind of retaliation”) (SL 12.4). While the inquisitorial types “feared that even honest people might prefer hiding the crime to punishing it, might prefer ignorance to vengeance,” Montesquieu seems to agree with the honest people who prefer decorous privacy (SL 7.10).25 Moreover, since the protection of female modesty is part of the natural right to self-defense, laws dealing with family matters must be framed with great care. In Book 26, Montesquieu gives examples of “civil laws that are contrary to natural law”; nearly all involve improper prosecutions of promiscuity, adultery, and divorce (SL 26.3, 26.4).26 Despite Roman attempts to keep women “very hemmed in,” mores mirrored the regime (SL 7.12). Rome’s conquest-driven expansion doomed republican purity. It was only “the first Romans” who had no luxury (unlike the non-expansionist Spartans who never had any). Montesquieu’s chapter “On sumptuary laws in democracy” is mostly about the failure of such laws in Rome, as evidenced by the “immense” desires of the corrupted Romans and the prices they paid for wine, meat, cooks, and young boys, the last said by Montesquieu to be
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“priceless” (SL 7.2).27 Montesquieu notes that “the whole political system with regard to women changed in the monarchy,” with public accusation for adultery coming to an end (SL 7.13, 7.11). Although there were “men filled with the idea of the earliest times” who sought to restrain the women, Montesquieu insists on the impossibility of reversing course, since luxury is “appropriate” in monarchies (SL 7.4). The role that women themselves played in inaugurating “the epoch of luxury” is highlighted in the short chapter that wraps up Book 7’s treatment of Rome (SL 7.14). Although sumptuary laws, directed against women’s wealth and displays of wealth, were passed, Montesquieu informs us that “the women demanded the revocation of the Oppian law” (SL 7.14). He encourages the reader to check Livy; doing so we find that in 195 BC the matrons of Rome (and the surrounding countryside too) took to the streets, blocking access to the Forum and besieging the homes of opponents until their demands for sartorial indulgences were met. What produced those revolutionary women? We don’t learn the fuller story behind “the impulses of the heart at liberty” until Book 27, Montesquieu’s “Chapitre Unique,” where he traces the Roman laws on inheritance from their earliest beginnings in the equal division of lands effected by Romulus through to the eventual establishment of inheritance “without any distinction between male and female” (SL 7.14; 27, p. 531). In his discussion of land reform, Montesquieu had already indicated that in order to maintain original equality, every form of contract must be regulated, especially those involving the family: “dowries, gifts, inheritances, testaments” (SL 5.5). While Rome did limit inheritance to those descending from the male line (agnates rather than cognates) with a view to preserving the equality of estates, it did not consistently prevent inequality. Imbued with “the idea of paternal power,” the citizens of Rome gained an “indefinite permission to make testaments” which “gradually ruined the political provision on the sharing of lands” (SL 27, p. 523). By means of testaments and legacies, women over time gained tremendous wealth. Late in the day, in 169 BC, the Voconian law was passed “to preclude the cause of luxury” by forbidding women from inheriting large fortunes (SL 27, p. 526). Montesquieu explains how loving patriarchs evaded the law. Fathers were willing to accept civic disfranchisement; removing their names from the census, they “consented to suffer the shame of mingling in the sixth class with the proletarians,” so as to be allowed to name their daughters as heirs (SL 27, p. 527). Having provided the entwined history of fatherly power and care, Montesquieu announces:
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Here I shall make some reflections. It is a misfortune of the human condition that legislators are obliged to make laws that oppose even natural sentiments; such was the Voconian law. . .. The law sacrificed both the citizen and the man and thought only of the republic. . . the law scorned the sentiments of nature in the testator. (SL 27, p. 528, emphasis added)
This is Montesquieu’s fifth and final use of the phrase “les sentiments naturels” and his only use of the phrase “les sentiments de la nature” (SL 27, p. 530). These sentiments of “tenderness for one’s children and women” led to the formal establishment of gender equality: “The old Roman law had begun to appear harsh. The praetors were no longer affected except by reasonings of fairness, moderation, and propriety” (SL 3.10; 27, p. 530). Rome, as a scene of transformation necessitated by military expansion and its disruptive correlate, wealth, is endlessly fascinating to Montesquieu. It does not have the repellant fixity of the Platonic ideal. Montesquieu’s disaffection from the inhumanity of the Spartan/Platonic model is made most clear late in the book in a chapter entitled “On Greece and the number of its inhabitants” (SL 23.17). There he is frank about the “singular” republic’s hostility to population growth and the misanthropic measures required to suppress natural increase: first and foremost, infanticide, or if that is forbidden, then forced abortion, and (that old stand-by) relations between men (the “vile” Cretan form of contraception).28 The chapter closes by noting that in some countries “a man is worth nothing; there are some in which he is worth less than nothing” (SL 23.17). This statement lamenting the devaluation of the individual goes back to a point Montesquieu made earlier when he noted that there are, in fact, two kinds of corruption: “one, when the people do not observe the laws, the other, when they are corrupted by the laws” (SL 6.12). The latter happens when laws are so harsh that “spirits are corrupted. . . [in that] they have become accustomed to despotism” (SL 6.12). Montesquieu’s example of such “an incurable ill” is the Athenians who gave “lessons in cruelty to all Greece” – an ironic twist on Pericles’ famous description of Athens as “the school of Hellas” (SL 6.12).29 On my reading, one of the main purposes of part 1 is to demonstrate that the ancient republic in its pure form is undesirable and in its impure forms unsustainable. Montesquieu was not content to reject the ancient republic as passé simply because of the modern prevalence of monarchy in Europe. The polis needed a different sort of dismissal. Through his
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recurring attention to women, family, marriage, and the natural sentiments, Montesquieu undercuts naïve Hellenophilism – perhaps rightly fearing “the Republic of Virtue” as a perennial source of utopian political theorizing and revolutionary action. Beneath the surface of what seems to be impartial regime analysis, Montesquieu is engaged in a transvaluation of values. This can be glimpsed in his diametrically opposed usages of the phrase “the spirit of liberty” in part 1. In 4.8, he refers to “the spirit of Greek liberty,” explaining that it is motivated by an inveterate hostility to commerce. Then in 7.9, he speaks of “the spirit of liberty” (without a qualifying adjective) displayed by the free-wheeling women who reign at court, with their consort Luxury.30 In the Greek republic, liberty belongs to the state rather than the individual. After part 1, “the spirit of liberty” will always be used with reference to the individual. While the first reference to the spirit of liberty (SL 7.9) could be construed as disapproving, what with its talk of women’s “charms,” “passions,” “weakness,” and “vanity,” Montesquieu works unobtrusively to cultivate a more receptive attitude toward vanity. It’s worth noting that Book 7, officially concerned with the condition of women, actually begins with a non-gendered observation about human nature and the vanity-inducing effects of urbanization: “The more men there are together, the more vain they are. . . men have more desires, more needs, and more fancies when they are together” (SL 7.1). Although Montesquieu sometimes speaks as if vanity were a specifically female passion (thus echoing the moralists of the day), this first definitional chapter insists that vanity is generically human. To free vanity from its traditional disparagement, the ancient attempt to brand vanity as weakly feminine must be overcome. Montesquieu opposes certain gender stereotypes in order to make possible what he will eventually denominate “the innumerable goods” that vanity produces: “luxury, industry, the arts, fashions, politeness, and taste” (SL 19.9). Book 7 is the opening volley in a contest that will be decisively resolved in favor of luxury and the liberty of women in Book 19. The contest pits the old political arithmetic of Plato against Montesquieu’s new demographic calculus. Montesquieu tells us that “In the republic of Plato, it was possible to calculate luxury accurately” – since “physical necessities” could be quantified, luxury could be counted and controlled as multiples of necessity (SL 7.1). The Montesquieuean alternative regards “need” itself as variable and infinitely expansive – a matter of advancing technology and social determination – rather than constant. To illustrate: Consider whether a ten-year-old “needs” a cell phone. Montesquieu has
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no objection to a child’s ever-growing definition of her needs and the consumer economy built around them. His mathematics of luxury involves “compound ratios” based on proportions between wealth, inequality, population size, regime type, and related factors (SL 7.1). The two footnotes of the first chapter tell the tale: the first a citation to Book 5 of Plato’s Laws on hereditary landed property versus the second to Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees about the rank-dissolving, egalitarian effects of fashion. Significantly, the only other mention of Mandeville (another footnote) is in 19.8 “Some effects of the sociable humor.” In this remarkable chapter, we are treated to a précis of erotic liberalism. Montesquieu speaks of how “the society of women” and the multiplication of “the branches of commerce” allow the “singularities of individuals” (plural) to flourish – a far cry from the “singular institutions” of the ancient republic (and another instance of Montesquieu’s vocabulary lessons) (SL 19.8). Soon after informing us that “fashions are an important subject,” we learn just how important; in a chapter entitled “What are the natural means of changing the mores and manners of a nation,” women’s love of fashion is presented as a gentle tool of liberalizing statecraft (SL 19.8, 19.14). Instead of insurrectionary women demanding to wear purple, as in Rome, or demanding the return of their decorative icons, as in the late Eastern empire, the noblewomen of Russia were summoned to the court of Peter the Great and issued swathes of sumptuous fabric. Orthodox religious mores were no match for commerce with women.31 This key lesson in deliberate regime change sets the stage for the next two parts of the work, part 4 on commerce and part 5 on religion. Returning to part 1, we have a better sense of the place of Book 7’s analysis of “the condition of women” in the articulated whole. Viewing the “consequences,” we come to understand why part 1 must close with Book 8 “On the corruption of the principles of the three governments.” Both republic and despotism involve intolerable consequences, in large part because they have not properly incorporated women within the polity. Both corrupt by their “ferocity,” affronting and distorting aspects of human nature. As to the more familiar brand of degenerative corruption, both republic and monarchy are prone to that as well. (Despotism, of course, is “corrupt by its nature” [SL 8.10]). While monarchies can be “moderate” (always a term of praise for Montesquieu), that moderation is hard to maintain: “Rivers run together into the sea; monarchies are lost in despotism” (SL 8.17). Because none of the three regimes as traditionally conceived is adequate, Montesquieu mostly abandons his tripartite
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schematic. From part 2 onward, Montesquieu explores new political possibilities in quest of an order less susceptible to either of the two types of corruption: first the federal republic and then the regime devoted to liberty and sustained by a system of separated powers. He discovers (or invents) a flexible model whose operational principle of dynamic equilibrium allows for considerable constitutional variation across cultures, while more universally promoting the security and prosperity of individuals. In France, this moderated modernity will clearly involve a prominent role for women in civil society and – given Montesquieu’s endorsement of “administration by women” in the last chapter of Book 7 – perhaps a greater (or at least more regularized and hence less licentious) role in governance as well. The question of female rulers is the final topic not only of Book 7, but of The Spirit of the Laws itself. Part 6 on the revolutionary metamorphoses of both Roman and French law concludes with considerations on the Salic law’s exclusion of women from the crown of France. Montesquieu explains the differences between European monarchies as a result of varying feudal histories and timelines regarding the right of daughters to inherit fiefs. In explaining why there are at present no ruling queens in France, Montesquieu does not preclude further revolutions in the monarchy or further revolutions in the condition of women.
Notes 1 Remember that Montesquieu poses as the translator, not the author, of these letters – letters which supposedly came into his possession because the visiting Persians, Usbek and Rica, were lodging with him. Stuart Warner points out that Montesquieu was in Paris during the time period covered by this letter of Rica’s. Montesquieu, Persian Letters, 61. As for Fontenelle, he was a proponent of women’s enlightenment, having included a female interlocutor in his work of popular science Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds (1686). Poullain was the author of a series of works defending the equality of the mind in the two sexes. 2 The female Sarmatian/Scythian warriors may have given rise to the Greek tales about the Amazons. 3 After all, among his bon mots is this one: “They are quite a ridiculous sex, those women” (MT 2219). 4 In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu confirms that Egyptian practices were “against reason and against nature” (SL 7.17).
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5 In the Preface to The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu indicates it is his aim to overcome prejudice and remind human beings of their nature. 6 Montesquieu’s hatred for the claustration of women is powerfully and consistently expressed. Pensée 503 is representative: “Once Mohammed’s religion was carried to Asia, Africa, and Europe, the prisons were created. Half the world disappeared; all you saw anymore was iron bars and bolts. Everything in the world was covered in black, and the fair sex, buried along with its charms, everywhere wept for its liberty.” 7 In his Considérations, Montesquieu calls gentleness “that prime virtue of princes” (CR 16). 8 I have borrowed the notion of naturalizing from Montesquieu who writes of despotism being “naturalized” in Asia (SL 5.14). The context for his remark links despotism to polygamy and the abuse of the institution of marriage. 9 For an analysis of the three interlocking dimensions of despotism within the novel, see Schaub, Erotic Liberalism. 10 Not much has been written on these or other fables by Montesquieu, like Lysimaque. But see Montesquieu, The Personal and the Political: Three Fables by Montesquieu; and Schaub, “The Education of the Sentiments.” 11 Montesquieu, “Le Tempe de Gnide,” in The Personal and the Political: Three Fables by Montesquieu, Fourth Chant. 12 Whereas Montesquieu’s footnoted source, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, had mentioned an array of internal improvements, Montesquieu drops any mention of the aqueducts and paved roads or other evidence of Tarquin’s civic achievements, such as the building of temples, city walls, and the Circus Maximus. 13 References to women increase accordingly, from five in the first half of the work to eighteen in the second half. 14 See also Montesquieu’s characterization of the earlier Empress Theodora (CR 20) and the Empress Ann (CR 22). 15 Although Montesquieu’s harshest words about “theological hatreds” and the “hydra of disputes” are applied to Eastern Christianity, his broad references to “our disputes over religion, by the nature of the thing” and the schismatic character of “theologians, then and always” clearly bear on Western Christianity as well (CR 22). 16 The Spirit of the Laws is not only a large volume, it is structurally complex, being subdivided into parts (6), books (31), chapters (605), and footnotes (2,074). Among those extensive notes are forty-six instances in which Montesquieu refers the reader to other places within The Spirit of the Laws. These internal references are highly indicative of Montesquieu’s non-linear mode of composition which often tracks back upon itself. While he sometimes highlights these linkages, more often he leaves readers to discover them for themselves. 17 The other is the immediately preceding Book 6 “Consequences of the principles of the various governments in relation to the simplicity of civil and criminal laws, the form of judgments, and the establishment of penalties.”
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18 Other measures include a hereditary senate, the establishment of censors, the “extreme subordination” of young to old and citizens to magistrates, and finally, fathers invested with “the right of life and death,” as well as control over the property of adult children. All of these are described as alternative means of instilling virtue, should the primary but “extreme” course of an “equal division of lands” not be possible (SL 5.7, 5). 19 Book 7 has the following rough order: It defines luxury in the first chapter, discusses sumptuary laws in the various regimes in chaps. 2–7, then turns to the condition of women in chaps. 8–18. 20 For Montesquieu’s concluding thoughts on Theban gymnastics, see 8.11. 21 “Singular” is not a term of praise for Montesquieu. It almost always indicates some marked departure from the nature of things, thus Montesquieu declares “Only singular institutions thus confuse laws, mores, and manners, things that are naturally separate” (SL 19.21). 22 The three instances are SL 4.6, 28.14, 30.20, p. 653. 23 SL 3.10; 4.6; 23.11, 21; 23.27, p. 528. 24 See also his unfavorable comments on the Venetian state inquisitors who “are subject to no formalities”: “These tyrannical magistracies in aristocracies are related to censorship in democracy” (SL 5.8). Later he compares republican Venice to Turkish despotism (SL 11.6). 25 See SL 26.18 for Rome’s intolerance toward cuckolded husbands who were inclined toward forgiveness. 26 See SL 12.14 for more extreme examples of “The violation of modesty in punishing crimes.” See also what Montesquieu says about the decriminalization of another hidden crime, “the crime against nature” (SL 12.6). 27 Although Montesquieu follows his source Diodorus Siculus in specifying prices for the first three items, for the last he substitutes “priceless” for Siculus’ “many talents.” Note the difference between Greece and Rome: In Greece, homosexuality was a political institution associated with virtue (i.e., patriotism) whereas in Rome homosexuality was a function of the “voluptuousness” of empire (SL 7.2). 28 See also SL 23.7 on the unnatural regulation of marriage in Plato and in Lacedaemonia. 29 The example, which involves the treatment of prisoners, shows the Spartans and Argives behaving similarly. Later Montesquieu will discuss the “abominable right of nations” among the Greeks (SL 29.14). Throughout The Spirit of the Laws, it is more usual for Montesquieu to associate cruelty and harshness with republics than despotisms. Another example of Montesquieu’s irony is his reference to the “beautiful ideas” of Plato in approving noble suicide while punishing suicide from human weakness (SL 29.9); just a few chapters later, Montesquieu refers to the same law of Plato (“as I have said”) but now he declares “this law was vicious” (SL 29.16). 30 Like “les sentiments naturels,” the phrase “esprit de liberté” occurs a total of five times: 7.9 in reference to women and luxury; 11.7 in reference to the difference between England which has liberty as its direct object and other monarchies (understand France) which partake of a “spirit of liberty” that approximates political liberty; 13.14 on the link between moderate
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government, the spirit of liberty, and the security of commerce in relation to taxation; 18.2 on the link between moderate government, mountainous terrain, and the spirit of liberty; and finally 26.15 on the civil right of individuals to the security of their property. (But see 6.15 for a slightly different form of the phrase [with a definite article] in reference to Rome.) 31 A critic of Peter’s often tyrannical, law-based methods of reform, Montesquieu states that he could have accomplished the same Europeanizing purpose entirely by this flattering appeal to “taste” (SL 19.14).
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13 Political Economy Paul Cheney
One can only speak of Montesquieu’s political economy with a certain degree of caution; nevertheless, the appellation sheds indispensable light on the development of Enlightenment social thought as a whole. In the decades subsequent to its publication, the Spirit of the Laws (1748) was constantly evoked in economic debates ranging from guild restrictions and foreign trade to luxury and slavery. But Montesquieu’s masterwork, not to speak of the Persian Letters (1721) or his Reflections on the Greatness of the Romans and of their Decline (1734), never comfortably figures in genealogies of French political economy in the way, for instance, that the Political Essay on Commerce (1734), written by his friend and contemporary Jean-François Melon, or Richard Cantillon’s Essay on the Nature of Commerce in General (written between 1730–4) generally do. Melon set forth a focused and analytically tidy set of arguments about the relationship between agriculture, manufacture, consumption and trade in the context of international economic competition; Cantillon’s Essay on the Nature of Commerce, which was published in 1751 after circulating widely in manuscript form, is a connoisseur’s piece among those interested in the first appearance of the kinds of rigorous models of value and distribution that came to define the canon of classical political economy starting with François Quesnay, Adam Smith, and stretching to Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo and finally to Karl Marx. Part of the issue is terminological: Montesquieu wrote on a number of subjects that entered into economic debates in the public sphere, but he himself was credited for giving form not to political economy but to the eighteenth century’s “science of commerce.” Starting in the mid-1750s, François Quesnay and his disciples – known to us as the Physiocrats, but 216
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labeled the “économistes” in their time – argued the need for a new and properly scientific science of society based upon the rigorous use of language and an analytical apparatus, the Tableau Économique, whose results were applicable in all places and times. Physiocratic polemics against their unscientific predecessors singled out Montesquieu’s insistence that laws should vary according to a range of physical and historical factors.1 In reality, the opposition was not so stark: Montesquieu’s science of commerce developed during the period when the private activities of economic life –hitherto confined by classical and Christian political philosophy to the domain of the household (Greek: oikos) – had, in the words of Hannah Arendt, become a “collective concern” necessarily attended to by the state. Jürgen Habermas ascribed the new centrality of economics in statecraft, and the salience of economic debate in the public sphere, to the rise of mercantile capitalism from the sixteenth century onward.2 In calling for a “science of commerce” in the eighteenth century, economists, administrators, and statesmen responded to a couple of different issues. First, it was a question of imperative. The jealousy of trade and manufacture between states had become a question that sovereigns could no longer safely ignore; the economy had entered into the science of statecraft and therefore had to be the subject of an independent kind of inquiry. Book 21 of the Spirit of the Laws describes the “revolutions” of commerce all over the world and in many epochs, culminating in the rearrangement of European society and politics that followed the discovery and commercial exploitation of the New World. Henceforth, according to Montesquieu, it was commerce and not military conquest that ruled the world – a circumstance propitious for the spread of moderate government. This perspective was developed earlier in the Reflections on Universal Monarchy (1734). Second, it was a question of perspective: Even though entrepreneurs orchestrated the activity that generated all of this newly indispensable moveable wealth, they were themselves often egotistic and narrow in their understandings of the workings of the economy. In order to attend to the common weal, sovereigns had to adopt a general (or “political”) perspective on commerce and discount accordingly the self-interested views of merchants and industrialists.3 There is a third and perhaps paradoxical sense in which Montesquieu’s work can be understood as a prelude to classical political economy. He was not in fact primarily focused on questions of wealth and prosperity; these were only interesting to him insofar as they related to the normative problem that lay at the center of Montesquieu’s oeuvre: liberty. Despite
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men’s love of liberty, “which is found only in moderate governments” (SL 11.4), Montesquieu argued that “most people are subjected to [despotism]” because moderate government is a “masterpiece of legislation that chance rarely produces and prudence is rarely allowed to produce” (SL 5.14). Montesquieu describes the means for producing or maintaining political liberty given a set of hard environmental limits, which interact with an evolving, time path–dependent set of institutional constraints. With increasing social complexity, the “empire of climate” (SL 19.14) cedes to moral and historical factors: “To the extent that, in each nation, one of these causes acts more forcefully, the others yield to it. Nature and climate almost alone dominate savages; manners govern the Chinese; laws tyrannize Japan” (SL 19.4). For Montesquieu, as for the classical political economists of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the most pressing political questions had not only to be understood as a function of economics but analyzed in increasingly economic terms. In Montesquieu’s hands, the classical themes of political philosophy become subjects for the science of commerce. Despotism was inseparable from poverty and material inequality: “When the savages of Louisiana want fruit, they cut down the tree and gather the fruit. There you have despotic government” (SL 5.13).4 The free governments of the ancient world in their republican phases were based upon a salutary equality of poverty, while prosperity seemed to be a desideratum of freedom in modern polities, whether republican or monarchical. In the Persian Letters, the traveler Usbek wrote to his friend Rhedi remarking on the monotony of despotism all over Asia, in contrast to the variety of free governments in Europe; he also noted the common factor among them: “I have often asked myself which of all types of government conforms the most closely to the dictates of reason. It seems to me that the most perfect government is that which fulfils its purpose at the lowest cost (frais), and therefore, that the government which rules (conduit) men in the manner most appropriate to their proclivities and desires is the most perfect” (PL 78). This observation should be compared to the ideal of “economical government” set forth later by Francois Quesnay and the Physiocratic school, which placed economic analysis and criteria at the very heart of constitutional design.5 From this perspective, reason is likened to a form of quantitative optimization, much in the same way that Thomas Hobbes defined reason as “reckoning.”6 For Montesquieu the imposition of constraint is counted as a kind of expense to be minimized; in contrast, the play of men’s proclivities and desires were to be reckoned as a limitless resource to be exploited in the pursuit of a
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moderate and free government. What were the prospects, in modern France, of bending the “masterpiece” of moderate, feudal government that France’s absolute monarchs had inherited from the Middle Ages to the demands of commerce? For Montesquieu and others, the answers were hardly unambiguous. Indeed, from the Regency of Philippe d’Orléans (1715–23) through the publication of the Spirit of the Laws (1748), economic writing in France was stimulated by a seemingly contradictory set of facts and impulses. On the one hand, between the death of Louis XIV (1715) and the outbreak of the War of Austrian Succession (1740–8), the French Regent Philippe d’Orléans and, later, the Cardinal Fleury pursued a successful policy of détente with France’s arch-rival Britain. As confusing and corruptly administered as they were on both the tax and expenditure side, French state finances would have remained more or less in equilibrium but for the regular irruption of expensive military conflicts.7 The Anglo-French détente therefore gave the French breathing room to pursue more productive kinds of expenditure in markets less troubled by the disruptions of war. During this period of quiet, French foreign trade – supported by monopoly trading companies and a rapidly consolidating plantation complex in the West Indies – grew smartly. Guillaume Daudin has estimated that from 1716 to 1780, French foreign trade grew at approximately twice the rate of the domestic economy as a whole (2.3 versus 1.2 percent per annum). During a similar period (1716–87), France’s trade with Europe grew cumulatively 412 percent while extra-European trade rose by 1,310 percent. Much of this increase was due to the fulgent growth of France’s Antillean island economies – the source of sugar, coffee, indigo and cotton; and it was in the period between roughly 1713 and 1740 that these islands saw their most impressive gains. Martinique multiplied its sugar production by a factor of three; and the colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) did so by a factor of eight. Although Saint-Domingue produced approximately one third of all sugar consumed in Europe and North America, on the eve of the French Revolution (1789) it had only increased its output by about half relative to mid-1740s production; Martinique actually declined in absolute terms. And it was also from 1710–30 that almost all of the increases in productivity on these plantations occurred; from that period forward the plantation complex increased output largely by adding slaves, equipment and land – not by improving technology or the division of labor.8 All of this colonial trade stimulated industry in the hinterlands of growing port cities such as Montesquieu’s Bordeaux. In larger cities, led
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naturally by Paris, a new consumer economy stirred demand among wider segments of the populace. Eighteenth-century observers argued – and recent statistical studies have confirmed – that foreign trade, which so dominated Montesquieu’s characterization of the modern age of commerce – contributed disproportionately to the growth of the domestic economy as a whole. Montesquieu, who managed his estates and the foreign vent of the wine produced on them, was a close observer of this expanding world of industry and trade, displaying a fascination for telling empirical details in his travel journals and commonplace books. From this perspective, Montesquieu and others were justified in their optimistic appreciation of a nation that had – at least temporarily – left behind a destructive, anachronistic pattern of territorial conquest in order to make a triumphal entry into an age of commerce.9 On the other hand, as Montesquieu’s Persian Letters strikingly illustrate, any celebration of France’s evolution into a modern, commercial nation had to contend with the debacle of John Law’s System (1716–20). Law’s Bank was established in 1716 in order to reduce France’s crushing sovereign debt in the wake of the War of Spanish Succession. The shares in the Mississippi Company and paper bank notes that were issued in profusion, Law theorized, would stimulate a self-reinforcing cycle of investment, production, and consumption in a hitherto money-starved economy; these innovations were, in part, answers to the central banks established much earlier in Britain (Bank of England, 1694) and Holland (Bank of Amsterdam, 1609). Owners of state debt eagerly accepted shares in the Mississippi Company in exchange for their bonds, in anticipation of profits from the nascent French colony in Louisiana; these profits could never have matched investors’ expectations, even at the relatively modest initial share price of 500 livres. Eventually all of France’s monopoly trading companies were consolidated into one concern, the Compagnie des Indes; moreover, Law’s bank assumed the reimbursement of the royal debt, the minting of coins and the collection of a number of different taxes. A speculative frenzy ensued in Paris: By the autumn of 1719, shares for the Company peaked between 9,000 and 10,000 livres. At the stock exchange on the rue Quincampoix, a hunchback earned a handsome living renting out his hump – widely believed to be a lucky charm – as an escritoire for the endorsement of shares.10 When this speculative bubble threatened to pop, Law imposed an increasingly brutal – some said despotic – set of measures to forestall the inevitable explosion: He devalued specie against bank notes to prop up the latter, forced people to accept bank notes at face value despite their depreciation on the market,
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and reduced interest payments to state creditors – a partial default on state debt referred to now as giving investors a “haircut.” Houses were searched for hoarded bullion, and Law finished by imposing the notorious cours forcé, which attempted to demonetize specie by decreeing bank bills the only legal tender.11 These maneuvers, and the collective trauma induced by the collapse of Law’s system more generally, helped to ensure that a central bank was not established in France until 1800, when Napoleon created the Banque de France. The Persian Letters have been plausibly read as a roman à clef critically depicting the Law System and, in a more general way, France’s halting progress under the Regency from the closed, despotic world centered on Louis XIV’s court at Versailles to a freer, more open and prosperous society. Rica’s observations on the pleasing novelty of Parisian life deserve comparison with the hurly-burly of London praised by Bernard Mandeville in The Fable of the Bees (1714). Vast Numbers throng’d the fruitful hive; Yet those vast Numbers made ‘em thrive; Millions endeavouring to supply Each other’s Lust and Vanity . . . They furnish’d half the Universe; Yet had more Work than Laborers.12
Lust and vanity in the “grumbling hive” of London set off a selfreinforcing cycle of consumption and industry that, in rejecting religious or republican asceticism, ensured “vast, potent and polite societies.”13 From the vantage point of Paris, Rica observed that while the French king had no gold mines like the king of Spain, he drew “riches from the vanity of his subjects, which is more inexhaustible than mines” (PL 22). Usbek marveled how “this passion for work, this passion to acquire wealth . . . affects people of every condition, from the artisan to the nobleman; nobody wants to be poorer than the man he’s just seen” (PL 103). John Law drew upon widespread acquisitiveness, the force of public opinion, and the culturally democratizing effects of the market cited by both Mandeville and Montesquieu to establish his system of credit and commerce. Law’s System emerged out of a wider social, political, and intellectual network – the self-styled “moderns” surrounding the countess of Verrou – devoted to bringing France out of the economic doldrums of the end of Louis XIV’s reign by re-founding the monarchy along new political and social principles.14 Rica and Usbek were both keen observers of Regency Paris, even if the elder, Usbek, was often highly ambivalent.
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The gaiety of Paris after the death of Louis XIV is mirrored in the licentiousness of the seraglio after Usbek’s departure for Europe. Both cases evince the disorderly freedom of a people corrupted by despotism. The campaign of terror that Usbek urges his first minister to unleash upon his wives evokes the despotic measures taken by John Law to put the genie of speculation he had released back into the bottle. The spectacle of fraud and carnivalesque social reversal denounced by Montesquieu (PL 138) was that of a population that had yet to be moderated by the prudent, orderly spirit of commerce. Montesquieu was not a reactionary opponent of the “moderns” and their goals. The gentle satire (PL 12–13) on François Fénelon’s mythical Bétique – a rustic, virtuous and, to Montesquieu’s mind, impossibly ideal society situated at the moral antipodes from Mandeville’s Grumbling Hive – excludes this interpretation; so too do the many odes to commerce and luxury in the Spirit of the Laws. Nevertheless, whereas the Fable of the Bees presented Mandeville’s vision of a powerful and prosperous commercial society without any reference to constitutional form, virtually all of Montesquieu’s reflections on this subject were refracted through this prism. The degeneration of the Law experiment into despotic illegality – like Usbek’s quick regression to jealous rage under the pretext of moral purification – exemplified the persistence of the psychological and institutional reflexes of despotism, even among people (like Usbek) and societies (like France) actively seeking more modern, enlightened ways of being. But the Persian Letters presents a tale of caution, not of despair, and the Spirit of the Laws provides a framework for thinking about a modern, and necessarily commercial, monarchy in France. The principal analytical apparatus of the Spirit of the Laws is the interaction between the nature and principle of diverse types of governments: “Its nature is that which makes it what it is, and its principle, that which makes it act.15 The one is its particular structure and the other is the human passions that set it in motion” (SL 3.1). As is well known, Montesquieu’s division of regime types into monarchy, republic, and despotism diverges from the classical tripartition into monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. This deliberate rearrangement of the classical scheme should be understood as a way of focusing attention on monarchy. Despotisms and republics are similar insofar as their animating principles – fear and virtue, respectively – must constantly be aroused (or imposed) through external applications of force. “The prince’s ever raised arm” (SL 3.3, 3.9) instills fear in despotism through threats and punishment; in republics, when natural virtue declines, as it must inevitably over
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time, individuals or ruling bodies must self-consciously “repress” (SL 3.4) their natural instincts in favor of the general good. In any case, “true glory, self-renunciation, sacrifice of one’s dearest interests” are “heroic virtues we find in the ancients and know only by hearsay” (SL 3.5). Fear certainly exists but it is a detestable basis for government, so there is only one modern type of government with a fully coherent relationship between its nature and principle: “In monarchies, politics accomplishes great things with as little virtue as it can, just as in the finest machines art employs as few motions, forces and wheels as possible” (SL 3.5). Monarchy, like Usbek’s perfect government, fulfills its purpose at least cost. Montesquieu’s account of honor in monarchical societies closely resembles Mandeville’s description of the way “private vices” providentially resolve themselves into “publick benefits.” For Montesquieu, honor takes the place of self-denying political virtue, inspiring people to “the finest actions” solely from the selfish desire for social recognition (SL 3.6).16 Mandeville, and later Montesquieu, analyzes the possibility of turning self-love to socially useful ends in the vocabulary of moral psychology, but the key move – observing the disjuncture between selfish individual behavior and beneficial social outcomes – quickly emerged as an analytical cornerstone of political economy. Mandeville applied this logic to explain the paradox of thrift: Individual profligacy and waste leads to collective prosperity, while its opposite, individual self-denial and savings, impoverishes the nation. Later, Adam Smith applied the same logic in observing that “by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”17 Montesquieu’s comparison of the monarchical principle of honor to the Newtonian system of gravitation might easily be mistaken for the naturalized descriptions of the market – with their appeals to the authority of science – that became a mainstay of classical political economy: “You could say that it is like the system of the universe, where there is a force constantly repelling all bodies from the center and a force of gravitation attracting them to it. Honor makes all the parts of the body politic move; its very action binds them, and each person works for the common good, believing he works for his individual interests” (SL 3.7). It is significant, however, that Smith and Mandeville offered theoretical accounts of commercial societies in general, and that Mandeville even explicitly rejected the notion that
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“dexterous management” of morals and markets had anything to do with the differences between monarchies and republics.18 For Montesquieu, by contrast, these questions of social order and prosperity were unintelligible outside of the framework of regime type: “Commerce,” he states apodictically, “is related to the constitution” (SL 20.4).19 The polite economy of self-regard and social distinction in the service of the common good resembled both Usbek’s ideal government and the morals of market society depicted in The Fable of the Bees. It is worth recalling that in the mid-eighteenth century, most Europeans lived in monarchies; and even when they did not, the imperial or republican polities they inhabited rested on thoroughly old regime social foundations including: privileged estates and social orders; self-governing municipalities, guilds, universities and other corporations; and inherited status hierarchies of every description. Montesquieu was not theorizing over an exception, but something resembling the contemporary norm in Europe. The ebullient economy of the Regency comforted the notion that the monarchical system was compatible with commercial success in the modern world, a fact with implications for a whole world of Montesquieu’s readers beyond France. At the very same time, the startling regression of the Law system into despotism suggested that absolutist France’s mœurs and institutions still had some evolving to do. Before discussing at some length the way that constitutions could (or should) shape and limit commerce, it is useful to stipulate that the causation implied in the lapidary formulation “commerce is related to the constitution” runs both ways: Transformations in global commerce have a shaping effect on states. Montesquieu never actually used the expression doux (gentle) commerce, but his reflections on the fact that the massive expansion of commerce in the modern epoch reduced the scope for war and despotism amount, in effect, to the doux commerce thesis frequently attributed to him: “The natural effect of commerce is to lead to peace” (SL 20.2).20 Commerce reduced warfare between mutually dependent peoples, but on a perhaps profounder level it led to a general softening of manners among commercial people: “Commerce cures destructive prejudices, and it is an almost general rule that everywhere there is commerce, there are gentle mœurs” (SL 20.1). The expansion of commerce – and in particular the increasing predominance of moveable over landed wealth – also acted as a brake on despotism. The Jews of Europe invented letters of exchange to put their wealth out of reach of sovereigns’ violent exactions; in a more general way, the possibility of capital flight tamed the despotic inclinations of sovereigns in need of the tax revenue
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and loans provided to them by merchants: “One has begun to be cured of Machiavellianism . . . What were formerly called coups d’état would at present, apart from their horror, be only imprudences” (SL 20.20).21 New markets led to the multiplication of alternative uses of money, commodities and labor; this broke the monopoly power of property owners in general, but especially that conferred by ownership of the scarce good par excellence – land. The scarcity of land created chains of dependence up and down the social hierarchy: “The people comprise only slaves attached to the land and slaves called ecclesiastics or gentlemen because they are the lords of these slaves” (EL 22.14). The rise of mobile wealth helped to dissolve the social power of feudal lords over their serfs, and with it their political power.22 Serfdom no longer existed in western Europe, but there remained an unevenly distributed residuum of feudal obligations (e.g. rents, dues, and corvée duties, as well as the right to dispense justice at a price) attached to noble landholdings. Under the name of seigneurialism, the “odious” privileges enjoyed by nobles (SL 11.6; 2.3) continued to confer social, economic, and political power. As a noble landowner and as the former owner of a venal office, Montesquieu personally profited from seigneurialism in all these ways. He also understood the intimate connection of seigneurialism with monarchy: “In a way, the nobility is the essence of monarchy, whose fundamental maxim is: no monarch, no nobility: no nobility, no monarch” (SL 2.4, emphasis in original).23 In this way, the rise of mobile wealth and impersonal market relations in commercial societies threatened the social foundation of the monarchy. Different regimes were more suited to specific forms of commerce, which determined their place in the international division of labor; Montesquieu outlined a set of sociological and institutional limitations, with particular emphasis upon monarchies, that would allow commerce to flourish without exploding the rapport between nature and principle at the heart of their constitutions. Republics were more suited to the carrying trade (“commerce d’économie”), the widespread and frequent commerce in high-volume but low-profit goods such as grain and lumber. This unglamorous trade eventually led to the accumulation of vast sums, and their reinvestment in great mercantile enterprises like monopoly companies and colonization schemes. Whereas in monarchies merchants had to fear the sovereign’s arbitrary exactions, in a republic they believed their fortunes were “secure” from specifically political predation; they felt they could invest in necessarily mixed private-public ventures without getting burned by greedy, impulsive monarchs. Beyond state-sponsored
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companies, merchants’ sense of safety from kleptocracy gave them sufficient confidence to expose their fortunes to the profitable risks of trade (SL 20.4). Commercial nations like Holland enjoyed a virtuous cycle: The diversity of markets and their insulation from political interference made all sorts of trade potentially profitable; “sober” bourgeois could diversify their investments in a “lottery” that became progressively less risky as more capital, goods, and actors were drawn into the market. Many investors could win in this lottery even if the principal bet – a whaling or trading adventure – itself lost, because they were often co-investors in the victualing or ship-building enterprises called upon to outfit the voyage (SL 20.6). Densely commercial societies abounded in these kinds of positive network effects. Although he recognized that they were the prerequisites of a “great navigation,” Montesquieu discouraged monopoly trading companies. Catherine Larrère has pointed out that these were precisely the institutions that were central to Law’s System, and whose dolorous effects were recounted in the Persian Letters.24 Such institutions were not only harmful for commerce, but the concentration of economic privileges in the hands of the sovereign increased the means and temptations of would-be despots. Montesquieu was sensitive to the ways in which the spread of commercial relations, even in the absence of market restrictions and privileges, could produce inequality.25 In keeping with his fundamental maxim that the monarchy and the nobility formed a social and political block, Montesquieu also sought to isolate both from commerce. Partly, he wanted to protect commerce from the profitable kinds of privileges (e.g., tolls, taxes, and local monopolies) that nobles would inevitably seek to impose upon it (SL 20.19–20). Privileges were appropriate to land and not the necessarily flexible, mobile world of commerce where rent seeking would distort prices, dampen trade, and impoverish the common people; in so doing, they would magnify to an unacceptable degree the inequalities that were inherent in monarchical societies. Believing that the spread of commerce among the nobility would weaken the monarchy as it had in England, he also sought to protect the monarchy from the socially levelling effects of commerce. Such restrictions would seem to make the idea of commercial monarchy a bit of wishful thinking, but for Montesquieu, France’s economic inequality and social differentiation actually conferred upon it singular competitive advantages. In contrast to republican commerce d’économie, monarchies could succeed by pursuing luxury commerce, an essential element of eighteenth-century Europe’s commercial revolution. Although clearly status-bound, France had a relatively open elite: By
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1789, fully two thirds of the nobility had joined the ranks of this order within the last two centuries and one quarter only since 1700. Generally commoners found their way into the nobility through the purchase of ennobling offices after a lifetime of commercial gain.26 Montesquieu was clearly alert to these facts when he observed: “When nobility can be acquired with silver, it greatly encourages traders in a position to attain it” (SL 20.22). This social ascension was impossible in despotic countries, which locked children into the profession, and presumably the estate, of their parents. Once the rich commoner acceded to noble status, thereby renouncing trade, he would then begin to dissipate his fortune in military commissions and other services to the state, as well as ostentatious consumption – all in search of the “honor” that is the motive force in monarchical societies. This process led to the recycling of elites and a productive sort of emulation within and between them.27 Perhaps more importantly, France’s aristocratic manners created a “lively, pleasant, playful” society imbued with luxury (SL 19.5). The natural inequality there necessitated luxury consumption: “If the wealthy men do not spend much, the poor will die of hunger” (SL 7.4). Once the bourgeoisie – not to speak of servants and other strivers – adopted their social superiors’ fashions by donning cheaper imitations, the aristocracy moved on to new fashions; these novel confections were subsequently diffused beyond the court and, ultimately, France’s borders as luxury exports. This game of social emulation fed a perpetual motion machine of luxury design, production and consumption within France and in the overseas markets that avidly sought French textiles and other objects of fashion. Montesquieu seemed to believe that this emulation would help the French monarchy avoid the poverty natural in unequal societies (SL 7.4): “The desire to please more than oneself establishes fashions . . . as one allows one’s spirit to become more frivolous, one constantly increases the branches of commerce” (SL 19.8).28 A buoyant luxury trade was another way, in addition to the threat of capital flight, that commerce could help monarchies avoid the evils of despotism to which they were prone. Although Montesquieu focused largely on monarchies, he also explored the way commerce compensated for the defects inherent to other regime types. Neither aristocratic nor democratic republics were to be counted moderate, and therefore free, because they functioned on the principle of virtue (SL 3.3–3.4, 11.4).29 Montesquieu’s disdain for aristocratic republics was such that one is tempted to say that he did not believe it was a form of government at all: “The more an aristocracy approaches democracy, the more perfect it will be” (SL 2.3). Modern democratic
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republics, on the other hand could – as Holland and England demonstrated – became moderate through the “spirit of commerce.” Although the great fortunes there seemed to offend against the requirement for equality in all democracies, “the spirit of commerce brings with it the spirit of frugality, economy, moderation, work, wisdom, tranquility, order and rule. Thus, as long as this spirit continues to exist, the wealth it produces has no bad effect” (SL 5.6).30 The key to maintaining the spirit of commerce was first to ensure that the poor can work, and second that even the comparatively well off must work by subjecting them to egalitarian inheritance practices. Montesquieu, as Céline Spector has observed, searched out “substitution solutions” to explain how modern societies of various sorts compensated for their lack of virtue.31 In democracies, the prudential “spirit of commerce” substituted for the lack of virtuous self-sacrifice to be found, if it ever existed, in ancient republics. In a similar vein, the spread of the “spirit of commerce” may substitute in many contexts for the lack of specifically political freedom. Montesquieu’s use of the word “tranquility” in connection with the spirit of commerce is telling, since he uses this term to define political liberty, which is the unique object of the English constitution: “Political liberty in a citizen is that tranquility of the spirit which comes from the opinion each one has of his security” (SL 11.6). In England, tranquility derived from the separation of powers, procedural guarantees in criminal law, and the protection of property. China did not set political liberty as its principal object – far from it – but rather enshrined “public tranquility” as its goal (SL 11.5, 19.16). This led legislators to emphasize family piety, but also, in a densely populated nation frequently teetering at the edge of subsistence, work. Although China was a “despotic state whose principle is fear,” the individual was “able to work without fear of being frustrated for his pains.” Here, the economic sphere was systematically protected from the violence inherent in a despotic political constitution; the whole great domain of producing, buying and selling became “less a civil government than a domestic government” (SL 8.21).32 China did not enjoy a moderate government, but society was protected, and the government thereby legitimated, by preventing the despotic logic of statecraft from touching the economy – in other words, by placing the Louisiana fruit tree beyond its reach. The resonances of the Chinese with the French case – including the problems of agriculture and subsistence – are striking. France, England and China served as representatives of his three regime types in their modern incarnation throughout the Spirit of the Laws. Each in its own way responded to the same imperatives that had
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produced the science of commerce in eighteenth-century Europe. That each enjoyed a prosperous economy was of secondary importance next to the fact that they exemplified alternative approaches to maintaining the moderation and tranquility he identified with political liberty through the compensatory virtues of doux commerce. Montesquieu’s science of commerce always remained, in this sense and others, the handmaiden of his political philosophy.
Notes 1 See, for instance, Dupont de Nemours, “De l’origine et des progrès d’une science nouvelle [1768],” 337–8. For a discussion, Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce, 145–6. 2 Arendt, The Human Condition, 33; Habermas, Structural Transformation, 17–19 citing Arendt. Montesquieu was frequently referred to as a “philosophe politique” in eighteenth-century France, which authorizes that designation here. 3 On the “science of commerce,” “political commerce,” and “commerce in general,” see Steiner, “Commerce, Commerce Politique.” 4 Montesquieu allowed for a virtuous poverty among those, probably in ancient republics, who “distained . . . the comforts of life” (SL 20.3). 5 Quesnay, “Despotisme de la Chine [1767].” For an illuminating discussion of gouvernement économique and its relation to the eighteenth-century trend towards “governmentality,” see Foucault, Sécurité, territoire, population, 108–13 (lecture of 1 Feb, 1978). 6 Hobbes, Leviathan, 22–3. 7 Morineau, “Budgets de l’état et gestion des finances,” 334–5 and table on 325. 8 On trade statistics, see Daudin, Commerce et prospérité, 24, 210. Some of these figures are quoted as well in my “Commerce.” For sugar production, see Watts, West Indies, 287 (table 7.3). Martinique: 5,172 tons in 1717; 15,988 in 1740–4; 10,782 in 1785–9. Saint-Domingue: 5,012 in 1710–14; 43,400 in 1742; and 68,407 in 1785–9. And on plantation productivity, Eltis, Lewis, and Richardson, “Slave Prices, the African Slave Trade, and Productivity,” 684. 9 Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle en Europe, article 2, OC 2:341–3. 10 Accounts of maximal share prices are conflicting. Compare Murphy, “John Law et la bulle de la Compagnie du Mississippi,” 14; to Velde, “John Law’s System,” 277. 11 For details of Law’s manipulations and contemporary criticisms of his “despotism” and “terror,” see Kaiser, “Money, Despotism and Public Credit,” 16–20. For Montesquieu’s judgements, see SL 2.4, 22.10; PL 132, 136, 138. 12 Mandeville, Fable of the Bees, 1:18. Montesquieu cites the Fable: “I will gladly conform to the ideas of the man who wrote the Fable of the Bees, and I will ask to be shown grave citizens, in any country, who do as much good there as their
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dandies do for certain commercial nations” (MT 1553). See also SL 7.1, 19.8, on luxury. Mandeville, Fable of the Bees, 1:7. On the modernes, Orain, La politique du merveilleux, 103–11 and 161–71. For an influential discussion of the nature/principle distinction, see Louis Althusser, Montesquieu, chapter 3. Céline Spector discusses the Mandevillian aspects of Montesquieu’s social theory, with reference to the influence of Pierre Bayle and Michel de Montaigne in Pouvoirs, richesses et sociétés, 77–87. Spector’s work is an essential reference on Montesquieu’s political economy. For these and other antecedents in moral philosophy to the market mechanism see Hirschman, Passions and the Interests. Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book 4, chapter 2, 456. Mandeville, Fable of the Bees, 1:117 (Remark L). Althusser celebrates Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws as a kind of near miss with a fully scientific understanding of society. His grandeur was to have theorized history as a knowable, evolving social totality; but the centrality of regime types and of the nature/principle distinction to his analysis has the effect of subordinating economics to politics. It therefore precluded, for Althusser, a true “political economy” in the Marxian sense. One can appreciate Althusser’s insights without seeing Montesquieu’s method as a symptom of his “feudal” social biases. See Montesquieu, 53–6 and chapter 6. See also Montesquieu, Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle, articles 1–6, OC 2:339–45. Montesquieu is probably wrong that Jews invented letters of exchange. See Trivellato, The Promise and Peril of Credit, 133–9. This theme was greatly expanded upon by three Scottish philosophers who avowed the influence of Montesquieu: James Millar, Adam Ferguson, and Adam Smith. See, respectively, Origin of the Distinction of Rank; An Essay on the History of Civil Society; and The Wealth of Nations. On this relation, see Cheney, “Lumières Écossaises.” For Montesquieu as a seigneurial landowner, see Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce, 77–8. On seigneurialism, see Jones, Peasantry in the French Revolution, 42–59; and Blaufarb, The Great Demarcation, chapter 1. She adds one institution not discussed here: free ports. Larrère, “Montesquieu économiste? Une lecture paradoxale,” 258–60. Indeed she has argued – very influentially for the present chapter – that books 20–3, and perhaps the whole of the Spirit of the Laws, should also be understood as a response to Law’s System. Cheney, “István Hont,” 890–96. For figures, see Chaussinand-Nogaret, French Nobility, 30. Recent research suggests that instead of recycling elites, the process Montesquieu describes simply led to a decline in the numbers and wealth of the nobility. See Dewald, “Rethinking the 1 Percent,” 915–18. On the key role of the aristocracy, see Coquery, L’Hôtel aristocratique. There is considerable recent work on the product cycle in the French luxury trades, but without adequate theoretical or empirical attention to the role of French
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élites and social structure. See, e.g., Sewell, “The Empire of Fashion,” 88–9; and Sonenscher, Sans-Culottes, 92–5. Ibid., chapter 7. I leave out of discussion here Montesquieu’s criticism of the antisocial effects of the spirit of commerce (SL 2.2). Spector, Pouvoirs, richesses et sociétés, 58. In this as in so many other matters, Montesquieu seems to have been working from good information, at least so far as present-day scholarship has been able to confirm. On the Chinese “provisioning state,” relatively free markets and light taxation, see Wong, “Taxation and Good Governance in China.”
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14 Religion and Politics Annelien de Dijn
Montesquieu’s views on religion might not seem very remarkable at first sight. He voiced skepticism about the truth of Christian dogma and practice in his private notebooks. In his published writings, notably in his youthful Persian Letters, he showed a propensity to mock the religious establishment and its beliefs as irrational. While he toned down this irreverent attitude in his more mature writings, he continued to undermine the truth-claims of established religion in more subtle ways. In The Spirit of the Laws, he made clear that religious beliefs and practices could best be understood not as divine dictates, but as having emerged in response to specific, locally bound human needs, thus pioneering a new scientific, objectifying approach to religion. In other words, Montesquieu seems to exemplify a typical Enlightenment attitude towards revealed religion, promoting a critical, irreverent attitude to religious dogma and practice.1 Nevertheless, as I will argue in this chapter, there was more to Montesquieu’s views on religion than might first meet the eye. Notably, in his masterpiece, The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu, while subtly undermining the idea that Christianity was the one true religion, at the same time developed an original defense of established religion in general and Christianity in particular on instrumental grounds, as being socially and politically useful. Taking account of this aspect of Montesquieu’s work allows us to throw new light on a topic that has provoked considerable scholarly discussion: the diversity of enlightened attitudes towards religion.
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’ Born into a traditional Catholic family, Montesquieu remained a lifelong and ostensibly faithful member of the Church. He maintained cordial relations throughout his life with his younger brother Joseph, a clergyman of some distinction. Other family members also had strong ties to the Church: Montesquieu’s two surviving sisters became nuns. His wife, Jeanne Lartigue, was born into a prominent Calvinist family and she remained true to her ancestral faith throughout her life. But Montesquieu never seems to have been tempted by her example, and their children were raised within the Catholic Church. On his deathbed, Montesquieu was attended not just by his grandson and by his philosophically minded friends, but also by two Jesuit confessors.2 Yet, despite his outward conformity, Montesquieu seems to have become converted from a relatively early age to the new, skeptical outlook toward established religion evinced by many educated Europeans of his age.3 In his private notebooks, he frequently voiced doubts about the truth of Christian dogma and practice. He likened the doctrine of the Trinity, for instance, to the pagan belief in multiple gods and went on to explain that these similarities were not accidental. Christianity, after all, had emerged in a pagan world and many core beliefs of the early Church had been shaped by that background. This observation led Montesquieu to speculate that if Christianity had first established itself in China rather than among the Romans, the Church might very well have espoused very different dogmas and practices (MT 876). In another remarkable passage, Montesquieu asserted that the very “absurdity” of Christianity showed that it must be the true religion. After all, how else to explain the success of this new religion among ancient philosophers? These men had rejected paganism because of its irrational nature, but they had ended up accepting the idea of a crucified deity, whereas that doctrine must have seemed, prima facie, just as bizarre to them. “If the establishment of Christianity among the Romans were an event solely in the category of things of this world,” Montesquieu commented, “it would be the strangest event of its kind that has ever occurred” (MT 969). But these reflections seem to have been more tongue-in-cheek than a statement of firm conviction. In yet another one of his notes, Montesquieu attributed Christianity’s triumph in Late Antiquity to the long duration of the reign of Constantine – the emperor who had embraced Christianity and made it the official state religion – or,
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in other words, he attributed it to contingent historical factors rather than to divine intervention (MT 92). In sum, it seems likely that Montesquieu had, as his biographer expresses it, no “firm Christian conviction.”4 That is not to say that Montesquieu was an atheist. Both in his published writings and in his private notebooks, he argued against materialism, using the traditional argument from design. “The least reflection,” he wrote in one of his notebooks, “is enough for a man to cure himself of atheism. He has only to consider the Heavens, and he will find an invincible proof of the existence of God. It is inexcusable when he does not see Divinity depicted in everything that surrounds him; for as soon as he sees the effects, he must acknowledge a cause.” Reason therefore led to the conclusion that God was “an intelligent being that brings forth this order that we see in the world” (MT 1946). Montesquieu seems in other words to have been a typical deist, someone who believed that there had to be a divine being, but who did not believe in revealed religion or special divine action in the world. And that was of course a position he shared with many other enlightened thinkers, such as his younger contemporary Voltaire.5 Montesquieu’s skeptical attitude towards established religion was also very much in evidence in his published writings. One of his earliest texts, written in 1716, when he was just twenty-seven years old (though unpublished until his death), was an essay on the religion of ancient Rome. Montesquieu’s central thesis was that Roman elites had invented religion for their own political purposes. In addition to instilling a fear of the gods to discipline their people, these elites had deliberately presented themselves as the only true conduits to the divine. Priests, for instance, were completely subject to the Senate. Montesquieu was careful to emphasize that Roman elites themselves had not believed in their own absurd inventions, but instead espoused a more rational, natural religion, thus presenting the religion of the Romans, in essence, as a hoax perpetrated by elites against the gullible masses, in order to perpetuate their power over the latter (OC 8:77–98). Montesquieu’s first major literary contribution, the Persian Letters, published five years after his essay on the religion of the Romans, brought closer to home this critique of established religion as essentially irrational. In letters purportedly written by two wealthy and educated Persians travelling through France and other countries, Montesquieu provided extensive comments on all sorts of common beliefs and customs, including religious ones. His European readers were thus presented with a funhouse mirror image of their society, as they learned to look at familiar
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ideas and practices through the eyes of Usbek and Rica, the Persian Letters’ exotic protagonists. The overall effect of the novel was to foster a skeptical, relativistic attitude toward Montesquieu’s own society, including its dominant religion, Catholicism.6 Thus, Montesquieu, through the mouthpiece of Usbek, irreverently described the Pope as a “great magician” capable of making Europeans believe that “three are only one, that the bread he eats is not bread, or that the wine he drinks is not wine, and countless other things of that nature” (PL 22). Usbek also agonized over the question whether Christians would be condemned to serve eternity in Hell, like Turkish infidels, thus parodying commonly held Christian beliefs about the damnation of unbelievers, while pointing out how illogical they were. (“Do you think that they [the Christians] will be condemned to eternal retribution, and that God will punish them for not practicing a religion of which he denied them knowledge?” Usbek wondered (PL 33).) But Montesquieu did not just mock Christian beliefs. He also pointed out, through his mouthpiece Usbek, the considerable similarities between Islamic and Christian dogmas and religious practices, thus undermining in yet another way the idea that Catholicism was the only true religion.7 He compared Christian baptism to the mandatory ablutions performed by Muslims. (“The only mistake made by the Christians,” Usbek commented, “is in the efficacy they attribute to this first ablution, which they believe suffices for all the others.”) He pointed out that, just like Muslims, Christian priests and monks prayed seven times a day; that they expected to enjoy the blessings of paradise through the resurrection of the body; that they kept specified fast days and mortified the flesh; and that they believed in miracles. In short, Usbek concluded provocatively, “I see Muhammadanism everywhere, although I do not find Muhammad here” (PL 33). In his more mature writings, notably The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu toned down his irreverent and mocking tone, instead describing Christianity as a religion with “its roots in heaven” (SL 24.1). Yet, Montesquieu’s skeptical attitude towards established religion was nonetheless also very much in evidence in his masterpiece. Indeed, in The Spirit of the Laws, he pioneered a new, scientific understanding of established religious beliefs and practices as a product of local, context-bound human needs and desires, rather than of divine inspiration. Arguably, this new understanding was just as corrosive of the truth-claims of the Catholic Church as the mocking, relativizing attitude he expressed in the Persian Letters.8
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The Spirit of the Laws is a hugely ambitious work. Montesquieu’s ultimate goal was to explain the patterns behind the seemingly endless variety in political and social practices across space and time. Taking his cue from the natural sciences, he used empirical observation to discover regularities in human behavior, from which he then distilled more general laws. In doing so, Montesquieu was pioneering a new and scientific approach to human behavior that would come to be adopted by many Enlightenment thinkers as well as by later social scientists, so much so that Peter Gay has dubbed him “the most influential writer of the eighteenth century.”9 In Book 24 and Book 25 of The Spirit of the Laws, he extended this analysis more specifically to religious matters, examining, respectively, the dogmas of different religions as well as their structure and organization in relation to other aspects of humans’ political and social behavior. Montesquieu’s central claim was that different religious systems originated in different human needs and wants. Sedentary peoples, he explained for instance, believed that their gods resided in temples, just like they themselves lived in houses, whereas nomads, for obvious reasons, did not share this belief. “Almost all [civilized] peoples,” Montesquieu wrote, live in houses. From this has naturally come the idea of building a house for god where they can worship him and go to seek him in their fears or their hopes. . . . But this very natural idea comes only to peoples who cultivate land, and one will not see temples built by those who have no houses themselves. This is why Genghis Khan showed such great scorn for mosques. (SL 25.3)
More specifically, Montesquieu maintained that the striking global variety in religious practices and beliefs could best be explained by reference to climatic differences, which were the ultimate cause, he argued (following the abbé Dubos), of human diversity. The fact that Hindus believed in reincarnation, for instance, was not random, but due to the particularities of the Indian climate. Hindu belief in reincarnation encouraged vegetarianism, which was necessary in a hot environment. “Excessive heat scorches the whole countryside,” Montesquieu explained. As a result, one can feed only very little livestock; one is always in danger of having little stock for plowing; the livestock reproduce poorly; they are subject to many diseases: Therefore, a law of religion that preserves them is very suitable to the police of this country. (SL 24.24)
Montesquieu gave example after example of how different religious practices and beliefs originated from climatic differences. In India, for
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instance, as the English explorer William Dampier had observed, people living in warmer areas had plenty of time for diversions, since a hot climate produced more food. By contrast, in colder climes people were more occupied with fishing and hunting and hence had less time for fun and dance. Religious practices necessarily had to adapt themselves to these differences by instituting more or fewer festivals (SL 24.23). Montesquieu, it is important to note, did not shy away from making similar arguments about Christian beliefs and practices, which were likewise revealed to have their roots in various needs resulting from the climate characteristic of Europe. By presenting such a scientific, objectifying account of religion, The Spirit of the Laws of course encouraged a skeptical attitude toward established religion. After all, if many or even most religious practices adopted by Christians and other believers were developed in response to particular human needs rather than upon God’s command, then perhaps these beliefs and practices did not require the kind of faithful obedience one should accord to God’s will. Thus, Montesquieu’s analysis of temples as originating in the need of human beings to imagine the gods as being much like themselves – that is, in need of a house – was not terribly conducive to respect for the sanctity of, say, Catholic churches. In sum, Montesquieu’s writings propagated a skeptical view towards the truth-claims of revealed religion in general and of Christianity in particular. It is therefore tempting to think of Montesquieu as exemplifying a typical Enlightenment attitude toward religion. More specifically, it is tempting to think that his ultimate goal was to undermine established religion in order to encourage its replacement, not by atheism, but by a more rational, “natural” religion. But that would be to misunderstand Montesquieu. As we shall now see, for all of his explicit skepticism about the truth of prevalent religious dogma and practice, Montesquieu developed a novel defense of established religion generally speaking and Christianity in particular on the ground of its political and social utility. Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws in other words illustrates that the new, enlightened approach to religion could not just be used to attack religion. Paradoxically, it could also be mobilized to argue for a complacent acceptance of existing religious practices and beliefs, in particular Christian practices and beliefs.
Montesquieu developed his enlightened, instrumental defense of established religion in particular in Book 24 of The Spirit of the Laws, entitled
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“On the laws in their relation to the religion established in each country.” In this section of The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu embarked on an attempt to systematically evaluate different kinds of religion from the perspective of their social and political usefulness, or, as he expressed it himself, to “examine the various religions of the world only in relation to the good to be drawn from them in the civil state, whether I speak of the one whose roots are in heaven or of those whose roots are in the earth” (SL 24.1). Montesquieu’s analysis led him to the conclusion, first and foremost, that organized religions in general were useful things. They acted as a check on both rulers and subjects, making sure that people behaved morally. Montesquieu opened Book 24 with a discussion of Pierre Bayle’s claim that a society of virtuous atheists was possible – a claim Montesquieu roundly rejected. According to Montesquieu, fear of God was the best guarantee human beings had against the perfidy of other human beings, and without such a bridle, any society would soon devolve into anarchical violence. “Religion, even a false one,” he wrote, “is the best warrant men can have of the integrity of men” (SL 24.8). This was of course a familiar argument: Voltaire, too maintained that societies would collapse without religion, famously remarking that “if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”10 But in Montesquieu’s view, instilling a basic morality was not the only function of religion. Established religions, he made clear, also tended to support the particular socio-political systems of which they were a part. Throughout Book 24 of The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu gave his readers example after example to show that even the most bizarre religious beliefs and practices typically had some useful social or political effects. Thus, Montesquieu explained, for instance, that the Muslim prohibition on eating pork made considerable sense in the context of the Arab world, where people were subject to diseases of the skin. As medical men had observed, “when one eats pork it transpires little and . . . this food even greatly prevents the transpiration of other foods.” It was also well known that “the lack of transpiration forms or sharpens diseases of the skin,” so that abstaining from pork was healthy in Arab lands (SL 24.25). Montesquieu also appealed to social utility to explain religious habits closer to home. For instance, he asked himself why Protestants had fewer religious festivals than Catholics. The answer, again, was social utility: “Protestant countries and Catholic countries,” Montesquieu wrote, “are situated in such a way that one needs to work more in the former than in
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the latter. Therefore, the suppression of festivals suited Protestant countries better than Catholic countries” (SL 24.24). In The Spirit of the Laws, in short, Montesquieu pioneered a type of analysis that today we would describe as “functionalism” – an approach to understanding social phenomena in which the existence of a specific institution or social custom is explained by pointing to its function, its social benefits.11 Now, functionalism can easily lead to conservatism with a small “c,” to complacency. If even the most bizarre social habits or customs exist because they benefit society in one way or another, then it is clear that there are no truly “bad” or pernicious habits and customs but rather all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. And hence, functionalism can work against reformism: To change specific customs and beliefs, even seemingly harmful ones, might rend the delicate fabric of society and result in far worse outcomes than just leaving things alone. Montesquieu’s own analysis definitely points in that direction. Throughout The Spirit of the Laws, he repeated again and again that the specific customs and habits of a particular people could not simply be transferred or used as a model by other people. Or, as Montesquieu expressed it himself: “May we be left as we are” (SL 19.5). This was also true for religious practices and beliefs. Because each religion was a reflection of local needs and adapted to local social and political systems, there were considerable “drawbacks,” as Montesquieu put it, in “transferring a religion from one country to another” (SL 24.25). A ruler was therefore justified in trying to prevent this from happening by prohibiting the proselytizing of new religions (SL 25.9–25.11). But Montesquieu was not simply saying that whatever is, is best. He also argued that, from the perspective of social and political utility, Christianity was in many respects a better, that is, more useful religion than other religious traditions. More specifically, he argued that Christianity had beneficial effects because it supported freedom from despotism, especially when compared to other religions like Islam that helped to maintain slavery and tyranny. These ideas held a prominent place in Book 24 of The Spirit of the Laws, where Montesquieu devoted a chapter to the idea that “moderate government is better suited to the Christian religion, and despotic government to Mohammedanism” (SL 24.3). So why was this the case? Why did Christianity foster moderate government and freedom, rather than despotism? In answering this question, Montesquieu insisted first and foremost on the gentleness fostered by Christianity. Christianity softened the mores of both rulers and ruled. As
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Montesquieu put it: “We owe to Christianity both a certain political right in government and a certain right of nations in war, for which human nature can never be sufficiently grateful.” This was immediately apparent, he believed, when one compared the mores of Christian nations with the Greeks and Romans, whose histories testified to their continual massacres of their kings and leaders. Likewise, nomads and Muslims were equally violent. “The Mohammedan religion,” he wrote, “which speaks only with a sword, continues to act on men with the destructive spirit that founded it.” All of this brought Montesquieu to the happy conclusion that “the Christian religion, which seems to have no other object than the felicity of the other life, is also our happiness in this one!” (SL 24.3–24.4). In addition, Montesquieu also believed that the higher status of women in Christianity helped stave off the rise of oriental despotism in Europe. The fact that Christianity encouraged monogamy, and Islam polygamy, Montesquieu wrote, had contributed to establishing greater equality between the sexes in the Christian world. This had, in turn, important political effects. The example of the Islamic world showed, Montesquieu believed, that there was a causal relation between the “domestic slavery” of women and political slavery. In the Islamic world, for instance, harems isolated the prince from the people. By contrast, in the Christian world, kings got married like everyone else, hence remaining more integrated into society. As a result, they were more inclined to think of themselves as subject to the law rather than above it (SL 24.3). This is not to say that, in Montesquieu’s view, all forms of Christianity were equally conducive to fostering political freedom. As he explained, Protestantism, “a religion that has no visible leader,” was better suited to foster freedom than Catholicism. Hence, it had become the dominant religion of northern Europe, where a colder climate went hand in hand with “a spirit of independence and liberty” (SL 24.5). Yet Montesquieu was careful to emphasize that Catholicism, while being generally less conducive to freedom, could nevertheless, in specific contexts, help protect against despotism. Because the Church was headed by the pope, who controlled an independent religious hierarchy, it could play a useful role in offsetting the potentially overweening power of hereditary kings. “In monarchy,” Montesquieu remarked, “where one cannot have too much separate the orders of the state and where one should not bring together all the powers in the same head, it is good for the pontificate to be separated from the empire” (SL 25.8). Of course, Montesquieu was aware that Christianity had not always lived up to this idealized description. He acknowledged that the religious
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violence sparked by disagreements between Christians, as well as intolerance toward nonbelievers, could undermine the social utility he attributed to Christianity. But at the same time, Montesquieu seems to have believed that such intolerance was becoming ever less rampant in his own day and age. Thus, in the Persian Letters, he had Usbek remark that “Christians are beginning to abandon that spirit of intolerance which formerly inspired them,” as they had come to realize “that zeal for the advancement of religion is different from the love one should bear it, and that in order to love it, and observe its precepts, there is no need to hate and persecute those who do not do so.” In this regard as well, Christianity compared favorably to Islam. “We must hope that our Muslims,” Usbek remarked, “can think as sensibly on this subject as Christians do” – thus implying that, so far, they had remained stuck in their intolerant ways (PL 59).12 Indeed, Montesquieu made clear that he believed the beneficial properties of Christianity to be so considerable that they could overcome or at least counter the nefarious political effects of a hot climate, as he made clear in a discussion of the Ethiopian Empire. In Montesquieu’s view, a very warm climate was conducive to political despotism, as “great heat enervates the strength and courage of men,” thus making them less capable of resisting tyranny. By contrast, a cold climate gave men “a certain strength of body and spirit” that made them “capable of long, arduous, great, and daring actions,” hence, they were more inclined to fight for their freedom. “Therefore, one must not be surprised,” he wrote, “that the cowardice of the peoples of hot climates has almost always made them slaves and that the courage of the peoples of cold climates has kept them free” (SL 17.2). In the case of Ethiopia, however, the effects of a hot climate had been overruled by the advent of the Christian religion. That became clear from a comparison with the neighboring kingdom of Sannar. Despite “the vice of its climate,” Montesquieu commented (relying on the travelogue of Charles Jacques Poncet), the spread of Christianity in Ethiopia, had kept despotism from being established. Here, the Christian religion, had “carried the mores and laws of Europe to the middle of Africa.” By contrast, in Sannar, “Mohammedanism” had encouraged the establishment of despotism by propagating ruthlessness and a general disregard for human life (SL 24.3). By highlighting Christianity’s freedom-promoting propensities, it is worth noting, Montesquieu did not aim to promote the expansion of the Christian religion outside of Europe. Indeed, for all his talk about the
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beneficial effects of Christianity in Ethiopia, Montesquieu made it very clear that he did not believe in proselytism. Generally speaking, climate determined which religion was most suitable for each particular region, he believed, and even though this rule could be bent in specific cases, where for contingent reasons a religion had taken root that was less suitable to its climate, such cases would always remain exceptional. “Climate,” as Montesquieu put it, “has prescribed limits to the Christian religion and to the Mohammedan religion” (SL 24.26). In other words, Montesquieu’s idealized portrait of Christianity was not meant to propagate Christian proselytism abroad; hence, in this sense at least, he cannot be accused of orientalism.13 To sum up: While Montesquieu was skeptical about the truth-claims of Christianity, he propagated a novel and enlightened defense of revealed religion by emphasizing the social and political utility of established religions generally and Christianity in particular. He argued, first, that religions in general were useful because they instilled a certain basic morality in rulers and subjects alike, and second, because religious beliefs and practices tended to support the socio-political systems they were a part of, for instance by making northern Protestants work harder than southern Catholics. But Montesquieu also argued – and that was his third main claim about religion – that Christianity in particular was more useful than other religions because it played a crucial role in helping to preserve political freedom in Europe. By making such claims, Montesquieu was deviating in an important way from other philosophes such as his younger contemporary Voltaire. Like Montesquieu, Voltaire was a deist who believed that atheism formed a threat to the very survival of society. But unlike Montesquieu, Voltaire had little good to say about established religions in general and about Christianity in particular. Throughout his many writings, Voltaire depicted Christianity as a tissue of fraud and lies, imposed by canny priests on gullible populations. There was no hint in his writings that Christianity was more useful than other religions. In his 1767 broadside Dinner at the Count de Boulainvilliers, for instance, Voltaire declared that Christianity amounted to a “tissue of the most insipid impostures” and an “uninterrupted series of frauds” perpetrated throughout the centuries. Above all, it was a fanatical and violent religion.14 Voltaire’s complaints, it is important to note, were by no means restricted to the religion in which he was brought up: He was equally critical of other revealed religions, notably Islam and Judaism. Ultimately, Voltaire’s dream seems to have been a society purged of Christianity and
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other forms of revealed religion and based instead on a more rational, natural form of religion. “Religion must clearly be purged; the whole of Europe is crying out for it,” he remarked in his Dialogues Between A B and C. Indeed, Voltaire insisted that getting rid of revealed religion was the only way to prevent the spread of atheism. “Theology has only served to subvert minds,” Voltaire wrote, “and sometimes states. It alone creates atheists, for the vast majority of minor theologians, who are sensible enough to see the silly side of this fantastical discipline, don’t know enough about it to replace it with a sane philosophy.” By contrast, natural religion, “the faith of all decent people,” made men “bow down before the Divinity”; it made “just and wise” what revealed religion made “iniquitous and insane.”15 Montesquieu, however, does not seem to have shared Voltaire’s enthusiasm for natural religion.16 In private notes jotted down in the 1730s, he rejected the idea that natural religion could ever offer an adequate substitute for revealed religion. “What proves to me the necessity of a revelation is the inadequacy of natural religion,” he wrote, “given men’s fear and superstition. For if you place men today in the pure state of natural religion, tomorrow they would fall into some gross superstition” (MT 825). About two decades later, in a letter to the English bishop William Warburton (an enlightened defender of revealed religion against English deists like Lord Bolingbroke), Montesquieu made much the same point. To attack revealed religion, especially in the English context, he wrote, where it had been divested of its pernicious intolerant aspects, was foolish. If a person succeeded in undermining its authority, he would only succeed in “destroying an infinity of practical goods to establish a purely speculative truth.”17 Montesquieu’s doubts about the feasibility of introducing new and more rational, natural forms of religion suggest one possible reason why he felt compelled, in The Spirit of the Laws, to come up with a new and more enlightened defense of Christianity. If the eradication of revealed religion was impossible without destroying religion itself – which would ultimately lead to the destruction of society – then there were good reasons, even from an enlightened, deist perspective, to attempt to buttress the authority of Christianity. And that was precisely what Montesquieu set out to do in The Spirit of the Laws, as he made clear. His examination of Christianity, in comparison with Islam, was meant to show, he explained, that we should “embrace the one and reject the other” – “for it is much more evident to us that a religion should soften the mores of men than it is that a religion is true” (SL 24.4).
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Montesquieu’s views on religion, in short, were a lot more complex than it might appear at first sight. While he was skeptical about the truth of revealed religion, at the same time he developed a novel defense of established religion generally and Christianity in particular by highlighting, among other things, its freedom-enhancing propensities. Acknowledging the complexity of Montesquieu’s views on established religion, I will now go on to argue, is not just important for our understanding of Montesquieu himself. It can also help us to bring into focus a particular strand of Enlightenment thinking about religion that has hitherto remained unacknowledged in the literature – a strand of thought we might describe as the “Complacent Enlightenment.” In recent years, debate about the Enlightenment has taken an important new turn. Scholars have increasingly come to question the traditional view of the Enlightenment as a wholesale attack on established religion in the name of reason. In a landmark study, David Sorkin has drawn attention to the existence of a multi-confessional and transnational “Religious Enlightenment” existing alongside, and in dialogue with, the more familiar secular Enlightenment of the French philosophes. As Sorkin shows, in the eighteenth century, believers all over Europe attempted to rethink their respective religions in the light of human reason and propagated more humane and tolerant versions of their faith. The Enlightenment, he argues, was “not only compatible with religious belief but conducive to it” by making possible “new iterations of faith.” 18 Montesquieu’s defense of Christianity might at first sight bring him close to the Religious Enlightenment, and we know that some enlightened theologians, such as the Calvinist pastor Jacob Vernet, read the Spirit of the Laws with at least partial approval. (Indeed, he oversaw the printing of the Genevan edition of the Spirit of the Laws).19 But in the end of the day, a representative of the Protestant Enlightenment like Vernet defended Christianity because he believed it was true and that other religions were false beliefs. Montesquieu, as we have seen, never suggested that this was the case. Instead, he harped on the social utility of the Christian religion and especially on its role in preserving freedom in Europe. Montesquieu even suggested, as we have seen, that social utility was a better argument in favor of Christianity than its doctrinal value. Orthodox believers, needless to say, were not exactly thrilled by such an
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instrumental defense of Christianity and that was one of the reasons why The Spirit of the Laws eventually ended up on Rome’s Index of Prohibited Books (much to Montesquieu’s surprise and dismay).20 Nor can we capture the distinctiveness of Montesquieu’s contribution to the Enlightenment debate about religion by describing him as a proponent of the “Moderate Enlightenment.” This term, originally coined by Margaret Jacob and later revived by Jonathan Israel, was introduced to distinguish religiously and politically moderate deists from more radical thinkers who espoused a strident, revolutionary atheism. Israel in particular has argued that Montesquieu must be understood as one of the major proponents of the Moderate Enlightenment, an Enlightenment that aimed to “conquer ignorance and superstition,” but at the same time also aimed to “preserve and safeguard essential” structures of the Old Regime, in order to come to a “viable synthesis of . . . reason and faith,” rather than “sweeping away existing structures entirely,” as more radical philosophes intended.21 Montesquieu’s ideas, however, cannot simply be described as a more “moderate” version of the ideas propagated by thinkers like Spinoza – or, for that matter, Voltaire. Montesquieu, after all, was just as willing as Spinoza or Voltaire to dismiss the claims of orthodox theologians that Christianity was the one and true religion; he was not intent on reconciling Christianity with reason. Instead, what is interesting about Montesquieu is that he was just as adamant about Christianity’s lack of reasonableness as the most radical atheist – while developing, at the same time, a novel defense of Christianity based on a typically enlightened, secular attitude toward revealed religion, as being useful in the here and now.22 In sum, if we want to pick out Montesquieu’s distinctive contribution to the Enlightenment debate about religion, labelling him a religious or moderate enlightener will not do. Instead, we need to acknowledge that Montesquieu represented a different strand of enlightened thought – a strand of thought that used the tools of enlightenment neither to uproot Christianity nor to affirm its truth or reasonableness, but to reveal its social utility. This strand of Enlightenment thought, I would argue, might be usefully labelled the Complacent Enlightenment. In his own time, it might be remarked, Montesquieu seems to have made relatively few converts to his distinct way of thinking about religion. If anything, the generation of philosophes following in Montesquieu’s and Voltaire’s footsteps was more hostile to Christianity and revealed religion than even Voltaire.23 Yet in the longer run, the Complacent
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Enlightenment has had a considerable impact on the way in which we think about Christianity. Indeed, the approach pioneered by Montesquieu – his claim that Christianity is a “good” religion not for its intrinsic value but for its social utility, and in particular because it helps to foster individual and political freedom – is now more pervasive than ever. Bernard Lewis, Samuel Huntington, Larry Siedentop and Niall Ferguson are all examples of public intellectuals who have used the arguments pioneered by Montesquieu to argue for the superiority of Christianity, in particular over and above Islam. (Indeed, it should be noted that Ferguson explicitly describes himself as a “Scottish enlightenment liberal.”)24 In that sense, we are still, for better or worse, the heirs of Montesquieu’s Complacent Enlightenment.
Notes 1 See Schaub, “Of Believers and Barbarians”; Bianchi, “La religion dans l’Esprit des Lois,” 289–304; Pangle, Theological Basis; Bartlett, The Idea of Enlightenment, chapter 2. For an important critique of this standard view, see Callanan, Montesquieu’s Liberalism, especially chapter 5. 2 Shackleton, Montesquieu, 1–26, 392–9. 3 For Montesquieu’s personal beliefs, see Shackleton, Montesquieu, 349–54; as well as Shackleton, “La religion de Montesquieu,” 109–16. 4 Shackleton, Montesquieu, 352. 5 For the philosophes’ deism, see Gay, The Enlightenment, vol. 1, 383–5. 6 Montesquieu was not alone in using a comparativist approach to undermine the truth-claims of Christianity. See Revel, “The Uses of Comparison.” 7 It should be noted that I do not wish to suggest that Usbek’s words can always be understood as expressions of Montesquieu’s own views. The Persian Letters is obviously not a roman à clef. Yet in this particular case Usbek is voicing an opinion very similar to views Montesquieu himself expressed in his private writings. 8 See Schaub, “Of Believers and Barbarians,” 235; Bianchi, “La religion dans l’Esprit des Lois,” 289–304. 9 Gay, The Enlightenment, vol. 2, 325. 10 Voltaire, Épitre à l’auteur du livre des Trois Imposteurs, 403. 11 For a description of Montesquieu’s approach as “functionalist,” see Carrithers, “The Enlightenment Science of Society,” 232–70. 12 For a nuanced analysis of Montesquieu’s views on toleration, see Kingston, “Montesquieu on Religion.” 13 For a nuanced discussion of Montesquieu’s orientalism, see Curtis, Orientalism and Islam, chapter 4. 14 Quoted in Marshall, “Voltaire, Priestcraft and Imposture,” 168. For the philosophes’ dream of a society purged of Christianity and based on natural religion, see Gay, The Enlightenment, vol. 1, 371–96.
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15 Voltaire, “Dialogues between A B C,” 147. 16 For a discussion of Montesquieu’s views on natural vs revealed religion, see Spector, “Naturalisation des croyances,” 40–109, and Pangle, Theological Basis, 20 and 142. But compare Rolando Minuti, who argues that Montesquieu and Voltaire did share the same outlook on religion. See Minuti, “An Overview: Montesquieu and Islam,” 181–95. 17 Montesquieu to Warburton, May 1754, Nagel 3:1509–10. 18 Sorkin, Religious Enlightenment, 3. See also Rosenblatt, “The Christian Enlightenment,” 283–301. 19 Sorkin, Religious Enlightenment, 98. About Jacob Vernet’s work overseeing the Genevan edition of The Spirit of the Laws, see Volpilhac-Auger, “Vernet.” 20 Shackleton, Montesquieu, 356–77. 21 Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 11. See also Jacob, Radical Enlightenment. For Montesquieu as a proponent of the Moderate Enlightenment, see Israel, Enlightenment Contested, esp. chapter 14. 22 For such a secular outlook as typical for the Enlightenment, see Jacob, Secular Enlightenment. 23 Gay, The Enlightenment, vol. 1, 17. After 1750, antiphilosophes did increasingly adopt arguments highlighting the social and political utility of Christianity, but mostly they argued religion was necessary for stability, not freedom. See Matytsin, “Reason and Utility in French Religious Apologetics,” 63–82. 24 Interview with Niall Ferguson, The Guardian 20.2.2011.
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15 Constitutional History Jacob T. Levy
The concluding Part VI of The Spirit of the Laws is by far the longest of the book’s major sections – almost a third of the book’s total length – but it is almost certainly the least-discussed and least-understood section of Montesquieu’s great work. It is awkward to even identify thematically in a way that parallels the obvious demarcations of the other five parts of the book: forms of government; their relationships to power and liberty; the political consequences of geography and culture; commerce; and religion. It offers a legal and constitutional history of France which, even by Montesquieu’s usual standards, offers few explicit normative conclusions and little by way of an explanation of its purpose. The material he discusses is largely unknown to contemporary readers, and so Part VI is typically either ignored altogether or identified in a summary way with la thèse nobiliaire.1 On its face, Part VI can appear to current eyes as a collection of miscellaneous leftovers, historical notes ranging from ancient Rome through medieval and modern France. It apparently “bears little connection to the rest of the work” and “is usually considered an oversized appendix tacked onto the end.”2 It has “long puzzled commentators” who have been led “to question the relevance of the closing books for the general purpose of the work as a whole.”3 “What the deuce,” wondered Helvétius in a letter to a mutual friend upon reading SL, “would he have us to understand by his treatise upon fiefs?” In his denunciatory Thanks to participants in the UCLA Political Theory Workshop and to Cynthia Charlton for comments, to Alex Byrne for research assistance, and to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding.
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“Commentary on” SL, the idéologue Destutt de Tracy dismissed four of the five books of Part VI as being “purely historical” material from which “nothing can be drawn” of a general nature, with the fifth having “nothing instructive” except by way of prompting an attack on it by Condorcet which Destutt de Tracy appended to his work. Nothing in Part VI has had the same kind of enduring fame in the anglophone literature as the treatment of the separation of powers and the rule of law, the brief account of federalism, the discussion of the size of states, or the development of the theory of doux commerce. In this chapter, I will offer an interpretation of Part VI and its purpose in the book. Part VI uses legal and constitutional history to develop Montesquieu’s account of moderation and diversity. It shows Montesquieu’s resistance to founding narratives of all kinds, provides crucial support to his pluralist constitutionalism, and points toward a distinctive evolutionary account of regime change over time, an account I will suggest complements one found in The Persian Letters. I aim to do for Part VI what Montesquieu aimed to do in it: “the things I have said will shed light on others, which have been quite obscure until now.” (SL 28.4, p. 537)
It will be helpful to begin with an overview of a few prominent overlapping positions about the legitimate origins and constitutional founding of the French monarchy. According to all sides in these debates, inquiry into the founding principles of French government and royal power was important for deciding the distribution of authority and the shape of the French legal system in their day. Schematically, the prominent positions included: 1. The argument that the Franks governed Gaul by absolute right of conquest, making them collectively the perpetual masters of France. This history was used to ground the thèse nobiliaire, the thesis of the primacy of the ancient nobility (“of the sword”) over both the more-recently created nobles (“of the robe”) and the commoners who vastly outnumbered them, and of the nobility’s equal standing with a king who was, in Germanic fashion, merely the chief of a group of peers. This was most famously associated with the Comte de Boullainvilliers, whose key works advancing the argument were published posthumously in the late 1720s and early 1730s.
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2. The contrary claim that the Frankish monarchy over Gaul was founded in a consensual direct transfer of power from the falling western Roman empire in the fifth century. Not only did this strengthen the argument for the Romanization of French law, the promulgation, under centralized royal authority, of a codified version of the ius commune at the expense of the variety of provincial and customary legal traditions. As a constitutional matter, it also cast the French kings as holders of power as absolute as that of late Roman emperors, claiming that Clovis of the Franks had received complete authority over Gaul from the Roman government. The Abbé Dubos most famously developed this in his 1730s response to Boulainvilliers.4 3. Theories of original popular compact. These rested on the same tradition of thinking of the Franks as collectively self-governing as Boullainvilliers’ account, but without the element of right of conquest. In François Hotman’s Francogallia, an influential text of the Huguenot school of monarchomachs constitutionalists in the sixteenth century, the Frankish constitution and elective monarchy were seamlessly transplanted into the new hybrid kingdom of the Franks and the Gauls. The monarchomach justifications of armed Protestant resistance against royal absolutism understandably lacked open advocates in eighteenth-century France; the tolerant Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685 by Louis XIV, leading most Huguenots to flee the country. But the Francogallia continued to circulate in both English and French, and Hotman’s humanist approach to legal history was of continuing importance in French scholarship in general and to Montesquieu in particular.5 Attention to foundings and founding principles was, of course, far from a uniquely French preoccupation. Machiavelli not only restored the classical figure of the founder and lawgiver to pride of place in republican thought, but had famously (if complicatedly) insisted that republics should regularly aim to return to the pure principles of their founding. In a different intellectual idiom, seventeenth-century political thinkers made regular recourse to metaphors of a founding compact, covenant, or contract, a one-time act of agreement and creation that set the legitimate authority of the state and duties of subjects in an enduring and juridically binding form. In all its various forms, the idea of a founding contract is normatively binding on the ongoing polity, in perpetuity. Furthermore, although the social contract as a legitimizing move in
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political philosophy fell out of favor by the late 18th century, it was still embraced by the post-revolutionary Americans at the time they developed the practice of adopting written constitutions by supermajoritarian enactment and thenceforth treating them as fundamental law. Those American developments spread to France, then to western Europe and Latin America, and eventually around the world, putting an element of contractarian thinking about foundings and legitimacy into widespread political practice even if the underlying theory was no longer quite believed.6 Different moments in Montesquieu’s work suggest affinities with both the republican and contractarian traditions. SL begins with a somewhat unclear engagement with Hobbes’s state of nature reasoning and the distinction between natural laws and those that apply “as soon as men are in society” (SL 1.3). The republican theme of regimes’ gradual corruption and decline as they abandon their founding principles appears not only in the Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline (especially ch. 9–10) but also SL 1.8. The “Fable of the Troglodytes” in The Persian Letters seems to include both a narrative about emergence from the state of nature and one about the corruption and decline of a once-virtuous people. These appearances are, I think, misleading. Part VI of SL systematically unravels the various accounts of a unitary founding moment of a unitary French state and all the attempts to find an ancient legitimate principle that could dictate what lawful government would mean in the eighteenth century. Montesquieu rejected founding narratives in favor of evolutionary history and unplanned development; he connected that move to his rejection of legal uniformity in favor of pluralism.
The six main parts of SL can be further clustered into three pairs. Parts I and II cover formal legal and political institutions, including not only regime types but also courts and armed forces. Parts III and IV move from formal politics to socio-economic and historical underpinnings, influences, and constraints on legal and political choices, the various ways in which a society’s politics is not simply a matter of its own political decisions. Part V, apparently about religion, might seem a better fit with III and IV, so understood. But on a closer look it is really about religions understood as sources of laws, and the interactions of those laws with civil laws. It concludes with a treatment of the interactions of various
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juridical orders: civil law, public law, the law of nations, and natural law, in addition to the legal norms that arise out of religious establishments (Catholic canon law, obviously, but also including many other examples that fit the canon law paradigm with varying degrees of precision.) The reader moves into Part VI – the second part in a pair, if the pattern holds – thinking, not about “the laws” of a society as one set of norms enacted by political decision, but as a complex set of various interacting bodies of norms arising from a variety of sources. Part VI begins with the very brief Book 27 tracing out the evolution of Roman inheritance law, and in particular the gradual erosion of the rule against women inheriting or against inheritance through the female line, until Justinian eliminated both sets of distinctions altogether (SL 27.1, p. 531). Montesquieu does not explain his interest in this question, or how it relates to any other questions of interest. But fundamental to the Salic law that governed the inheritance of the French monarchy was the impossibility of either women taking the throne or any man doing so through descent from a woman. The evident implication is that the French monarchy could not claim legal continuity with Roman institutions – that is, that the king of France was not the successor to the Roman Emperor. (There may also be some criticism of the Salic law itself. Montesquieu characterizes the harsh and unnatural exclusion of women and their descendants as appropriate to a luxury-fearing republic, and the change in that rule as appropriate to the increasingly monarchical principate.) The theme of discontinuity between Rome and France continues in the much longer Books 28, 30 and 31, addressing the development of French jurisprudence, feudalism, and monarchy respectively. In Montesquieu’s original plan, Book 28 did the necessary historical explanation, then Book 29 concluded the work as a whole by drawing the theoretical implications of that history. Books 30 and 31 were subsequently composed separately and added on at the end, initially appearing as an appendix to the already-typeset first edition.7 These final two books expanded the substantial constitutional history in Book 28 with the apparent goal of making the intervention in constitutional debates more forceful and explicit.8 SL ends strangely as a result, with the historical material interrupted by a section that still reads like the conclusion of the work; or, to put it differently, it has two conclusions, one for political theory and one for contemporaneous French debates. The theme of Book 28 is “the origin and revolutions of the civil laws among the French,” and its thesis appears in that title. The early centuries
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after Rome’s fall saw a complex juridical coexistence between the Franks and the Romanized populations already present. Although there were various compilations and codifications of Frankish law into written Latin, these were expressly not new codes of legislation for the governance of a whole kingdom, as some modern readers had believed. Germanic law remained fundamentally personal in jurisdiction, not territorial, and it remained primarily customary, not written; and the Franks by and large left the Roman civil law in place for those used to being governed by it. However, in what we would now understand as the criminal law regulating inter-communal conflict, the advantage went to the Franks; the weregeld fines for killing or assaulting Romans were much lower than for doing so to Franks. And so, in the Frankish-ruled areas of what eventually became France, the right of living under Roman law was gradually given up except by the clergy. The disadvantages of retaining the legal status of “Roman” became too great. Things were otherwise in Burgundy and the Visigothic kingdom, where the rules were impartial as between Romans and Germans. By the time of Charlemagne, then, Frankish law had achieved a primacy in Frankish regions but not in the regions originally conquered by the other Germanic peoples. Notice two consequences of this. On the one hand, it meant that the difference between Frank and Gaul largely disappeared over those centuries; and that outside the Church, the Roman law became substantially extinct in the Frankish core of the territory that was to become France. This belied Boullainvilliers’ attempt to keep the division between Franks and Gauls alive as a racial foundation for the distinction between noble and commoner, as well as any argument that depended on juridical continuity between ancient Rome and modern France, whether Dubos’ constitutional history or arguments for the Romanization of civil law. On the other hand, it meant that Frankish law was not the whole story for the modern kingdom of France. It set the distinctiveness of what by Montesquieu’s time was understood as the laws of the provinces on coeval ancient foundations as the Frankish kingdom. This pluralism was twofold: Not only were the regions of Burgundy and the Visigothic west different from the Frankish core, but those regions retained the internal legal complexity of coexistence between Roman and Germanic laws. Montesquieu’s account continued with further “revolutions.” The Salic Frankish law, already significantly reshaped by becoming the semiterritorial law of a mixed and settled population rather than the personal law of a migratory people, faded almost entirely by the end of the 9th century. The development of feudal claims over land rendered it obsolete;
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as circumstances changed, unwritten custom took more and more precedence over centuries-old written codifications of Salic law. Furthermore, the pervasive spread of dueling and judicial combat as dispute resolution procedures tended to displace the details and rules of any particular legal code. Montesquieu offers histories of first the spread and then the limitation of judicial combat, the ebb and flow of canon law and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the regionally uneven reintroduction of Roman law starting in the twelfth century, the evolution of manorial justice and mayoral authority, and more, to show that legal complexity and jurisdictional pluralism was the only constant rule of French constitutional history. The moves toward legal uniformity and judicial regularity under Charlemagne and, 450 years later, Louis IX at no point successfully swept away the realities of this medieval complexity. By the end of Book 28 it seems impossible to project a juridically stable and unified order into the distant past, and thus to manufacture modern legitimation narratives in support of any claimant to unitary rule, or any demand for legal centralization and codification. Book 28 took the rise of feudalism and the high politics of the monarchy as important but exogenous to the basically jurisprudential story. For the purposes of Book 28 it doesn’t matter where feudalism came from, only that it irrevocably interrupted any continuity with pre-feudal law, and generated new relationships of land, power, and violence that necessarily shaped and reshaped subsequent legal developments. Books 30–1 revisit the same era but foreground the development of feudalism and the French monarchy. In these final sections, the rejection of Boullainvilliers’ and Dubos’ rival constitutional histories moves from being largely implicit to being very explicit, and Montesquieu pairs their failures (SL 30.10, pp. 626–7). Against Boullainvilliers, he denied that the Franks adopted agriculturalist habits soon upon entering Gaul – and, thus, that they immediately established feudalism by granting fiefs. A non-agricultural people wouldn’t have conceived of land as the fundamental good or source of power to distribute. Thus, although they had what Montesquieu describes as “vassals,” the hierarchical personal ties characteristic of feudalism, they did not translate that into the familiar system of feudal tenure over land for centuries to come. This breaks the supposed link between the Franks as an ancient conquering tribe and a Second Estate whose roots Montesquieu places centuries later under the Carolingians. The Germanic tribes “did not despoil the Romans throughout the extent of their
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conquests. What would they have done with so much land?” (SL 30.8, p. 625). Against Dubos’ account of the immediate transition from Roman to Frankish rule, he insisted on the continuing separation of the Romans from their conquering Germanic neighbors, and the continuing distinctions among their customs and mores. And against the attempt to single out the monarchy as uniquely anciently legitimate, with Clovis as succeeding to sole possession of the whole of Roman imperial power, he argued at length for the existence of a division of ranks among the Franks themselves, with something like a noble class existing all along. Indeed most of Book 30 is dedicated to dismantling Dubos’ historical work – so disproportionately to his critiques of Boullainvilliers that some have (wrongly) thought that Montesquieu aligned with Boullainvilliers’ thèse nobiliaire,9 so aggressively that the book ends with a half-apologetic reminder that Dubos wrote other works of greater intellectual and literary merit than his constitutional history. Although he is at pains to distinguish their errors – roughly speaking, he thought Boullainvilliers wrote very mistaken history but Dubos wrote outright fantasy – he subjects them to judgment in common: They “have each made a system, the one seeming to be a conspiracy against the third estate, and the other a conspiracy against the nobility” (SL 30.10, p. 627). “Conspiracy” jumps out as the most critical word here, but it’s softened by “seeming.” More telling, I think, is the charge of “system.” It’s that judgment that is immediately reinforced by the mythological reference to Helios’ advice to Phaeton about driving the chariot of the sun: to keep carefully to the middle way, since driving too high or too low would burn the heavens or the earth. The commitment to a system in matters of complex history, the attempt to force everything into single founding moments and unitary principles, does similar damage to our understanding of the facts.
Each of these systems claimed that the French constitution at its founding had been one coherent thing, which normatively bound constitutional development thenceforth. Montesquieu argued that there had never been any single coherent rule of that sort. The French kingdom had always been jurisdictionally pluralistic and had always been fluid and changeable. A regime in which law variously attached to persons based on who they were (Roman, Frankish, Burgundian, etc.) gave way to a regime of
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mixed and overlapping urban, provincial, manorial, and canon law. Noble and royal power ebbed and flowed; the conflict between them eventually created space for the Third Estate to gain a share of authority. This pluralistic flux was the normal condition; no unique original contract or constitution implicit in the Salic Law or right of conquest could legitimize one Estate’s or office’s right to rule alone. Montesquieu rejects all the contemporaneous theories of political normativity grounded in foundings and origins – la thèse nobiliaire as much as la thèse royale, monarchomach historical contractarianism as much as both hypothetical contractarianism and Machiavellian-republican founding principles. He demonstrates the falseness and impossibility of all of these, rejecting them as incompatible with the pluralism and complexity of history, the contingency and accident that shaped the development of political authority. In particular, the “event which happened once in the world and perhaps will never happen again,” “laws which did infinite good and infinite ill,” produced “rule with an inclination to anarchy and anarchy with a tendency to order and harmony” (SL 30.1, p. 619). In short, the development of feudalism was not a decision, a plan, or a system. It arose out of the compounding effects of facts about the control over power and resources over generations. It was this kind of compounding accident that generated the moderate and balanced era of the Gothic constitution in which “the civil liberty of the people, the prerogatives of the nobility and of the clergy, and the power of the kings, were in such concert that there has never been, I believe, a government on earth as well tempered as that of each part of Europe during the time that this government continued to exist;” it was “the best kind of government men have been able to devise” (SL 11.8, pp. 167, 168).10 This “best kind of government” did not ultimately fail through its corruption, as one might think through reading the lengthy discussion of regime types and their internal failure in Parts I and II, or as any Machiavellian would expect. The Gothic constitution was itself “the corruption of the government of a conquering people” (SL 11.8, p. 167). This is nothing like Hobbes’ description of the era before state sovereignty as a pre-juridical state of nature; it is much more like the description Adam Smith would offer decades later of the unplanned growth of commerce that arose out of the jurisdictional fragmentation of the Middle Ages. This praise of the Gothic constitution as the best leaps out as strange to the reader oriented toward Montesquieu’s reorganization of the typology of regime types and his conspicuous refusal to clearly rank better and
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worse among the three moderate types of monarchy, aristocratic republic, and democratic republic. If “each part of Europe” had “the best kind of government” – for centuries, apparently – shouldn’t that kind of government either be important enough to count as a regime type or easily describable as one of the regime types on offer? But, like the also-praised English government, the Gothic government proves difficult to map onto the typology. The Gothic constitution was monarchical, but wasn’t identical with the regime type of monarchy, which after all he would not have referred to in the past tense (“during the time [it] continued to exist”). Montesquieu had particularly stressed the mutual constitution of the monarchy and the nobility in the regime type of non-despotic monarchy, but the Gothic constitution became the “best kind” of government through its extension of civil liberty and political participation to the towns and the commoners. That addition makes it sound a little like the traditional account of the mixed constitution. Nevertheless, he says it was unknown to the ancients, although as he knew well, both the Greeks and the Romans had a vocabulary for talking about mixtures of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. While there’s a recognizable relationship between his description of the relationship among monarch, estates, and deputies on the one hand and his creative redescription of the constitution of England on the other, he neither refers to the English constitution as Gothic nor uses England to move the Gothic constitution out of the past tense. He does suggest that England has a Germanic idea of liberty (SL 11.4, pp. 165–6), but the connection is to the ancient Germans in their forests described by Tacitus. As we have seen, that kind of Germanic liberty didn’t straightforwardly become the Gothic constitution. Moreover, the Germanic connection is one of the English seeming to have “taken the idea” of liberty, not one of descent. (This point is sometimes missed, and Montesquieu is mischaracterized as endorsing the myth of English liberty as historically continuous with ancient Germanic liberty. He does not.) The obvious difference between the Gothic constitution and that of Bourbon France was of course the rise of absolutism, exemplified by the desuetude of the Estates. (The Estates-General had not met for 130 years.) The difference from England is perhaps less clear to us, but Montesquieu held that the English nobility had been destroyed as a political force at the time of the Civil War, when the House of Lords was suppressed and feudal land tenures were abolished. The freedom of post–Glorious Revolution England was, he said, institutionally fragile because there remained no powerful corps intermédiaires. In short, and despite the very
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attractive development of the separation of powers, England had fallen into modern centralization at least as much as France had. Paul Rahe dismisses the idea that we should view the debate about the origins of the French constitution as crucial to Part VI, saying this would amount to treating it as “primarily parochial and polemical.” He prefers to see it as a subtle account of “the future development of monarchy in France and Europe more generally.”11 I doubt that Montesquieu would have considered the historical debate “parochial”; while it was conducted about France, it concerned the Gothic constitution as it had existed in “all parts of Europe,” and which had been undermined by the turn to absolutism and centralization everywhere. Moreover, intervening in a historical debate that had been going on for decades about the foundations of the constitution need not be understood as “polemical” in the sense of an intervention in an immediate pamphlet war. When Rahe says future he means England, and understates the genuine criticisms Montesquieu offered of the English system. Montesquieu indeed aimed to draw prospective lessons from the historical turn, but those were not simply lessons about how to be more English.
With all this in mind, we can understand why the more theoretical Book 29, “On the way to compose the laws,” appears deep in Part VI rather than, say, in Part I, when “laws in general” are first introduced. “I say it,” Book 29 begins, “and it seems to me that I have written this work only to prove it: The spirit of moderation should be that of the legislator; the political good, like the moral good, is always found between two limits,” (SL 29.1, p. 602), a principle he immediately applies to nothing less than justice itself, because the exacting procedures needed to vindicate each person’s right could mire a whole society in endless lawsuits and uncertainty about anyone’s rights. At this level of generality, Aristotle could have said the same.12 But Montesquieu devotes the rest of Book 29 to critiques of both real legislators and aspirational ones, Aristotle among them, any of whom would have ruled out the messy moderation of the evolved Gothic constitution.13 “The Roman laws were not made in the same circumstances as ours,” Montesquieu insists, and “laws must not be separated from the circumstances in which they were made” (SL 29.14, p. 611), endorsing the position taken by the legal humanists (including Hotman) a century and a half before, and summarizing the approach taken to Roman law
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throughout SL. Montesquieu never treats the Corpus as a source for freestanding and timeless legal principles, but only as one historically specific legal case among many. The endless series of things to which laws are “relative” in SL – the climate, the terrain, a country’s strategic position, manners and mores, customs and religion, the particular vices and virtues of a people – amounts to an argument over hundreds of pages against transplanting a sixth-century body of legislation from a defunct Mediterranean empire into any eighteenth-century northern European kingdom. Montesquieu continues, not prescribing laws, but prescribing guidelines for how, whether, and when to make or change them. These chapters discourage legislative overreach and argue that legal promulgation means that laws should be clearly drafted and simply expressed. Legal distinctions “should not be subtle; they are made for people of middling understanding.” (SL 29.16, p. 614). These principles recall the importance given earlier in the book to the rule of law and to subjects’ liberty consisting in their opinion of their own security. A free person is one who both knows what the law demands and knows that if they comply with the law’s demands, they are secure against the state.14 More than that, Book 29 counsels against rapid legal change, even to try to correct existing faults in the law to which informal solutions might already have emerged; against legal change to override custom or tradition; against legislation simply for the sake of improvement, the urge to “prohibit something that is not bad on the pretense of an imagined perfection” (SL 29.16, p. 616). It seems not only that laws themselves should be moderate but that lawmaking should only be engaged in moderately. Moderation names not an ideal middle point at which to aim, but a prudent caution about aiming at ideal points at all. Book 29 concludes – which is to say, the whole of The Spirit of the Laws as initially sent to the printers concluded – with one chapter on the spirit of uniformity in legislating, and one on the spirit of uniform legislating that has gripped political theorists from ancient Greece onward. The chapter on uniformity defends in general terms the legal pluralism that Book 28 documented in French history: “When the citizens observe the laws, what does it matter if they observe the same ones?”15 Centralization, codification, and uniformity attract “great spirits” among legislators such as Charlemagne but more often, indeed “infallibly,” small ones, who “find in it a kind of perfection. . . in the police the same weights, in commerce the same measures, in the state the same laws, and the same religion in every part of it.” (He names no further names here; whether
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Colbert or indeed Louis XIV was a great spirit or a small one is left an open question.) Montesquieu identifies the urge to uniformity with the errors of excessive and excessively rapid legislation. The plurality of laws and legal customs are among the existing facts in a society that one should not rush to legislate away. In the concluding chapter, he expands the critique from actual lawmakers to the aspirational ones across centuries of political philosophy who have, in their vanity, imagined beautifully coherent codes of legislation. The implication is not only that Aristotle, Machiavelli, More, Harrington, and the rest made bad legislators, but also that their vice was related to, shared by, the habits of the real lawmakers seeking to impose uniformity. In short, it’s not only that the legal order of France was an overlay of multiple orders that were created at different times for different reasons; it’s also that this is no very bad thing, and probably better than the dreams of either the kings and ministers or the philosophers to rationalize and replace it. The belief that complexity was a corruption that could be wiped away by returning to a simpler, unitary source of constitutional legitimacy was mistaken both as legal theory and as legal history. Now, it does not follow that the pluralistic Gothic constitution could simply be restored, either. Montesquieu does not substitute that ambition for the various fantasies of restoring some pure unitary system. He does, however, look to its surviving institutions, and the juridical complexity they create – cities with urban law, the Church with canon law, provinces and provincial parlements – as sites for checking the further slide of modern monarchies into despotism. The corps intermédiaires are not merely political counterweights to a centralized state. They are continuing sources of legal and jurisdictional pluralism. Those who imagine themselves as legislators, whether political philosophers or kings and ministers gripped by the spirit of uniformity, consider this a fatal objection to them. Whatever system they favor, by virtue of wishing for a system, they wish to abolish this complexity. Part VI of The Spirit of the Laws serves as Montesquieu’s rejection of that ambition.
I conclude with a look earlier in Montesquieu’s intellectual career that can only be suggestive but that I think succeeds at being that. The Persian Letters, the 1721 epistolary novel that established Montesquieu’s fame as a man of letters, consists of exchanges between two Persians who have left
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their homeland out of some combination of disfavor at court and a desire to explore and learn – the older, more worldly, and more self-consciously philosophical Usbek, and the younger and more curious Rica – as well as between them and various other persons, mainly still in Persia. Most of it provides satirical commentary on the mores and manners of contemporaneous France and Europe; some provides a running plot to which we will return below. But one strange series of letters, known collectively as the fable or myth of the Troglodytes, seems to provide an abstract model or general theory of politics, without surrounding explanation. In response to a question from his friend Mirza (still in Persia) about whether man inclines naturally toward pleasure or toward virtue, Usbek relates a tale that he describes as an histoire (ambiguous between “story” and “history”) offered in lieu of “philosophical argument” so that its truths might be better “felt.” The original inhabitants of Arabia, the Troglodytes, were a wicked people ruled by a tyrannical king of foreign origin. They conspired and overthrew him, and lived in a thoroughly vicious anarchy, each looking no farther than his immediate advantage. They met their deserved fate when they refused to pay what they owed the foreign physician who abated a plague among them; the disease returned, the doctor refused to help, and they perished. The race restarted with only two supremely virtuous and happy families. They multiplied and thrived, in a society evocative of Fénelon’s virtuous utopia; they were generous, frugal, hard-working, devout, and chaste. They were also filled with republican virtu, and capable of heroic martial feats to defend what was justly theirs. But they grew so numerous and prosperous that they decided to choose a king, who sadly criticized them for the decision: Their virtue had grown too heavy for them, he said, and so they would rather follow orders and laws than bear the weight of their own rigorous moeurs. Like the Israelites facing Samuel, they disregarded his good advice and insisted on a king; Montesquieu’s preferred edition of the story ends there. The prospective king seems about to accept the burden but closes on questions to the Troglodytes: Why did they inflict on him the shame of seeing their ancestors after death and admitting that he had helped his people abandon virtue? Mizra began the exchange by noting that Usbek was known for believing in innate virtue, and so it is easy to read the whole sequence as a Fénelonian tribute to the virtuous life, and so as a rebuke to Hobbes’s state of nature or Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees. Melvin Richter suggests as much, reading the story as endorsing the harmony between public and private virtue – they rise or fall together – a lesson which Montesquieu
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decisively abandoned by the time of SL. In SL Montesquieu cites Mandeville approvingly in arguing that a well-functioning monarchy depends on the pursuit of honor by the nobility, a pursuit that is egoistic enough to count as a private vice. Moreover, of course, SL (mostly) celebrates the rising world of commerce, while recognizing the degree to which it weakens private virtue. Richter here stands with a tradition of reading the Troglodytes as offering Montesquieu’s rejection of Hobbes on the state of nature, of Mandeville on virtue and vice, or both, and thus identifying their story with a moral view Montesquieu later rejected. “No reader of the Persian Letters can miss the evidence of flirtation with republican sentiment,” but “Montesquieu left this youthful radicalism behind with the Regency, according to an account of his intellectual development that today commands a wide consensus,” as Wright summarizes this view, with a nod to Richter.16 I want to offer some reason to doubt such a sharp change between the two books. I suggest that the Troglodytes should not be read as offering Montesquieu’s Fénelonian rejoinder to Hobbes or Mandeville, for three reasons. First, there is something subversively comical about the Troglodytes’ virtue. Perhaps it is only modern sensibilities that are taken aback by their singing mirthful songs to the gods about the destruction of the original Troglodyte nation. But the Troglodyte who resolved to wake in the middle of the night in order to secretly complete his father’s chores before the latter woke up shows the unworkability of rule-less generosity. (It works once as a surprise, but quickly descends into absurdity if the other saintly Troglodytes decide to do likewise.) Laws that allow for social coordination are not signs of vice. Second, and in my view decisively, the story as a whole is undermined by coming from Usbek. When it appears, early in the book, the reader does not yet have much reason to doubt Usbek. He presents himself as the voice of reason, intellect, virtue, justice. This is undermined gradually but decisively. It proves to be Rica, not Usbek, who is the keener observer of French society; the puncturing of French pretensions and hypocrisies that is the core of the book’s social commentary more often comes from Rica’s pen. Usbek himself proves to be a despot, a hypocrite, and a fool. Montesquieu never clarifies how much we should come to doubt Usbek’s analyses in light of the revelations about his character (and lack of wisdom) at the end of the book, preferring to leave the reader unsettled and doubtful. I think we should resist the urge to seek much more determinacy than that; but we cannot treat instances of Usbek’s moralizing as simply Montesquieu’s pronouncements of truth. If Montesquieu
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had meant for the Troglodyte story to be taken at face value (as complicated as that face value might be), he would have given it to another character. But third, and most relevantly for the connection to Part VI of SL, it comes to pass that the rigorously virtuous republic is not stable. The only regime whose end we do not see is the monarchy in which virtue has been somewhat relaxed. As natural as it is to reach the end of the story and suspect that the monarchy will cycle back to despotism, we don’t actually see it happen. The monarchy – or the commercial monarchy – with genuine but not extreme virtue might be stable, whereas even a supremely virtuous republic is definitely not. This sits comfortably with SL’s eventual defense of large commercial moderate monarchies, and its criticism of republics that rely on extremes of “monkish” virtue. Neither the beginning nor the end of the story is stable. The Troglodytes don’t have a single founding moment; their origin lies in tyranny, or in anarchy, or in virtuous rebirth. While they reach virtue, they outgrow it as well. They neither have an innate nature that governs them throughout (whether virtuous or vicious, Fénelonian or Hobbesian), nor a moralized narrative of clear progress. Their history more nearly resembles ancient and Renaissance narratives of societies’ life cycles than modern contractarian or progressive narratives; and there’s a certain amount of resemblance to Roman history. But it is not quite so determinate as traditional Renaissance cyclical accounts of Rome, either; it does not end in clear corruption, decay, or collapse. It is as if the history of Rome ended with the Roman people approaching Cicero rather than Caesar to lead them, and with a cliffhanger about whether he would do so. Indeed, we see more of the same in the “sequel” to the Myth that appeared in early editions of PL but which Montesquieu later removed. Many letters later, and with no particular justification offered for returning to the story, Usbek tells Mirza that the Troglodytes’ king soon died of grief, inspiring them to redouble their commitment to virtue under his successor’s reign. During the second king’s life, the question arose of whether to introduce the arts and commerce, and to allow the growth of wealth. The king and the people warned each other that wealth could prove corrupting, but each believed that a just and virtuous prosperity was possible. Again, the king has the last word, warning the people that they must choose virtue alongside their wealth, or else he will be forced to tax and oppress them in proportion to their corruption. Melvin Richter argues that the sequel was removed because it contradicted SL’s Mandevillean use of vicious noble honor to promote public
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monarchical moderation. That may be; it may also be that Montesquieu changed his mind over the decades about commerce and wealth themselves. But it may be yet again that the problem was simply that the sequel added nothing of great interest to the original story: The Troglodytes again faced an uncertain future, between virtuous and vicious modernization (kingship in one case, commerce in the other). They again received good advice and, in some sense, knew what the right thing to do was, yet the story ends each time before we know what they will actually do. The sequel doesn’t alter the Fable’s unsettling uncertainty; Usbek never clarifies its moral in either case. I don’t suppose that Montesquieu had anything so clear in mind as a draft version of SL’s account of French history decades early. But I suspect that Montesquieu cured himself early on of the need for simple and unified stories of social foundings or political births and deaths. Like the Scottish Enlightenment and the German historical jurisprudence school, both of which took inspiration from SL, and unlike the dominant traditions in early modern constitutional debate and political philosophy, Montesquieu seems to have always distrusted myths of coherent foundings, destabilizing them even when engaged in mythmaking of his own.
Notes 1 For exceptions, see Manin, “Montesquieu et La Politique Moderne;” Ward, “Anglo-Gothic Constitutionalism;” Callanan, Montesquieu’s Liberalism; Cox, “Montesquieu and the History of Laws;” Mosher, “Monarchy’s Paradox” and “Perfection.” The view I present here is meant to be broadly compatible with the approaches taken in these works, though its emphases differ. 2 Conroy, Montesquieu Revisited, 103. 3 Ward, “Anglo-Gothic constitutionalism,” 564–5. 4 For a fuller treatment of the Boulainvilliers-Dubos dispute and Montesquieu’s response to it, see Hulliung, Montesquieu and the Old Regime. 5 On Montesquieu’s continuation of the humanist school of legal scholarship, see Callanan, Montesquieu’s Liberalism. 6 Although I argue in my “Not so novus an ordo” and “Montesquieu’s constitutional legacies” that it’s easy to overstate the contractarian element in modern constitutionalism, and to miss other important influences, there is no denying that contractarianism is at least a substantial part of the idea of legitimacy behind the compound practice developed in the USA and France in the 1770s– 90s: a non-legislative convention drafting a complete constitutional text for subsequent approval by popular vote or legislative supermajorities such that it can serve as fundamental law and the foundation of a new political and legal order thenceforth.
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7 This fact sometimes drifts into the claim that Part VI as a whole was in some way an appendix – see the quotation from Conroy above. This is a mistake. 8 Ellis, “Montesquieu’s Modern Politics,” 668–9. 9 E.g., Pangle, Philosophy of Liberalism, 295: “What results [from Montesquieu’s work] is a more sober and far more solidly based version of Boulainvilliers’ thesis.” 10 Compare that “each part of Europe” claim to “all the laws of Europe are gothic, they all had the same origin and were of the same nature.” MT 1645. 11 Rahe, Logic of Liberty, 217. 12 Though perhaps it would be less of a commonplace today. The idea of an excess of justice that must be mitigated with moderation in the interest of equity is strange to contemporary ears; justice is not, for Montesquieu, the “first virtue of social institutions.” 13 See also Manin, “Montesquieu et la politique moderne,” 196–200, on why Montesquieu’s moderation is not simply a golden mean. 14 I explain this understanding of his views of the rule of law, liberty, and the separation of powers further in Levy, “The challenge to constitutional democracy.” 15 SL 29.18, p. 617. 16 Wright, “Montesquieuian Moments,” 149.
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16 Montesquieu and the Enlightenment Jonathan Israel
Montesquieu’s influence over the Enlightenment from the appearance of the L’Esprit de Lois in 1748, onwards, was immense on both sides of the Atlantic and in every quarter as far east as Russia and ranged into practically every dimension of thought and intellectual endeavor. Admiration of his achievement could be found in abundance even in Voltaire who was rarely given to praising others, and on all sides, albeit found in the longer run especially on the conservative side of the political divide. Given the varied and sometimes conflicting influences at work in shaping his thought, and his early interaction with radical intellectual approaches, the dichotomy moderate/radical proves indispensable both for explaining the overall character and goals of Montesquieu’s system, and why his European and American reception evolved as it did: His fiercely contested initial reception developed over time into a very different battle – one of conservatives solidly defending his system and radicals forming an eventually solid front against it. The usefulness of Montesquieu for bolstering and consolidating the existing political and social framework was partly a consequence of the basic structure and format of Montesquieu’s thought itself. But to a degree it was also due to its novelty and fashionability and hence a consequence of changing political and social conditions. It had a prized gloss of Enlightenment innovativeness of thought and expression. Thus, in the Russia of Catherine the Great, Montesquieu’s L’Esprit des Lois was a (almost the) primary source for the proposed new legal code, the Nakaz, drawn up by the empress and her advisors in the late 1760s. Catherine herself had experienced a “revolution in my thinking” when she first read Montesquieu’s masterpiece in the year he died, 1755, and 266
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was guided by him more than by any other thinker apart from Voltaire.1 But besides giving her clues about how to manage the vast diversity and cultural disparity of her empire, and lending her the reputation in Western lands of being an enlightened and progressive ruler, the main function of Montesquieu in Catherine’s thinking was to provide a fashionable and prestigious frame for consolidating monarchy and aristocracy. Certainly, Montesquieu could have been used to promote more constitutionalist and emancipatory policies than she was willing to contemplate, not least with respect to serfdom, as some Decembrists emphasized in Russia in 1825. When he visited St. Petersburg in 1773, Diderot did his best to employ Montesquieu to prod the empress into moving in a less autocratic and despotic direction, but that was decidedly not for her.2 Perhaps Montesquieu’s greatest formative impact on the further development of the Enlightenment itself was in the Scottish context. Almost all the major thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment took the view that the publication of L’Esprit des Lois in 1748 was a decisive watershed in the history of modern thought. In Scotland, almost every aspect of social and political inquiry as everywhere else was profoundly influenced by this work including one of the most prominent themes of the Scots Enlightenment, the so-called stadial or four-stages conception of human social organization, development and history, a trend clearly initially stimulated by Montesquieu’s deliberations.3 If Kames styled Montesquieu “the greatest genius of the present age,” Scotland’s foremost philosopher, David Hume, who first read L’Esprit in 1748, the year it appeared, labeled it in 1751 “the best system of political knowledge that perhaps has ever been communicated to the world.”4 Montesquieu was likewise the “writer on politics whom [Edmund] Burke admired above all others.”5 Equally, no thinker contributed more than Montesquieu to providing a general framework of reference for political debate among the American Founders during and immediately after the Revolution. Montesquieu exerted his impact most obviously by searching for natural laws that would explain the patterns and variety of moral and legal systems in the world, the basic principles according to which these functioned, and by establishing vital connections between what had previously been largely separate fields of study and thought in a way that produced new approaches, interactions and techniques for studying long debated questions. It is certainly true that this creative impact loomed considerably larger in certain contexts – Naples in the 1750s, Scotland, and North America most obviously while having noticeably less formative and
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innovative effect elsewhere, as in Russia and the German Enlightenment. Yet, overall, there can be no doubt that Montesquieu imparted decisive new impetus to the study and discussion of political thought, comparisons of political and legal systems, systems of labor, social studies as context for understanding law and why there exist sharply contrasting moral and legal systems, and the relationship of these widely contrasting systems to social organization, climate and geographical location. Given the great breadth of his interests, it is scarcely surprising that Montesquieu’s oeuvre drew on many different strands of the early Enlightenment or that the later Enlightenment evinced hugely divergent responses to his political and social thought and legal reformism; it is due to this that Montesquieu’s system offers an exceptionally illuminating category marker aiding understanding of the widening ideological rifts of the later Enlightenment era. His international reception functions almost as a mirror of the shifting nuances, the complex intricacy of interaction of the vying radical and moderate Enlightenment blocs during the latter half of the eighteenth century and the opening years of the nineteenth. Although Montesquieu remained a thinker eager to absorb a wide range of influences throughout his career, it is especially early on that we find him willing to incorporate radical libertine proclivities, whereas later he increasingly declared against irreligion, atheism and republicanism, even if still occasionally leaving tantalizing hints with respect to all of these. It was during his early period, then, that Montesquieu seems to have been more open to radical ideas than he became later, or at least had less reason to be cautious. It was then that he appears to have been more favorably inclined toward republics than he became subsequently,6 and more inclined toward anti-colonialism. It was likewise early on that he was most drawn to the cause of sexual liberation and the proposition that providing girls with an education equivalent to that of boys will increasingly throw doubt on the generally supposed inferiority of women in matters of the mind.7 Later, in L’Esprit, Montesquieu argues that women’s status, and the degree of freedom they enjoy, simply reflect the general typology of political, social, and moral systems that he sought to uncover: Women were wholly “enslaved” in despotic states; free before the law in republics – but severely restricted and subordinated by the “customs of society,” confining them in practice to the household and family with strict female chastity as a kind of precondition, or private parallel to male political “virtue”; and freest, like almost everyone and
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everything else, under a law-abiding monarchy.8 Montesquieu always differentiated very sharply between monarchy and tyranny. Montesquieu’s stress on the differing social roles, forms of labor and organization of work under different legal and moral systems, climate conditions, and sets of political institutions also helps explain why and how it was that Montesquieu imparted crucial momentum to the birth of economics as a modern social science. Antonio Genovesi (1713–69), in Naples, one of the founders of the new science and the professor who, in 1754, taught Europe’s first university course in political economy, was another who had the experience of finding his entire outlook on the world transformed, in his case specifically during the early 1750s, through steeping himself in L’Esprit des Lois.9 Deeply affected by the distress and extreme poverty of a great part of the Neapolitan population, Genovesi felt driven by what he became convinced was the overwhelming need to reform, modernize and strengthen the Neapolitan economy, and to do this sought the means to enable government to stimulate and expand commerce and the middle class. Montesquieu helped shape Genovesi’s conception of economics and perception of local conditions; but at the same time, key features of Montesquieu’s thought rendered his economic principles, as applied in Naples and more generally, somewhat problematic. Montesquieu’s notion of “commerce” as a form of economic activity generating wealth created by labor and skills rather than something deposited in gold, silver and coinage, certainly had wide application and one readily linked in systematic fashion to the rise and fall of peoples, republics, empires and regions. His innovative conception of “commerce” had obvious relevance to the rise of the Dutch Republic and, more recently, of England, to dominance of world trade, a decisive development in world history for Genovesi, and likewise to the steady long-term decline of seventeenth and eighteenth-century Spain and relative decline of Italy.10 But in Montesquieu’s system of thought, “commerce,” though conceived as broadly positive, operated socially also as a negative factor in certain respects. He viewed expansion of commerce as not just depending on growth in employment and skills but as a surplus extracted from labor and skills that concentrates wealth into fewer and fewer hands, channeling the profits, acquisition, and ownership so as to further increase inequality and luxury while at the same time favoring population growth, hence increasing the numbers of those without land or money. Population increase at the same time was something Montesquieu deemed desirable for he was under the delusion, as many eighteenth-century
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commentators were, that France’s rural population and population generally were declining. Consequently, while Montesquieu more and more emerged as basically a defender of monarchy and aristocracy, he also argues that wealth accruing through trade strengthens society by boosting population, accentuating social hierarchy and driving growing inequality, something which in his view only monarchical “moderation” could manage sensibly, flexibly and effectively. Hence Montesquieu’s “commerce” favors modern monarchy and aristocracy and creates difficulty for republicans and defenders of equality who ought, he advised, remain wary of merchants and trade.11 Favoring “commerce” while offering no general objection to the growing inequality he deemed “commerce” to be generating, lent an ambiguous function and status to the budding new science of economics wherever, as in Genovesi’s economic thought, the stress was on building up the commercial middle class amidst a context of widespread poverty. Meanwhile, besides stimulating the rise of economics as a separate social science in the 1760s and 1770s, Montesquieu’s innovative perspective on equality and inequality acted as a spur to studying more comprehensively than in the past the growing tension in the contemporary era between monarchy and republican ideas. No theme mattered more in Roman history, demonstrated Montesquieu, than the clash between monarchical and republican conceptions of society. Yet it was decidedly not luxury that was the cause of the decline of the Roman empire, he contended in his book, published in 1734, on the causes of the greatness and decline of Rome, but rather the ancient Romans’ failure to transfer fully from moral notions and institutional forms still republican in character to the more accommodating basis of a genuine well-ordered monarchy grounded on luxury, social hierarchy, and wealth inequality.12 Another problematic feature of Montesquieu’s “commerce” was his recognition that expansion of land and seaborne trade was the factor that had raised European military and naval might to unheard of new levels of dominance never witnessed in the past. Although one can detect hints of an anti-colonial stance in his early work, the Lettres Persanes.13 it is an astounding fact that Montesquieu, in his later major works, has practically nothing to say about the domineering colonialism then spreading over much of the globe or the social and political implications of vast new colonial empires on society and politics at home. He showed remarkably little interest in the fate of either subjected colonial peoples overseas or the consequences for European populations remaining at home. Hardly less problematic in his analysis is the almost serene confidence with which he
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concludes that “tyranny” cannot match genuine monarchy in building up military and naval power because tyranny cannot generate the increased flow of commerce that nurtures and feeds such power owing to despots’ lack of respect for the rule of law and the integrity of private property. Tyrannical regimes consequently condemn themselves, at least in Montesquieu’s system, to permanently undermining their own “commerce” and remaining weak and feeble.14 At the same time, there were unmistakable hints of a veiled radical as well as more openly paraded conservative core to Montesquieu. Certainly, he was never more than very marginally indebted to Spinoza15 and expressly rejected his views, in his Pensées, for example, as harmful to society.16 But he remained steeped in Bayle and Machiavelli and from his earliest sojourn in Paris (1709–13), rubbed shoulders with various radical enlighteners, remaining on notably amicable terms with Fontenelle, Boulainvilliers and also Fréret with whom he still interacted late in his development.17 If Montesquieu’s gradually increasing recalcitrance toward radical tendencies – apart from unremitting contempt for monasteries and monks – culminated in the Esprit des Lois, his life-long penchant for religious toleration, no less prominent in the L’Esprit des Lois than the Persian Letters, persisted and owed much to Bayle. Simultaneously, though, Montesquieu took good care to counter the “paradoxe de Bayle,” the latter’s claim that for society and morality it is less harmful to have no religion whatever, to be atheistic, than for humans to be “idolators” embracing a deluded, false faith. “It is poor reasoning against religion to gather together in a large work, a long enumeration of all the bad things [religion] has produced, if one does not do the same with the benefits it has brought” (SL 24.2).18 While Montesquieu’s relations with the radical tendency remained highly complex and, like Voltaire’s, shifted with changing circumstances, “moderation” unquestionably remained the dominant feature overall. Since “moderation” for Montesquieu always ranked as a key feature distinguishing true monarchy from despotism, his core argument that the Christian religion had long rendered the princes of Christendom more “moderate,” gentler, and “less cruel” than Muslim and other Asian princes professing non-Christian religions, mattered greatly to his reception during the Enlightenment era and featured everywhere as one of his most characteristic doctrines (SL 24.2, 24.3).19 Rejecting Bayle’s “paradox,” he defended what he deemed the essential usefulness of revealed religion for maintaining state and society on a stable basis, albeit without
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at all appealing to theology while doing so, arguing on purely secular grounds. Yet, while staying firmly in the “moderate” camp, there lingered enough noticeable radical strands in Montesquieu’s thought for the charge of Spinosisme to be a serious threat to him during the late 1740s and early 1750s. Never one to theologize, Montesquieu strove to grasp the natural laws governing religion’s role in the politics and moral attitudes of different societies rather than seek to justify particular beliefs. There was no disguising here a decided bias toward naturalism, a potential radical tendency especially in the way he portrays moral systems and religion as fulfilling essentially natural social and political functions, without concerning himself as to whether true and untrue religious faith actually exists, or whether a particular faith deserves universal endorsement. Necessary relations deriving from what is seen as the nature of things, climate especially, determine Montesquieu’s approach to differing social and moral systems much as the laws of nature determined physical reality. The question of why one religion, rather than another, predominates in one region of the world, and why other faiths fail to establish themselves, Montesquieu answers in undeviatingly naturalistic terms, applying his unchanging laws of nature. This approach was bound to suggest that it was less divine authorization, or their revelations, than their social and moral consequences that enabled religions to conquer, or fail to conquer, particular regions and shape political realities, and hence seemed to suggest Christianity boasts no intrinsic prophetic or moral superiority or divinely decreed supremacy over other religions.20 Since L’Esprit des Lois nowhere claims Christianity’s inherent truth and legitimacy by revelation and prophecy, and Montesquieu pronounces no one theological legacy superior to others, his work greatly displeased many ecclesiastical readers during the middle Enlightenment period. His stripping away of theology from all evaluations and judgments of societies and moral systems fueled a five-year public controversy (1748–52) over his pervasive naturalism. In October 1749, a public campaign initiated by French churchmen against L’Esprit began in the Jansenist journal Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques, founded in 1728, which culminated in Montesquieu’s book being placed on the papal Index of Forbidden Books despite the hesitation about this of the formerly reformist, liberalizing Pope Benedict XIV.21 Montesquieu’s masterpiece was denounced as a work permeated with naturalist principles and alleged spinosisme, and hence improper in a Christian society. This meant that even the more progressive Catholic scholars of the period, like Diderot’s encyclopédiste
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colleague, the Abbé Claude Yvon (1714–91), became decidedly reluctant to reveal how profoundly Montesquieu had influenced their thinking.22 What Montesquieu calls the “esprit général” of a people not only exudes nothing supernatural or God-ordained but clearly serves as the prime agent, the guiding force of social change which in his writing appeared to be entirely shaped by blind, necessary forces, often climatic, a particular conjunction of natural laws evincing an overriding and unalterable character. Nor did Montesquieu’s “naturalism” stop there. Another pronounced “Spinozistic” or Tolandist trait pervading Montesquieu’s thought, allegedly, was his distinctly anti-Cartesian, and antiNewtonian, conflating of matter and motion.23 Montesquieu’s mostly reliable biographer, Shackleton, here makes the error of supposing that “in the eighteenth century the word ‘spinoziste’ was essentially a term of abuse,” and “often of unthinking abuse” without real significance.24 But actually this terminology had considerable significance in relation to the underlying radical strand in Montesquieu’s thought and the, for a time, unmistakable tendency for radicals rejecting religious authority along with monarchy and aristocracy, and preferring secularism and republicanism, to move closer to him (and perhaps for him to move closer to them). This tendency was most pronounced in the immediate aftermath of L’Esprit’s appearance precisely when Montesquieu came under attack from Jansenist and other ecclesiastical critics. Insofar as he assigned the hegemony of particular religions and moral systems, in different parts of the globe, to purely physical causes rather than divine intervention and guidance, Montesquieu’s denunciation as a “spinosiste” in the late 1740s and early 1750s, did have both relevance and a measure of justification.25 In his Défense de l’Esprit des Lois anonymously published at Geneva in February 1750, Montesquieu angrily rebutted the charge of spinosisme, which far from being a mere polemical label without real meaning, as Shackleton supposed, defined the mid-century controversy lending it a very specific signification. The essential charge was that Montesquieu effectively eliminates divine providence and revelation from human existence, removes God, miracles and the divine will from determining and guiding the course of history. Unalterable “necessity” lies at the heart of “spinozisme,” retorted Montesquieu, seeking to present some of his points as objections to le spinosisme, but “necessity” was by no means the core of his own system.26 Where Spinoza’s God cannot change the established order of things, Montesquieu, he answered (rather dubiously), accepts divine creation of the universe and the possibility of divine intervention to change the order of things. Where Spinoza conceives morality
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as not divinely revealed but purely a posterior social contrivance, he claimed to argue, even if here again not altogether convincingly, that he did recognize the pre-existence of divine justice.27 During this contest over whether or not his system is essentially “Spinozistic” in the Enlightenment sense of the term, Montesquieu collaborated closely with his most outspoken and fervent disciple at the time, the radical Huguenot, Laurent Angliviel de La Beaumelle (1726–73). The latter was an early advocate of equality between the sexes28 and staunch republican opponent of Dutch Orangism. In 1751, he published the continuation, or Suite of Montesquieu’s Défense, doing so in consultation with his venerated learned hero. In fact, during the 1748–52 public controversy over L’Esprit des Lois, La Beaumelle, undoubtedly a republican egalitarian expelled from the Danish kingdom in 1751 for criticizing that kingdom’s government, a figure looked on contemptuously by Voltaire, emerged as Montesquieu’s most loyal and adamant eulogist.29 Montesquieu cheerfully joined forces with him but only briefly since this, it soon transpired, was a strategy apt to drag him only deeper into trouble. La Beaumelle prolonged the controversy as to whether Montesquieu was, or was not a spinosiste, devoting several notable pages to this issue in his Suite de la Défense.30 He did so not because spinosisme was “un scandale, la figure extreme de l’hétérodoxie,” a vague corpus without specific meaning but rather, on the contrary, because it possessed all too specific a meaning, a damning significance around which not only the international polemic surrounding Montesquieu’s masterpiece, but also the entire mid-eighteenth-century debate surrounding Montesquieu’s thought swirled. Far from meaningless, spinosisme remained a towering cultural preoccupation of the age, signifying a determinism and materialism, often termed fatalisme, that abolishes all supernaturalia and all ecclesiastical authority, amounting to a total abjuration not just of Christianity and all revealed religion, but of supernaturalia generally as well as of Cartesianism, Lockeianism, Newtonianism and even all positive deism. To counter the charge that his entire account of nature and humanity constituted a single interlocking mechanistic system, or méchanisme totale, built around denial of divine governance and all teleology, rendering all moral and political values purely man-made, it became vital for Montesquieu to deny that he embraced mathematical scientific “reason” as the exclusive tool of verification available to mankind, the sole criterion of what is true. While resolutely embracing toleration and
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liberty of conscience, he needed to show that he did not embrace “freedom to philosophize” in Spinoza’s sense of rendering philosophy and science wholly independent of all religious sanction, control or censorship, permitting freedom to criticize every religious belief and all rulers. Insofar as spinosisme meant far-reaching intellectual revolution and rejection of monarchy and aristocracy in favor of democratic republicanism, he did oppose it, but it was never clearly established that he actually did oppose its metaphysical base. Meanwhile, parts of La Beaumelle’s defense of Montesquieu against the charge of spinosisme proved somewhat too subtle for any benefit to accrue to Montesquieu. Montesquieu’s stance on toleration and freedom to philosophize hardly differed from that of Spinoza, admitted La Beaumelle, but whereas Spinoza undeniably grounded the Enlightenment’s more comprehensive conception of religious toleration not just preceding but also transcending Locke or Bayle, these valuable elements, contended La Beaumelle, need detaching from spinosisme proper. For in themselves they do not necessarily entail the exclusive hegemony of reason or atheistic denial of divine providence or Revelation.31 Comprehensive toleration Spinoza defended in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, held La Beaumelle, that is (according to La Beaumelle) before he became a spinosiste. Spinoza was not yet the atheist or fataliste, he argued when he wrote his Tractatus. Spinoza only denied divine providence, Creation and Revelation later, he (wrongly) maintained when composing his Ethics. Among Europe’s most uncompromising champions of toleration of the 1740s and more partial to republicanism than Montesquieu, La Beaumelle tried to legitimize his hero’s naturalism by arguing that his views overlapped with Spinoza’s only in part, with respect to toleration and explaining moral categories in purely naturalistic terms. Wherever Spinoza and Montesquieu overlap, however, Montesquieu’s position should not be regarded as atheistic, or to involve fatalisme. 32 Here La Beaumelle was being excessively as well as misleadingly adroit and Montesquieu soon testily drew back. The presence of radical strands in Montesquieu’s thought, and his radical contacts, and the fact that, once firmly established as a masterpiece by the early 1750s, the L’Esprit des Lois could readily be used to mask, not least in the Encyclopédie, more radical ideas, does not detract from but rather underlines the reality of the tension between radical thought and philosophical moderation that Montesquieu dramatically intensified, and helps explain why the Montesquieu of the 1750s increasingly thrust himself more unequivocally
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toward the moderate side.33 The “temptation of the radical” and his contacts does not alter the essential point that Montesquieu avowed his opposition to atheism, fatalisme and irreligion and consistently argued for the superiority of Christian societies over other societies, tying this to his sustained defense of monarchy and aristocracy. Montesquieu’s interacting with the likes of Fontenelle, Boulainvilliers, Fréret and La Beaumelle helps explain how he could intertwine startlingly innovative strands of thought together with solidly conservative positions in the way he does. But his increasingly entrenched bias toward monarchy and mixed government also explains why, during the late eighteenth century, Montesquieu’s political ideas – the most widely cited, applauded and discussed of any political philosopher’s during and immediately after the American Revolution – came to be championed exclusively by moderate enlighteners, anglophiles and constitutional monarchists, by publicists dismissed by radicals as champions of aristocracy, constitutional monarchy, and “moderate” absolute monarchy on the French model, even if, as some American revolutionaries pointed out, especially in his early work, he also undeniably lends tentative support to republican ideas.34 During the 1750s whilst Montesquieu was under a cloud, the young directors of the Encyclopédie, Diderot and d’Alembert, remained keen to associate the great Montesquieu with their project and capitalize on his high standing among the progressive-minded, by presenting him, as they did at the time of his funeral in February 1755, as a staunch encyclopédiste.35 But their attitude had changed markedly by the mid1760s. By that time radical Enlightenment antagonism to Montesquieu’s political theories was becoming clearly discernible. Earlier, d’Holbach, like Montesquieu, had eulogized representative, constitutional monarchy in preference to absolute monarchy and praised the “British model.” Here he differed only marginally from Voltaire and Helvétius, who while contemplating Montesquieu’s general preference for monarchy and aristocracy, for Christian societies and semi-defense of slavery with equanimity, leaned more than he did toward royal absolutism.36 What Voltaire and Helvetius chiefly criticized in Montesquieu was how he applied his climate relativism and way of depicting national character, with Helvétius even harsher in dismissing Montesquieu’s climate classification than Voltaire.37 But after returning to Paris from England in 1765 much disillusioned with what he had seen and heard on the spot of the British “mixed government” system, much of d’Holbach’s henceforth fierce criticism of the English monarchy and political system, rubbed off also onto
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Montesquieu. D’Holbach, furthermore, sufficiently swayed his ally, Diderot, in the same direction, that he too began expressing derogatory remarks about Montesquieu’s political outlook.38 His visit to England convinced d’Holbach for the rest of his life that the British constitution was irretrievably “corrupt.” A considerably more substantial figure in the history of political thought than historians and political scientists have usually taken him as being, d’Holbach wholly rejected “mixed government” on the British model, as championed by Montesquieu and by Hume, no less than the “enlightened despotism” preferred by Voltaire, d’Alembert and Helvétius. Most opinion during the late eighteenth century, swayed by Montesquieu, considered Britain’s constitution not just positively but as the “greatest effort of the human spirit,” a magnificent step forward in human endeavor. This model, however, with its inherent proneness to ally aristocracy with monarchy, was in reality, contended the post-1765 d’Holbach, alarmingly defective in its consequences for representation of the will and needs of society. Britain’s Lower House, the Commons, suffered from the fatal defect of infrequent elections (under the Septennial Act), enabling the people’s “représentants,” once elected, to forget their accountability to the people and “without incurring any risk betray the people’s true interests and sell their liberty to the monarch.”39 Equally detestable in Montesquieu’s political schema, held d’Holbach, was his failure to recognize the highly insidious role, as d’Holbach and Diderot now saw it, of the monarch. Bloated with prerogatives, the British crown remained sole dispenser of the nation’s public funds, a corrupt arrangement further facilitating government vitiation of the electoral process and the public good.40 Turning against the “British model” extolled by Montesquieu, a new radical front formed under the aegis of d’Holbach and Diderot against the “moderation” of Montesquieu and his admirers, not least Hume. A major affinity between Hume and Montesquieu that the new detractors of the British constitution especially deplored, was their common resistance to parliamentary supremacy and independence from the crown, preferring to sanction an interactive relationship in which crown and Parliament mutually hold each other in check, enabling royal influence and a certain degree of corruption to steer affairs in a direction only somewhat influenced by either popular or parliamentary pressure.41 This pervasive, systemic royal corruption sanctioned by Montesquieu and Hume, protested their new critics, was thoroughly pernicious. “English liberty” was not remotely as positive as Montesquieu hyped it up to be, nor were its
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evident deficiencies at all mitigated by the English people’s absurd veneration of it.42 Such veneration was mere “political superstition,” reflecting how society cherishes, without evaluating their rationality, old traditions and modes of thought simply because most authorities and most people have always venerated them, as with the Magna Carta, an obscure medieval charter, a vestige of the dismal feudal past, extorted from King John, and ridiculously supposed to embody the highest legitimacy in politics.43 Perfection in government, argued radical enlighteners, consists in steering men’s passions toward the common good and “le bien public” and is invariably based on virtue, and nothing else, a principle that to d’Holbach’s mind, as to Condorcet, Volney and others later, exposed Montesquieu as ultimately a malign influence.44 In this way, Montesquieu’s categories came to seem to the radical mindset to be fundamentally false. For them, not only did Montesquieu err, by exaggerating climate’s role in determining the moral and political character of different societies, which was as far as Voltaire was willing to go, but erred more seriously in confusing men’s understanding of what government is and what it is for. It was true that an identical form of government would not suit all peoples so that, to an extent, different circumstances do necessitate differences in laws and forms.45 Yet such differences, held the radical enlighteners, were marginal: The state’s basic purpose and moral guidelines should always converge and be equivalent everywhere. About this, d’Holbach differed just as profoundly from Voltaire and d’Alembert as from Hume and Montesquieu. His basic bias toward monarchy and aristocracy sufficiently proved, d’Holbach contended, like Condorcet, Volney and Destutt later, that Montesquieu’s schema needed to be comprehensively rejected. “Honour” is not the special principle of “monarchy” as the L’Esprit des Lois maintains, held d’Holbach, neither is “virtue” the distinctive underlying principle of republican government. If one takes Montesquieu seriously, and accepts that only republics are grounded by nature in “virtue” while monarchy is founded on “puerile vanity, frivolous distinctions depending on the caprices of a single master,” then monarchy must necessarily and needs to be everywhere thoroughly despised. Pondered seriously, Montesquieu’s separating honor from virtue is so devoid of sense, so perplexing, as to make one suspect – since we receive no explanation for so absurd a conclusion – that, he is insinuating, like Aristotle, that there exist no real kings, only “tyrants” (d’Holbach did hold this view).46 Montesquieu’s aristocratic preferences, noblesse de robe agenda,
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and ardor for intermediary powers in the hands of aristocracy, as well as monarchical bent, left no room during the revolutionary era that began in America in 1775 for radical philosophes to abandon, or modify, this newfound antipathy to Montesquieu.47 In America and Europe alike, L’Esprit des Lois inevitably became an ideological battleground divided during the revolutionary era between the rival blocs as attitudes toward Montesquieu polarized further still. Revolutionary moderates aiming to salvage aristocracy and in most of Europe also monarchy, along with counter-revolutionaries everywhere, solidly championed Montesquieu after 1775, while democratic republicans increasingly repudiated and denigrated him.48 Furthermore, L’Esprit des Lois was often embraced by apologists for slavery as a bulwark against abolitionism.49 During the early French Revolution, until August 1792, the white planters’ spokesmen championing Caribbean white landed oligarchy in the French National Assembly, sought to defend slavery as well as promote their notably strong monarchist preferences, by continually mobilizing Montesquieu’s relativism of climate and conditions as a philosophical counter-rationale to radical claims that slavery was an affront to morality and equal rights. In the particular circumstances of the Caribbean, where whites could not easily work the fields, slavery, as these spokesmen interpreted Montesquieu, particularly his argument in Book 7 of Part III of the L’Esprit des Lois, was “natural,” indispensable and hence ultimately justifiable. His maintaining that “there are countries where the heat debilitates the body, and so weakens resolve that men are not brought to arduous labor except through fear of punishment: There black slavery seems less shocking to our reason,” became welcome fuel for the slave-owners’ racist as well as monarchist and pro-Church propaganda machine (SL 15.1–7).50 Prominent among those promoting Montesquieu as a pillar of modérantisme during the early Revolution was a leading deputy for Martinique, Médéric-Louis Moreau de Saint-Méry (1750–1819), a lawyer and author of several books on the Caribbean. He was a key member of one of the principal scholarly and scientific groups anywhere in the Americas before 1789, the Cercle des Philadelphes, the main academic scientific body in French Saint-Domingue until it ceased amidst the turmoil gripping Saint-Domingue in 1791, a society founded in 1784 that boasted some sixty members at its height. Moreau de SaintMéry emerged among the leading apologists of Montesquieu as well as of social hierarchy in the New World. Author of the most detailed surviving description of Saint-Domingue on the eve of the Revolution, Saint-Méry,
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though a social and political conservative, was indubitably a passionate enlightener, fervent for sociability and newspapers, and promoting the theater, but was utterly devoted to Montesquieu’s “moderation” opposing all radical change. Universal and equal rights Saint-Méry expressly rejected in favor of a race theory placing the white race at the top of his racial hierarchy and justifying slavery (he owned some slaves himself ). During the later Revolution, after the Brissotins gained control of SaintDomingue in 1792–3, Saint-Méry sought refuge in Philadelphia where he ran a bookstore that became a famous meeting place in America for French émigré royalists.51 Post-1789, democratic republicans increasingly opposed Montesquieu’s entire system, the overall framework, a typology of forms of government declaring monarchy the most “moderate” format, and “moderation” to be, as Montesquieu argued, the most stable, favorable to liberty, opposed to tyranny and pliably accommodating to the ill effects of corruption and degeneration. In Montesquieu, types of government needed to be appropriate to their setting, moral milieu and geographical context. While up to a point, he offered justifications for different kinds of government boasting very divergent legal systems, according to different environments, climates and moral systems,52 the best were always his “moderate” regimes, aristocratic governments together with the modern commercial Christian monarchies.53 To many critics, he appeared to employ his schema to persuade readers their government “should remain such” as it was, unchanged, simply because that was how it was.54 Despite there being radical ingredients in Montesquieu’s system, hardcore democratic republicans, accordingly, in France and America especially but by no means only, evinced growing hostility to his political thought. The harshest criticism was voiced by d’Holbach, Condorcet, Filangieri, Thorild, Volney, and Thomas Paine, followed later by Jefferson, Say and Destutt de Tracy, all political writers abhorred by conservative theorists such as Ferguson and Burke and American “aristocratic” republicans like the “openly Montesquieuan Anglophile,” John Adams.55 Ferguson was steeped in Montesquieu, especially admiring his analysis of the Roman empire’s decline. He agreed too with Montesquieu’s assessment of the advantages of large, powerful modern monarchies such as Britain and France based on monarchy and social hierarchy, albeit he was less positive about commerce, and still less about “honor” as monarchy’s basic viable principle. He was also distinctly less confident than Montesquieu that the military and naval power generated
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by these modern monarchies, and their impulse to empire, did not constitute a potential menace to liberty and path to pernicious despotism.56 Condorcet’s journal the Bibliothèque de l’Homme Public (1790–1), established in 1790 to promote awareness of political science and government more widely, included a critique by the revolutionary journalist and diplomat Philippe-Antoine Grouvelle (1757–1806), analyzing Montesquieu’s influence on and in the French Revolution. Son of a goldsmith, Grouvelle was a founding member of the “Club de 1789,” a republican serving as the Revolution’s envoy in Denmark-Norway during 1793–9. Styling Montesquieu a “benevolent genius” who taught men to reflect on the differences between different systems of laws, Montesquieu should also, contended Grouvelle, following d’Holbach and Condorcet, be considered a “culpable genius insofar as he defended aristocracy.” Paradoxically, claimed Grouvelle, Montesquieu at one and the same time, did more than most to help prepare the Revolution and yet, at the same time with his false distinction between “monarchy” and “despotism,” provided a great part of the intellectual momentum opposing the Revolution.57 Unlike his friend, Jefferson, Condorcet, meanwhile, never admired Montesquieu at any stage,58 any more than did Rousseau. He was especially exasperated by Montesquieu’s preoccupation with “moderation” in monarchies and republics alike: It is not “moderation,” retorted Condorcet impatiently, entirely concurring with d’Holbach, but justice that is the principle of every state, justice being one, equal for all and universal.59 An academic thesis submitted at Uppsala in 1787 by the Swedish radical poet and Spinozist, Thomas Thorild (1759–1808), was followed in March 1788 by a public disputation on Montesquieu, at Uppsala, in which Thorild vigorously criticized L’Esprit in the presence of the Swedish king.60 An expanded version of Thorild’s thesis reappeared in French, at Paris, during the Revolution. Pronouncing Montesquieu always “great and ingenious” but “rarely interesting or true,” Thorild reproached him especially for offering humanity fundamentally divergent types of political systems – monarchical, aristocratic and republican – whereas, like d’Holbach, Condorcet and Filangieri he insisted that he should be advancing just one, namely whatever is recognized as best for mankind.61 Democratic republicanism alone, urged radical enlighteners, promotes equality and the majority’s well-being and this applies universally irrespective of whether countries are large or small, European or non-European. Conversely, after 1789, ideologues like the German apologist of Joseph II and Frederick the Great, Johann Ludwig Ewald
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(1748–1822), endorsing enlightened despotism as the principal effective means to promote Enlightenment in the world, eulogized Montesquieu precisely for emphasizing the indispensability of religion to monarchical rule and the vital role of Christianity in rendering absolutism generally, including enlightened absolutism, humane, gentle and non-despotic.62 Anti-Christian, anti-aristocratic and anti-monarchical radicals writing during the revolutionary and Napoleonic era, while aware that Montesquieu had once been targeted for bold innovations and “Spinozist” tendencies, and while usually still acknowledging his greatness – though even that often grudgingly – were more and more alienated by his being continually mobilized by moderate reformers, like Edmund Burke, John Adams, Saint-Méry, and Pierre-Victor Malouet, and counterRevolution publicists, like Burke, to reinforce “moderation,” meaning aristocracy’s and monarchy’s defenses. What were once tentative reservations became increasingly vehement criticism.63 Once a youthful admirer of Montesquieu, prior to the American Revolution, when Montesquieu’s readers tended to skim over his whispered indictment of republicanism,64 later in life Jefferson’s perspective changed to emphatic repudiation. “Every man who reflects as he reads,” he commented, in August 1810, writing to William Duane, after perusing Destutt de Tracy’s manuscript analysis of Montesquieu’s political thought, “has considered [L’Esprit] a book of paradoxes, having, indeed, much of truth and sound principle, but abounding also with inconsistencies, apocryphal facts, and false inferences.”65 Destutt’s fierce criticism he welcomed as “a correction of these.” For American revolutionaries and Founding Fathers, among the “false inferences” Jefferson believed wholly “exploded by experience, with some other brilliant fallacies accredited by Montesquieu,” was, of course, the distinctly unhelpful and inconvenient thesis “that small states alone are fitted to be republics.”66 Writing to Destutt himself a few months later, in January 1811, supporting the latter’s call for “a radical correction” of Montesquieu’s theories, Jefferson remarked that his own opinion of Montesquieu had been growing steadily more negative for some time, specifically since 1789–90.67 “I had,” wrote Jefferson, “with the world, deemed Montesquieu’s work of much merit, but saw in it with every thinking man, so much of paradox, of false principle and misapplied fact, as to render its value equivocal on the whole. [David] Williams and others less emphatic about this than himself had nibbled only at its errors. A radical correction of them,” like that of Destutt de Tracy, was hence for Jefferson “a great desideratum.”68
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Jefferson’s repudiation of Montesquieu provoked a momentary squabble with his more conservative and Humean eventual friend, the former adversary with whom he became reconciled from 1805, the main author of the Massachusetts state constitution and second president of the United States, John Adams (president: 1797–1801). For reconciled or not, Montesquieu remained a thorn in their relationship. When Jefferson sent Adams a copy of Destutt’s commentary on Montesquieu which he considered the “most valuable political work of the present age,” Adams sourly conceded that Destutt was more sensible than that other French friend of Jefferson’s, “the abstruse, mysterious, incomprehensible Condorcet” but then Destutt too was just another French philosophe confusedly embroiling Montesquieu while wrongly imagining “men are rational and conscientious creatures,” forgetting that men’s “passions and interests generally prevail over their reason and their conscience.”69 Another leading radical Enlightenment commentator of the Napoleonic era, Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832), went so far as to claim that Destutt’s scathing Commentaire on the L’Esprit des Lois, rebuking Montesquieu at every turn for belittling democratic republicanism, a text wholly unpublishable in Napoleon’s France, was of greater worth to humanity than the Esprit des Lois itself.70 Much of the dissatisfaction voiced about Montesquieu after 1789 stemmed from the fact that wherever he discusses republics, Montesquieu focuses almost exclusively either on the defects and instability of ancient direct democracies lacking representative systems or else on the stifling oligarchic character of modern aristocratic republics like Venice, which he visited in the late 1720s and became utterly disillusioned with,71 and Genoa, republics which both he and the radical enlighteners disdained. For he did so, skipping all consideration of the representative or modern democratic republic that radical theorists idealized, avoiding all discussion of how democratic republican constitutions and legislatures might beneficially function. Montesquieu simply had virtually nothing to say about republics of the sort a good many in Geneva, the Dutch Republic and elsewhere, with La Beaumelle prominent among them, already aspired to see, and convert all existing republics into, during his own lifespan. Praised for the comprehensiveness of his approach by conservatives, the striking inadequacy of Montesquieu’s discussion of republics and republicanism only became fully evident after 1789. The result was that in all three of the pressure-points where democratic republican modernity broke through late in the eighteenth century – North America, Switzerland and the United Provinces – Montesquieu provided scarcely
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one word of the slightest use or relevance to the ideologues leading the revolutionary movements.72 In L’Esprit des Lois Book 9 Montesquieu does briefly touch on confederate republics like the Dutch, Swiss and Hanseatic confederacies, but he begins, hardly encouragingly, by affirming that “si une république est petite, elle est détruite par une force étrangère, si elle est grande, elle se détruit par un vice intérieur [if a republic is small, it is destroyed by a foreign force, if it is large, it destroys itself by an interior vice],” claiming this applied both to “les démocraties et les aristocraties”(SL 9.1).73 Montesquieu grants the greater resilience and durability of federal as compared to city republics, but says nothing about their councils, legislatures and representative arrangements (SL 9.1). It was indeed a yawning gap, as was Montesquieu’s striking failure to bring European colonial empires into the picture. At some level, acknowledged Paine, Montesquieu had once been “inclined to republican government.”74 Montesquieu, after all, grants that where “l’esprit de la monarchie” is war and aggrandizement, the spirit of republics is “peace and moderation” (SL 9.2).75 But Paine too found Montesquieu excessively prone to timidity, even obscurantism, especially in advancing the “absurd dogma” that republics suit only small countries: “for he had always the Bastille before his eyes when he was speaking of republics, and therefore pretended not to write for France.”76 In the view of radicals like d’Holbach, Condorcet, Destutt, Thorild and Paine, all types of political system in the end boil down to just two categories or types. The first was those of the “intriguers,” as Condorcet styled all forms prevailing prior to 1789, built on vested interests instead of popular sovereignty, rejecting volonté générale and obscuring the “common good,” using specious arguments to cheat those whose discernment, dimmed by religious piety, is such as to venerate kings, aristocracy and ecclesiastics. The second type was democratic republics, or “gouvernements nationaux” founded on “l’interêt général,” as d’Holbach and Destutt call it, based on reason and natural right.77 Only democratic republicanism rejecting all religious authority can legitimate a political and moral system, held Thorild, publicly repudiating Robespierre and the Montagne in a pamphlet of 1794. While different climes and contrasting legal and moral traditions may explain why different moral and political systems exist, only one kind can be universally valid and fitting from a genuinely enlightened standpoint, namely the kind that best promotes the “common good.”78 This ran flat against Montesquieuan relativism and “moderation” which make no provision
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for states based on institutionalized equality and only fed the deeplyrooted bias toward social hierarchy and institutionalized inequality.79 While he too occasionally employs the term “general will” in the L’Esprit des Lois, believing the Venetian Republic stood on an aristocratic “general will” and that ancient classical republics expressed a broader “general will,” Montesquieu resolutely opposed the Spinozist idea, renewed by Diderot and d’Holbach, that there exists an overriding common will expressing what is best for all viewed collectively and which society must advance by subordinating to it all particular individual and group interests.80 Given the manifold influences at work in shaping his thought, and interaction with radical intellectual approaches, the dichotomy moderate/ radical proves indispensable both for explaining the overall character and goals of Montesquieu’s system, and why his European and American reception evolved as it did, with conservatives solidly defending his system and radicals forming a solid front against it. By the early nineteenth century, neither Montesquieu’s conception of modern monarchy, nor his view of republics, nor his discussion of women and of nonEuropean peoples and contexts any longer retained much relevance. What did retain great relevance in and after 1800 was his preoccupation with how best to conserve and stabilize “liberty,” and his great fear of despotism, a residual strand of his musing that conceivably will never lose its relevance.
Notes 1 Zaretsky, Catherine and Diderot, 37. 2 Ghervas, “La réception,” 391–404; Zaretsky, Catherine and Diderot, 37–8, 81, 176. 3 Moore, “Montesquieu and the Scottish Enlightenment,” 179–95, 179–80, 186–7, 192. 4 Ibid., 181, 188. 5 Bromwich, The Intellectual Life, 42, 257. 6 Carrithers, “Not so Virtuous Republics,” 245–68, 262–5. 7 Villavarde Rico, “L’Abbé Raynal, philosophe radical,” 229–61, 244–6; Offen, The Woman Question, 121. 8 Larrère, “Women, Republicanism, and Growth,” 139–56, 140–2. 9 Imbruglia, “Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Naples,” 74–5. 10 Spector, Montesquieu et l’emergence, 104–6; Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic, 170–85. 11 Spector, Montesquieu et l’emergence, 138–44. 12 Hont, “The Early Enlightenment Debate,” 379–418, 407–8.
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13 Dallmayr, “Montesquieu’s Persian Letters,” 239–58, 248, 252–3. 14 Spector, Montesquieu et l’emergence, 64–6; Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic, 184–5. 15 Volpilhac-Auger, “Une modération radicale?” 389–97, 390–1. 16 Montesquieu, Pensées, 902; Oudin, Le Spinozisme de Montesquieu, 69, 119; Israel, The Enlightenment that Failed., 159–77. 17 Shackleton, Montesquieu, 10–13, 55–6; Volpilhac-Auger, “Une modération radicale?” 391; Bianchi, “Modération non sans tentations,” 341–54, 344–5, 347–8. 18 Ewald, Über Revolutionen, 240–1. 19 Bianchi, ”Modération non sans tentations,” 350–1. 20 Gaddo and Tortarolo, Secularizzazione e modernità, 73–4. 21 Israel, Enlightenment Contested, 403–4, 685–7, 826–39; Lehner, The Catholic Enlightenment, 68–9. 22 Oudin, Spinozisme de Montesquieu, 64–5; Shackleton, Montesquieu, 261–4, 360; Volpilhac-Auger, “Une modération radicale?” 394–5; Burson, The Culture of Enlightening, 119, 267, 310–11. 23 Bianchi, “Modération non sans tentations,” 349; Craiutu, A Virtue for Courageous Minds, 262–7. 24 Shackleton, Montesquieu, 261. 25 Oudin, Spinozisme de Montesquieu, 131; Shackleton, Montesquieu, 264. 26 Oudin, Spinozisme de Montesquieu, 132–3. 27 Ibid., 66, 68–70, 75. 28 La Beaumelle, Suite de la Défense, 16–17. 29 Shackleton, Montesquieu, 365, 376, 390–1; Lauriol, La Beaumelle, 184–96. 30 La Beaumelle, Suite de la Défense, 48–50, 63; La Beaumelle, Pièces pour et contre, 119–22, 135–6. 31 La Beaumelle, Suite de la Défense, 48; La Beaumelle, Pièces pour et contre, 11. 32 Lauriol, La Beaumelle, 193; Israel, Enlightenment Contested, 836–9. 33 Villaverde, “L’Abbé Raynal,” 244–6. 34 Imbert, Destutt de Tracy, 24; Dijn, “Montesquieu’s Controversial Context,” 66–88, 69, 81. 35 Wilson, Diderot, 232–3. 36 Romani, “All Montesquieu’s Sons,” 189–235, 206–9. 37 Ibid., 223. 38 Strugnell, Diderot’s Politics, 106–7; Wilson, Diderot, 232–3, 518. 39 D’Holbach, Système sociale, 295–6; D’Holbach, La Politique, 72–3; Goggi, De l’Encyclopédie, 399–400. 40 D’Holbach, Politique naturelle, 89; D’Holbach, Système sociale, 297–9; Israel, Enlightenment that Failed, 178–214. 41 Moore, “Montesquieu and the Scottish Enlightenment,” 182, 192. 42 D’Holbach, Système sociale, 429. 43 D’Holbach, Politique naturelle, 322; Israel, Enlightenment that Failed, 202–3. 44 D’Holbach, Politique naturelle, 81; Devellennes, “D’Holbach radical,” 321. 45 D’Holbach, Politique naturelle, 76, 314–17; Wolloch, History and Nature, 108.
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46 D’Holbach, Éthocratie, ou Le gouvernement, 600; Doyle, The Aristocracy, 141. 47 Romani, “All Montesquieu’s Sons,” 199. 48 Condorcet, Bibliothèque de l’Homme Public, 6. 49 Condorcet, Réflexions sur l’esclavage des nègres, 90; Fergus, Revolutionary Emancipation., 59–60; Romani, “All Montesquieu’s Sons,” 200–1. 50 Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic, 157–8, 160. 51 Ghachem, “Montesquieu in the Caribbean,” 183–210; Popkin, You are All Free, 53–4. 52 Condorcet, Bibliothèque, 11–12; Benot, Diderot, 206, 210; Vyverberg, Human Nature, 90–1; Larrère, “Montesquieu and Liberalism,” 290. 53 Rahe, “Forms of Government,” 76–82; Dijn, “Montesquieu’s Controversial Context,” 69, 87. 54 Condorcet, Bibliothèque, 12; Carrithers, “Introduction: An Appreciation,” 14–15; Carrithers, “Democratic and Aristocratic Republics,” 147; Levy, “Montesquieu’s Constitutional Legacies,” 133. 55 Levy, “Montesquieu’s Constitutional Legacies,” 115–37, 132. 56 McDaniel, Adam Ferguson, 25, 94–5, 141–2, 159–61. 57 Grouvelle, De l’Autorité de Montesquieu, 14, 33–42, 111–12, 137–9. 58 Badinter and Badinter, Condorcet, 537. 59 Levy, “Montesquieu’s Constitutional Legacies,” 127–8; Romani, “All Montesquieu’s Sons,” 233; Craiutu, Virtue for Courageous Minds, 56–7, 249; Williams, Condorcet and Modernity, 206. 60 Hoeckermann, “Thomas Thorild, der skandinavische Lessing,” 26–7. 61 Thorild, “Critik over Montesquieu,” 279–85; Carrithers, “Introduction: An Appreciation,” 13; see also Hoeckermann, “Thomas Thorild, der skandinavische Lessing,” 27. 62 Ewald, Über Revolutionen, 240–4. 63 Condorcet, Bibliothèque, 4, 6–7; Lutz, “Relative Influence,” 189–97; Jolly, “Introduction,” 14–15. 64 Levy, “Montesquieu’s Constitutional Legacies,” 121–2. 65 Jefferson to Duane, August 12, 1810 in Jefferson, Writings, 1230; Carrithers, “Introduction: An Appreciation,” 3–4. 66 Jefferson to François d’Ivernois, February 6, 1795, in Jefferson, Writings, 1024. 67 Albertone, “Thomas Jefferson and French Economic Thought,” 133. 68 Jefferson to Destutt de Tracy, January 26, 1811, in Jefferson, Writings, 1242; Levy, “Montesquieu’s Constitutional Legacies,” 127. 69 Adams to Jefferson, “The Adams-Jefferson Letters,” 506; Wood, Friends Divided, 186–7. 70 Jolly, “Introduction,” 7; Imbert, Destutt de Tracy critique, 14, 17–18; Carrithers, “Introduction: An Appreciation,” 40. 71 Grouvelle, De l’Autorité de Montesquieu, 44–5; Carrithers, “Not so Virtuous Republics,” 263. 72 Carrithers, “Democratic and Aristocratic Republics,” 128; Krause, “Freedom, Sovereignty, and the General Will,” 149, 151, 153. 73 Villaverde, Ilusión republicana, 170–1. 74 Paine, Rights of Man, 93; Imbruglia, “Civilisation and Colonisation,” 861–2.
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75 Spector, Montesquieu et l’émergence, 92–3. 76 Paine, Complete Writings, 598–9; Nicolet, L’Idée républicaine, 120–2. 77 Condorcet, Bibliothèque, 71–2; De Tracy, Commentaire, 68; Imbert, Destutt de Tracy critique, 35–6; Jolly, “Introduction,” 39. 78 Le Conservateur des Principes des Républicains, 3–8; Israel, Revolutionary Ideas, 335–6, 698. 79 Larrère, “Montesquieu on Economics and Commerce,” 337. 80 Krause, “Freedom, Sovereignty, and the General Will,” 153–8; Williams, “Spinoza and the General Will,” 125.
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17 Montesquieu’s Liberal Legacies Rebecca E. Kingston
Montesquieu’s relation to the liberal tradition is not as uncomplicated as many assume. Perhaps this may be true for most canonical political theorists when attempts are made to identify them fully with one overarching political tradition. Still, in the case of Montesquieu, it is relevant to note that his institutional sympathies lay with the old regime against which a large number of theorists associated with the newly minted liberal tradition in France of the nineteenth century defined themselves. Clearly the depth and insightfulness of Montesquieu’s analysis surpassed the horizon of his political allegiances. Still, it must be noted that liberalism is one of those essentially disputed concepts that make the field of political theory both exciting and challenging. From a continental perspective liberalism may be viewed as a set of ideas that sought to embrace certain features of modernity including an attachment to freedom as an overarching good in all its social and political aspects, while remaining hostile to the forces of democratization in politics.1 For purposes of this chapter, I adopt a rival account, one that is more often associated with an Anglo-American outlook. The reason I do so is because my view is that liberalism has always been closely associated with the idea of individual rights, and this in turn has a logical connection to ideas of basic equality among human beings. Thus, while the historical and strategic positions of liberals may be diverse, the logic of the ideas that ground the liberal outlook can be distilled into at least three minimal conditions: a commitment to political and civil liberties as important and foundational to social and political life; a commitment to basic rights and dignity for all human beings; and finally, a recognition of basic equality of all citizens as a condition for an effective application of 289
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measures to enhance liberty such as the rule of law (including its impartial application) and (this is where liberals can be distinguished from neoliberals) steps to promote greater equality of opportunity so that people can seek to advance according to their merits. Commitment to outright democratic principles of popular sovereignty and equal representation later supplemented liberal practice to help define the principles of contemporary liberal democracy which offers up a basic presumption in favor of social equality. However, even before its linking to democratic principles, the liberal ethos harbored an attachment to a vision of the political equality of human beings and of their right to pursue reasonable means for their own flourishing without excessive impediment. So, to explore Montesquieu’s relation to liberalism it is important to acknowledge points of contrast as well as points of both inspiration and similarity. His close association with the old regime highlights aspects of Montesquieu’s presuppositions that appear to differentiate his thought from much of the later liberal legacy. Despite his ongoing attachment to and concern for the promotion of liberty in public life, his theory of liberty in certain aspects sought to harness and make use of the political and social inequalities that were a pervasive feature of old regime politics. Nonetheless, in his defense of social mobility and commercial economies, Montesquieu is also aligned with the forces that were challenging the grounds of social differentiation and modernizing Europe of his day, acknowledging the often predominant power of moeurs as opposed to laws and judicial interpretation in shaping history and a state’s evolution. It is perhaps in part due to these features of Montesquieu’s thought, along with his clear attachment to civil and political liberty, that mainstream nineteenth-century liberals could so easily take inspiration from Montesquieu and adapt his insights to the cause of the new liberal movement. The question remains as to how Montesquieu’s thought might offer insight into new challenges for the liberal tradition today. Coming to terms with the complexity of Montesquieu’s association with the liberal tradition in greater detail will involve three stages. First, it is necessary to recapture a sense of the place of traditional social orders in Montesquieu’s thought. To state it starkly, his is a theory of liberty without equality, in line with what some authors have identified as aristocratic liberalism, though also a position taken up by outright royalists.2 While he shares in a general ethos of humanism and is well known for his condemnation of slavery, his defense of established political and social orders is something quite distinct from modern forms of egalitarianism.
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Second, I will demonstrate that despite certain features in Montesquieu’s thought that do not fit comfortably with liberal tenets, aspects of his thinking were nonetheless taken up and celebrated by liberals of the post-revolutionary era. While the story of reception is complex and multifaceted, for purposes of this overview I will focus on three ideas largely derived from Montesquieu’s work that we now associate with modern liberalism: institutional and constitutional organization to guarantee political accountability and the rule of law; the associational foundations of liberty, pluralism and representative government; and an ethos of moderation and avoidance of cruelty in political life. These three aspects are interrelated, as all can be associated with a more general notion that the aim of politics should be limited rather than providing conditions for human flourishing in the boldest classical sense, and that the expectations of those occupying public office could be minimized given the partial work of institutional design to guard against the worst abuses of power. In conclusion, I suggest that a general commitment to liberty in theory may need to extend and push beyond the parameters often traced to the work of Montesquieu. Montesquieu’s work is often regarded as offering a basis for thinking about the promotion of liberty in conventional times, and the question remains how it might offer further insight into understanding broader threats to what might be described as the post-war liberal-democratic consensus.
’ It is not new to suggest that there are clearly ways in which Montesquieu does not fit neatly or directly within the liberal tradition. Contemporary scholarship tends to be divided on this question. Defenders of Montesquieu’s more modern outlook and predominantly liberal sympathies most recently include Keegan Callanan (a particularistic liberalism), Paul Carrese (sustainable liberalism), Dennis Rasmussen (pragmatic liberalism), as well as Annelien de Dijn (aristocratic liberalism).3 As Céline Spector documents, the tradition of characterizing Montesquieu as a liberal goes back to at least the beginning of the twentieth century starting with Emile Faguet.4 These more recent interpreters refine the link and read Montesquieu as providing a more subtle version of liberalism. Montesquieu is depicted as not just a defender of a certain conception of liberty that finds a home within liberal politics, but as a purveyor of a
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broader theory of nuance, moderation and attention to particulars, offering liberalism a more sophisticated array of tools to defend against charges of abstract universalism and of intolerance towards those unsympathetic to the liberal outlook. Spector reconsiders this long line of associating Montesquieu with the liberal tradition.5 There is clearly a resonance of certain motifs of the liberal tradition in Montesquieu’s work, such as a defense of liberty in opposition to despotism, a defense of commerce in opposition to mercantilism, and a defense of social and institutional pluralism in contrast to absolutist traditions advocating unitary models of sovereignty or intense civic devotion to the polity. However, Spector claims that the defects Montesquieu associated with England, including a certain lugubrious tone of social interaction, suggests a more complicated position. The regime devoted to a principle of liberty was not ideal, and so ultimately Montesquieu offered an argument for liberty tempered by moderation and the need to draw on customary sources for a deeper sense of social cohesion. While Spector’s account covers a great deal of what makes direct association of Montesquieu’s work with the liberal tradition more uneasy, I think it glides over what is perhaps the most glaring issue. This involves the question of the social structure that appears to be necessary for Montesquieu’s vision of political liberty. To demonstrate this, we need to return to Montesquieu’s text briefly. Equality is discussed in two key contexts for Montesquieu and for both we can see that equality has only a contingent and not a necessary relation to his conception of liberty. In Book 1 equality is identified as a feeling, or untutored intuition, that is barely felt by primitive beings “a peine chacun se sent-il égal” (EL 1.2).6 Political society brings three possible states of equality, two as pathological and one as productive. The first pathological equality is what Montesquieu calls the “extreme” equality of a republic in the process of corruption (SL 8.2). At this stage there is no longer any virtue in the republic because people seek to perform the functions of the magistrates and there is no longer any respect for senior political figures nor for parents or the aged. It corresponds to a general state of what Montesquieu (sounding somewhat like Plato here) calls not liberty but “libertinage” and is generally instigated by a corrupt, influential and ambitious leader looking for a direct route to political rule by flattering the people. This form of pathological equality can lead to the second, which is the equality found under despotism. This is an equality of shared precariousness and servility under the arbitrary rule of a despot. It is only
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a rare form of equality under republican government that can be productive, but in general terms it is more of a democratic aspiration than a reality, and it is generally promoted in economic terms through land distribution laws at the time of founding (SL 5.5). Liberty could be allied with equality in the context of certain republics, but this was rare given that democracies were prone to the influence of demagogues who often paved the way to despotism. In Montesquieu’s discussion of republics there is no robust defense of social equality as an ideal. When Montesquieu develops his account of political liberty, equality is not embraced as a condition of liberty (as we might assume in a postRousseauian world). As represented in perhaps its most prominent form in the British constitution, Montesquieu’s model of political liberty protects social distinctions and honors rather than eliminating them, through relying on the monarchy as a key institution, as well as an upper house populated by the highest levels of the aristocracy. These, as Montesquieu tells us, give elites a place in the legislative process proportionate to their other advantages in the state (SL 11.6, p. 160). Hereditary nobility and defense of their privileges appears as an important feature in Montesquieu’s vision of how political liberty functions in eighteenthcentury England, because the nobility confront both the lower House of Parliament as well as the king in defense of their deeper social interests. Indeed, it is because of the strength of these social divisions and a lack of anxiety concerning class division, that a practice of sociality among classes is possible (SL 19.27, p. 331). This is important for Montesquieu’s conception of political liberty because he argues that other intermediary bodies in England, such as the corporate power of cities, monasteries and feudal courts (bodies that still existed in France) had been eliminated with upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (Henry VIII eliminated the monasteries, and the civil war of the seventeenth century accelerated a process of centralization.) Those intermediary bodies, which could work to promote liberty in France by setting boundaries to institutional power, could not be relied on in the English case, making class and political divisions and negotiations crucial. Thus, as Montesquieu tells us, the English state will lose its liberty when “legislative power is more corrupt than executive power,” given that there are no other safeguards (SL 11.6, p. 166). This understanding was central to debates within liberalism in the post-revolutionary era in France. For some proponents of aristocratic liberalism, and often just outright royalists, the attachment to Montesquieu’s depiction led to the conclusion that political liberty in
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France could not be restored without reinstating the social distinctions and privileges that had been set aside in 1789.7 Still, the idea of aristocratic liberalism on reflection appears unsustainable, which might help to explain its lack of historical traction. The challenge for the notion is the question of liberty for whom. To put it starkly, in seeking to avoid the Charybdis of despotism, individuals are asked to embrace and enhance rigid social orders that carry the risk of even greater oppression and lack of opportunity from the Scylla of entrenched privilege and generational inequalities. So others who agreed on the desirability of political liberty suggested that the forces of social change had become too strong to reverse and that new forms of social equality were to be welcomed and harnessed to a modified model of institutional liberty.8 This points to a dichotomy in how to conceptualize the conditions for Montesquieu’s theory of liberty. It is helpful here to explore first the implication of this for Montesquieu’s discussion of the English context before looking at it in relation to France. From the English example (SL 11.6) the key to the theory appears to be not just a functional balance and coordination of legislative, executive and federative powers (following Locke), but the links of each of the legislative and executive powers to distinct social and economic constituencies. This confirms his point that the presence of political liberty in the legal and institutional structure may not guarantee that the citizens will actually enjoy liberty. To state it in another way, in his discussion of liberty Montesquieu fuses together the more ancient tradition of mixed government, calling for a mixing of classes to promote stability, with the more modern notion of the responsibilities of legislative power being shared among several institutional bodies to prevent tyranny. From this perspective in Montesquieu’s framework, liberty depends on inequality because it ensures that there are competing interests given institutional expression, and it is both their disagreement and their competing place in the institutional dynamic which ensures that no one group dominates and that they have to negotiate in devising and enforcing policy. This in turn can distill a more general sentiment of security. In addition, while the two houses of the legislative body rely on important distinctions of class and status, the power of judging, Montesquieu tells us, rotates and is not associated with any more fundamental status, profession, or permanent corps. For this reason, he suggests, it is seen to be invisible or, as he suggests, “null” (SL 11.6, p. 158). What is clearly essential in the English case is not simply the separation of
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institutional bodies but the connection between these bodies and entrenched, distinct social groups. When applying the same notion of liberty to the French case the matter is more complex. Due to the continued presence of localized powers such as monasteries, communes, local parlements, seigneuries and the like, there is an array of customary institutions that could provide a check on the government, only some of which are reliant on distinct class divisions. So while a basic presumption of social inequality also applies to many of Montesquieu’s prescriptive comments concerning the French constitution, it is not as uniquely tied to those class divisions. So, for example, his defense of the role of the parlements as a unique form of body providing a check on the legislative and executive powers of the French monarchy also includes a defense of the right of the bourgeoisie to buy into that office and status. And while the invocation of honor as the very principle or beating heart of monarchy ensures distinctions of family, office and achievement serve a central role in providing the friction needed to mitigate against the tendency toward despotism, the defense of position and status is by locality and not only order. Thus, there is a mixture of a defense of a generic social differentiation and defense of social status that is combined in Montesquieu’s notion of honor, allowing some to suggest that it can still have purchase today. Indeed, the concept of honor and its link to ideas of social difference and hierarchy as a motivation for independence against overreaching executive power has been invoked as a salutary feature of Montesquieu’s work even for our own contemporary liberal democratic regimes.9 The different expressions of social differentiation, that is in strict class terms or in terms of function or locality, help to account for the ways in which Montesquieu’s theory could be adapted to a robust defense of broader social and institutional pluralism than he may have initially intended in the French case. We see this clearly in a thinker like de Tocqueville, for whom the functionality of class divisions in the European case is replaced by the work of associational groups and local governments in promoting liberty. The absence of a rights-based theory of politics, despite the arguments of Locke and others before him, further lends weight to conceiving of Montesquieu’s theory of liberty as one that had largely presumed social inequality. Still, as some have pointed out, Montesquieu’s discussion of the ironies and inadequacies of arguments in defense of slavery, as well as his appeal to a certain sense of humanity and his defense of a more humane ethos ushered in with the spread of Christianity, all testify to his attachment to a certain notion of dignity due to all human beings.10
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Montesquieu’s appeal to dignity, combined with an attachment to established differential social orders in his depiction of political liberty, raises the question of what type of equality is necessary in a more modern defense of political liberty. The position of Montesquieu in theory was reflected in the evolution of liberal practice. As noted by the political historian Michel Winock, the first liberals of early nineteenth-century France, including the school of doctrinaires, were highly suspicious and resistant to political democracy and broader political participation precisely because they regarded political liberty as issuing from the protection of certain privileges of the aristocracy which served as a bulwark against despotic government.11 This is how some continental historians continue to view liberalism as noted at the outset of this chapter. Indeed, it was not really until the instauration of the Second French Republic in 1848 that political leaders in France established a regime acknowledging that equality and liberty could be reconciled under democratic institutions.12 This latter view is closer to how I have presented contemporary liberalism. Thus, while Montesquieu’s celebration of political liberty and elaboration of the means to promote it was central to the development of liberal ideas, we might better identify his work as important for a nascent form of contemporary liberalism.
If we leave aside the question of how central a commitment to social equality should be for liberalism, we can then address other features of Montesquieu’s thought that are more easily reconciled with the basic spirit of contemporary liberal commitments (as articulated in the opening paragraphs). The purpose of this section is to focus on aspects of Montesquieu’s theory which have been taken up and integrated more systematically into liberal thought.13 Here I focus on three: constitutional practice and institutional design; social foundations of representation and citizenship; and an ethos of moderation and the avoidance of cruelty.
, , A central principle of liberalism has generally been the need to protect and promote liberty through a set of constitutional or legal practices which ensure that political power is not only limited, but also used to enhance the public good, most often secured through measures making the holders
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of power accountable in some way to the people they are meant to serve. Montesquieu, of course, offers no systematic defense of free and fair elections, but his depiction of liberty as related to the constitution serves as a model for maximizing accountability in the terms his era could offer. As the account often goes, later theorists in the liberal tradition and those drafting constitutions in the wake of liberal revolutions from the eighteenth century onward took up his positive description of the historically contextual and informal tensions between the king and Houses of Parliament in England as a basis for a constitutionally entrenched fundamental law ensuring ongoing tension in the exercise of shared responsibilities and powers.14 Of course, while Montesquieu in 11.6 was describing principles of political liberty which had evolved independently and organically over time in English history, liberal theorists believed that by identifying and harnessing those principles they could design and create institutions to replicate, enhance and perpetrate indefinitely those same practices of liberty.15 Montesquieu’s apprehension of both the complexity and contingency in the evolution of public institutions is thus later overtaken by a greater confidence that such things can be managed through willful redesign and imposition. Benjamin Straumann has recently offered a genealogical account of constitutional thinking rooted in the political struggles of the late Roman republic but running through various thinkers such as Bodin, Hobbes and Montesquieu to the writers of the Federalist Papers, issuing in the modern tradition of constitutionalism.16 From this perspective, Montesquieu was an iconic voice (indeed, “formative for later political thought”) in a much deeper and longer tradition seeking means to fight against perceived tyranny and abuse of power.17 The central thrust of this depiction is to suggest that the language of virtue had less importance in the development of modern republicanism than a recognition of institutional structures and a constitutional balance of power as central to the preservation and promotion of political liberty. This is depicted as carrying into the work of John Adams and James Madison among others.18 A politics of institutional design to thwart the possibility of tyranny and as generated through reflection on the period of late Republican Rome is thought to be central in the fashioning of modern deontological liberalism, centered on the right as opposed to the good. To put it another way, the thrust of the modern liberal project to which Montesquieu is seen to have contributed, is to ensure that politics relies for protection against the abuse of power on impersonal institutional structures rather than personal virtue or character.
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Still, there are competing accounts regarding the precise institutional prescriptions proposed by Montesquieu or taken up in his name. So while some suggest that Montesquieu’s portrayal of the English constitution offered inspiration for the American Founders in a division of legislative and executive branches, others suggest that Montesquieu’s work is most significant as arguing for a federal division of powers, stemming from both his discussion of leagues for the defense of ancient city states as well as from his discussion of the Gothic constitution.19 Yet others highlight the importance of countervailing powers in intermediary bodies and groups, pointing to a sort of associational or sociological protection for liberty through both separate realms of jurisdiction and potential sources of power that could oppose the state when it is judged that political power is being abused.20 These various mechanisms are seen to work most effectively in the fashioning of law to ensure that law as enacted does not merely reflect a singular particular interest. Still, it is crucial to note that while Montesquieu valued political liberty as related to the distribution of power within political institutions, he noted the central importance of liberty as it relates to the citizen. What he meant is that from the perspective of the citizen who craved a sense of security (i.e., liberty), it was crucial that established law was followed and applied consistently – what some might call the rule of law. This ensured that the citizen would neither be subject to punishments beyond the letter of the law, nor would she be subject to arbitrary accusations, arbitrary arrest or indictment for imaginary crimes (SL 12.2). So in thinking about liberty Montesquieu placed the greatest importance on those sites where the citizen might feel the power of the state, or more precisely the abuse of this power, most directly in their own lives. The power of this idea in the context of eighteenth-century France should not be taken for granted. While the idea of the rule of law has become a standard pillar of modern liberal democratic regimes, it was by no means a given in Montesquieu’s day. Distinct, but closely related to this idea, is a demand growing from the precept of the rule of law that those in power also be subject to the law in the same way as citizens, and not use their power to avoid prosecution.
Montesquieu’s link to modern theories of representative government arguably is due less to his discussion of the English constitution, and more to his robust defense of commerce. By championing the
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contributions of the bourgeois class in the exchange of goods and services, Montesquieu helped to legitimize the new societal order through which many of the functions and limits of modern liberal orders were defined. As Constant famously argued in his 1816 speech, “The Liberty of the Ancients compared with that of the Moderns,” given that the modern social order is based on ever-expansive commercial activity, wellfunctioning modern political institutions can no longer depend on citizens who devote the majority of their time and energy to politics, but require that power is placed in the hands of duly elected representatives who can do the work of governance on the citizens’ behalf.21 For Constant, then, political liberty could no longer be associated with direct participation in government, as in the ancient democratic republics, but should be understood as giving citizens space and time to pursue their private interests. Montesquieu’s defense of commerce gave Constant the key to conceptualizing his idea of “the spirit of the moderns” to which political practices and institutions must accommodate themselves. The ancient-modern dichotomy, while invoked by Montesquieu in certain passages, was generally subservient to contextual factors of regime, space and social order.22 Commerce itself, while seen as mostly a modern phenomenon, was acknowledged by Montesquieu to take different forms (Book 21).23 By giving primacy to the ancient-modern distinction, liberals like Constant offered early defenders of liberalism a stronger sense of historical progress and destiny. Perhaps most notable in this regard was the work of Tocqueville and Hegel. In the wake of the French Revolution Tocqueville became convinced of the increased salience of democratic equality and the need for institutions to adapt in new ways to assure a practice of political liberty within some of the contours set by Constant. In Democracy in America Tocqueville looked to identify those associations in the American case which might serve as the functional equivalent of Montesquieu’s intermediate bodies in decentralizing power but no longer serving to fuel a sense of social distinction and primacy.24 Tocqueville acknowledged that a presumption in favor of social equality was beginning to hold sway and that liberty would no longer be served by social and political institutions grounded on ascriptive characteristics. Thus, the role of blocking and checking power exercised by longstanding, socially distinct and constitutionally entrenched powers of the parlements was seen to be taken on by local democratic assemblies and a more informal array of voluntary associations. In a more modest, but somewhat similar way, Hegel saw the potential in associations such as professional guilds and estates whose
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presence had been earlier dismissed as a legacy of feudalism. For Hegel these associations were regarded as part of a more general variegated social landscape whose functioning in the modern era could be seen as consonant with distinctly new aspirations to liberty.25 The underlying logic of the claim is that modern individualism, further reinforced by Romanticist currents in European culture, was complemented with a particular depth, complexity and richness of personal connections and social networks through which a more meaningful and complex sense of self was being forged. From this we can perceive a somewhat novel use of a common theme. In Montesquieu’s work, as we have already seen, the defense of distinct social groups and classes corresponding to the features of an aristocratic culture was a social condition on which the preservation of political liberty was possible, in part by avoiding an excessive concentration of power. In such thinkers as Tocqueville and Hegel we also perceive a celebration of an array of particular and distinct group identities. However, in the latter case the practice and flourishing of these groups not only helps to prevent despotic tendencies. Indeed, the very principles of association in voluntary terms of these groups serve to transform and educate their members. Thus, for Tocqueville and Hegel group association becomes an exercise in modern liberty as citizenship, all within the confines of the modern state and modes of representative government. The latter was a modern addition and liberal twist to an essentially Montesquieuian notion. Still, these developments revealed some of the challenges in the modern liberal project as distilled in part from Montesquieu. On the one hand, as Tocqueville and Hegel acknowledged, modern preoccupations were diverse and individuals often characterized their freedom as autonomy to pursue their own version of the good life in distinct ways, being free from imposition from others, and with this often delegating the task of governance. On the other hand, both also were fully aware that it was not adequate to suggest that modern freedom was idiosyncratic to the individual and concerned only private matters. The work of Tocqueville and Hegel sought ways to imbue modern citizens with a civic sense which would elevate and widen their perspective from the narrowness which excessive immersion in personal preoccupations might foster. For Tocqueville active participation in local associations and groups connecting individual concerns to a wider whole was a means by which this civic sense might be developed. For Hegel, it would appear that reflection on the broader framework and ultimately the state (understood as both
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government and society) and a phenomenological account of the modern individual in relation to the more general conditions underlying modern individualism was a means to foster that civic appreciation. Still, it may also be crucial to think about the tone in which power was to be wielded in the modern era. In other words, was civic-mindedness a sufficient condition of a modern liberal ethos?
What sort of individual characteristics or qualities might liberalism require? Judith Shklar famously drew on Montesquieu (and his predecessor Montaigne) to develop a model called the liberalism of fear.26 It was suggested that Montesquieu was one of the first thinkers in a transition to liberalism rejecting any notion of a singular good in collective life. This rejection stems from a recognition of the challenges of imposing any one idea of the good on a society characterized by competing conceptions (a lesson learned from both the devastation of the wars of religion and evils of moral persecution), and the existence of both “external plurality” and “internal plurality” to borrow a distinction from Bernard Manin.27 A shared abhorrence of cruelty, and the fear associated with it led thinkers to acknowledge, tolerate and in some contexts encourage, some of the lesser vices, or ordinary vices, in order to keep cruelty at bay. Thus, for Shklar, Montesquieu’s acknowledgement and acceptance of the mundane vices associated with monarchical honor and modern commerce served in part to instill an ethos of relative accommodation and tolerance and to undermine those driven by models of moral purity who might seek to discipline and chastise populations with harsh methods.28 The thrust of Shklar’s model of liberalism is that it was centered on a rejection of the worst that politics can deliver, namely cruelty (illustrated by Montesquieu’s depiction of despotism), while being silent on the nature of the human good. This was an important stage, Shklar argues, yet crucially for Shklar this is also an attempt to oppose those who argue for a modern deontological and depersonalized model of liberal governance where questions of character have no place. Her appropriation of Montesquieu suggests that there is a definite form of social psychology and of individual dispositions required by liberal practice. Liberal individuals are asked to tolerate some of the ordinary vices, such as hypocrisy and snobbery and some degree of misanthropy, all in the service of avoiding and repudiating cruelty.29
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Others have described Montesquieu’s model of moderation and citizenship in somewhat different terms, though still drawing on the principle of honor. For Krause, the motive of honor stemming from both extrinsic as well as inner causes is regarded as an important motivation for a principled defense of liberty on the part of some individuals in Montesquieu’s account. This is somewhat distinct from Shklar’s notion of a distilled social psychology that functions in the toleration of our foibles.30 Depicted by Krause as a motivation that is reducible neither to civic virtue nor self-interest, honor serves the cause of freedom especially in times when moderate regimes are under threat due to tyrannical and despotic intentions. The prototype for these high-minded gestures of honor is the refusal of the Viscount of Orte to engage in the massacre of Huguenots on the order of Charles IX, as noted in SL 3.5. The point for the current era is that contemporary liberal democratic regimes can, in times of crisis, depend on individuals with a strong sense of social distinction to stand up against either authorities or a culture of complacency that threaten to undermine the social fabric and the integrity of institutions. So despite attention to institutional and structural conditions as mechanisms to help mitigate against misuse of power, others suggest that these are not sufficient for Montesquieu. Just as regimes can only be understood through an exploration of both the nature and principle of governments, so any account of moderate regimes must include attention to psychological and moral factors or broad questions of a social ethos, while still not embracing a singular conception of the moral good.31 At the least subjects and citizens should acknowledge and value the mechanisms and institutions through which their freedom is partially promoted. So there are certainly aspects of Montesquieu’s thought providing an important basis for the subsequent formation and evolution of currents within the liberal tradition. The institutional conditions adapting an idea of the balance of powers for a practice of political liberty can be seen alongside a defense of social and associational pluralism. The latter plays its part both as a bulwark against potential abuse of power, and is noted later as a source of education in civic consciousness and in the forging of the depths of individual experience that enhance our modern notion of the self. Furthermore, Montesquieu’s notion of the principle of governments, and especially honor, has been tapped to develop an understanding of the ethos of liberal societies. From this has emerged an expectation of a social psychology combining a rejection of moral purity and a
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favoring of toleration; it also captures qualities needed to motivate a defense of liberty from below when leadership and institutional protections fail. Still, there are also important challenges to Montesquieu’s conceptions today. For many, liberty is no longer seen as a collective gain to be worked out through adjudication and deliberation among concerns, and a feature of a life in common, but rather a principle only relevant to individual priorities and considerations that leave no room for compromise with others. For Montesquieu, the spread of this narrow view of liberty was both a cause and symptom of the weakening of republican regimes, where people seek to be free against the law rather than guided by its reasonable application.32 And even where honor in a monarchical regime was understood by Montesquieu as compatible with a pointed notion of self-interest, moderation and freedom still dictated acquiescence to reasonable laws as well as to measures implemented to promote basic ends (i.e. minimal functions such as the preservation of life and of the community) of social organization.33 Contrary to the spirit of Montesquieu the promotion of the basic goods necessary to make a meaningful practice of liberty possible (e.g. health, adequate nourishment, education) have often come to be challenged in the name of a narrow view of liberty itself. Montesquieu’s preoccupation with despotism, given his own impressions of political life in France of the early eighteenth century, led him to be primarily concerned with preventing abuses of political power. What needs to be acknowledged, nonetheless, is that this stance is underpinned by a presumption that laws and governments are crucial to the preservation of community. While we see recourse to this logic in Montesquieu’s work, what may be required in response to some of the challenges to liberalism today is a more systematic attempt to articulate the features of the collective good to be pursued by governments as a background to liberty. While not ignoring some potential for abuse of political power, concern for liberty, and especially liberty for all, in the current era requires citizens to identify the benefits and needs met by collective life and to acknowledge threats to liberty in all its forms (technological, corporate, social and economic). The promotion of liberty requires that we balance the positive contributions of public regulation with the possibility of its abuse and so approach the use of public power with a much more nuanced appreciation to ensure that the positive benefits of collective life are managed justly and equitably.
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From the perspective developed in this chapter, Montesquieu offers us an important theoretical contribution in a long history devoted to the theme of liberty. Although starting from a position that appears to be far removed from the suppositions regarding social structure that we experience in the contemporary era, his work was a precursor to and highly inspirational for modern strands of liberalism both through considerations of institutional design and of social ethos in the service of freedom. He is separated from his nineteenth-century successors by the latter’s recognition and embrace of a reality of increasing social equality. However, in view of current and future challenges to liberal democracy there is something that may require further emphasis in Montesquieu’s account. What may be coming to light is the need to elucidate the components and identify the priorities within a thicker doctrine of the public and common good so that the conditions for a meaningful practice of liberty are more clearly understood and promoted.
Notes 1 This is an account articulated by Annelien de Dijn in a roundtable of the Brown Political Theory Project, October 9, 2020. See also her Freedom. This resembles the position of C. B. Macpherson, who argued for a necessary tension between liberalism and democracy. See his Life and Times of Liberal Democracy. 2 See, for example, Kahan, Aristocratic Liberalism and De Dijn, French Political Thought. De Djin uses the term “aristocratic liberalism” to designate a tradition of political reflection in the nineteenth century for thinkers who held liberty to be a dominant political principle and who sought to prevent despotic rule through social pluralism, often (but not necessarily) guaranteed with the existence of distinct social orders. It is to be distinguished from both laissez-faire liberalism (advocating the minimal state) and republican liberalism (selfgovernment as the solution). De Dijn’s understanding of “aristocratic liberalism” is distinct from Kahan in that it centers on the feature of pluralism rather than the idea of a social elite and hierarchy. The point I am making here is that despite Montesquieu’s inspiration for a tradition of thought that championed a notion of social pluralism, the essence of his argument does reflect a clear commitment to social hierarchy, as is evident in his understanding of monarchy. 3 Callanan, Montesquieu’s Liberalism; Carrese, Democracy in Moderation; Faguet, Politique comparée; Rasmussen, Pragmatic Enlightenment. 4 Spector, “Was Montesquieu Liberal?” 57–72. 5 Spector, Pouvoirs. 6 A (rather inelegant) English translation (“he scarcely feels himself an equal”) is drawn from SL, 1.2.
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7 This includes such royalist thinkers as Nicolas Bergasse and Charles Cottu. See De Dijn, French Political Thought, ch. 2. 8 This is a view associated with Francois Guizot and Benjamin Constant among others. 9 Krause, Liberalism with Honor. 10 See SL 15.1–15.19 for Montesquieu’s discussion of slavery, as well as Schaub, “Montesquieu on Slavery,” and Vickie Sullivan’s contribution to the present volume. Not all readers of Montesquieu agree on where Montesquieu stands on the issue. For a repudiation of Montesquieu’s presumed racism, see, for example, Lafontant, Montesquieu et le problème de l’esclavage. The issue became one of national focus in France recently as SL 15.5 was chosen for students to prepare for analysis in writing the baccalauréat exams. On the question of religion and its humanizing effect in Europe in matters of conquest, see SL 3. See also Kingston, “Religion.” 11 Winock, “La Démocratie,” 80. 12 Ibid., 81. 13 Less often acknowledged is the way in which Montesquieu’s thought was also used as a source or inspiration for non-liberal outlooks. See, for example, Bernard Yack’s discussion of the importance of Montesquieu’s depiction of republics for more radical strands of thought in the nineteenth century in Longing for Total Revolution. It is not often recognized that Godwin began his Enquiry Considering Political Justice as a commentary on Montesquieu’s work. 14 See, for example, Vile, Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers. 15 See, for example, Przeworski and Maravall, eds., Democracy and the Rule of Law, and Claus, “Montesquieu’s Mistakes,” 419–45. 16 Straumann, Crisis and Constitutionalism. See the “Epilogue” in particular for his tracing of the modern legacy of ancient constitutional thought. 17 Ibid., 324. 18 “Constitutionalism, not virtue, is the answer for Montesquieu and John Adams no less than for Bodin. Their new, constitutional republicanism insists on the limits of virtue and is dedicated to avoiding the fate of the Roman Republic: military despotism. To look at the history of political thought more broadly, it is clear that the increasing skepticism concerning virtue and eudaemonistic political theory as well as the corresponding turn to constitutional rules – a turn from teleological good to deontological right, to put it anachronistically – constitutes a crucial aspect of the protohistory of liberalism. We are now in a position to understand the contribution of late Roman republican constitutional thought to the early history of this consequential move.” Straumann, Crisis and Constitutionalism, 341. See also Rahe, Soft Despotism. 19 On the latter see Ward, “Montesquieu on Federalism,” 551–77. 20 Levy, Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom. See also his “Montesquieu’s Constitutional Legacies,” 115–37. 21 See Constant, “De la liberté des anciens.” 22 “The political men of Greece who lived under popular government recognized no other force to sustain it than virtue. Those of today speak to us only of manufacturing, commerce, finance, wealth, and even luxury” (SL 3.3).
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23 Further discussion of Montesquieu and Constant in relation to the theme of commerce and liberalism, see Larrère, “Montesquieu and Liberalism,” 279–301, as well as Catherine Larrère’s chapter on Montesquieu’s economics in Montesquieu’s Science of Politics. 24 De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, see especially Volume 1, Book 1.12. 25 Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, see especially 250–6, 270, and 288, where Hegel discusses the nature of the corporation and 301–20 on political representation mediated by the estates. On this theme also see Stillman, Hegel’s Civil Society: A Locus of Freedom, 622–46; Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society; and Villa, “Hegel, Tocqueville, and ‘Individualism,’” 659–86. 26 Shklar, Ordinary Vices. 27 Manin, “Montesquieu et la politique moderne,” 206–29, and taken up and drawn out in relation to Montesquieu and liberalism by Larrère in “Montesquieu and Liberalism,” 291–3. 28 A classic set of passages on this theme in Montesquieu’s work is his discussion of the principle of honor in monarchies, most notably in SL 3.6–3.8 and 4.2. 29 Again, while Montesquieu does not directly endorse a liberal stance given that he preceded the movement and was a defender of the ancien régime, there is a basis for Shklar’s distillation of Montesquieu’s message. Montesquieu’s principle of honor associated with monarchy combines an independence of spirit by which individuals are not held to any strict idea of moral purity, with a strong norm of politeness which engages everyone to accept the idiosyncrasies of others and to seek the company of others and even to please them regardless of our internal judgements. See SL 4.2. Arguably, while not stated as such by Montesquieu, such an approach lends itself well to a certain practice of toleration. 30 Krause, “The Politics of Distinction and Disobedience,” 469–99 and Liberalism with Honor. 31 “Only the disposition of the laws, and especially of the fundamental laws, forms liberty in its relation to the constitution. But, in the relation to the citizen, mores, manners, and received examples can give rise to it and certain civil laws can favor it. . .” (SL 12.1). 32 “One was free under the laws, one wants to be free against them. Each citizen is like a slave who has escaped from his master’s house. What was a maxim is now called severity; what was a rule is now called constraint. . .” (SL 3.3, p. 23). 33 “[P]olitical liberty in no way consists in doing what one wants. In a state, that is, in a society where there are laws, liberty can consist only in having the power to do what one should want to do, and in no way being constrained to do what one should not want to do” (SL 11.3).
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Index
abolitionism, 279 Académie de Bordeaux, xi, 3–5, 8, 12, 24 Académie des Inscriptions, 4 Académie des Sciences, 4 Académie Française, xii, 6, 12 accountability, 296–8 Adams, John, 280, 282–3, 297 adultery, 7 African slave trade, 53, 191–2 Alexander the Great, 137–8 Althusser, Louis, 54, 77, 230 American Revolution, 267 anarchy, 108 ancient Greece Montesquieu on, 51, 116, 125–6, 185, 209 slavery, 185, 187 state security, 154 virtue principle, 81–2, 85 women in, 204, 206–7 ancient Rome, see Roman Empire ancients, liberty of the, 159 Antillean islands, 219 Antonines, 48 Antony, Marc, 115 Arabs, 142 Arendt, Hannah, 217 arete, 81–2 aristocracy, 79, 89, 100, 108, 126 modern, 86–8 Montesquieu’s preferences for, 278 social, 80 Venetian, 87
aristocratic honor, 101, 122–4 aristocratic liberalism, 290, 293 Aristotle, 74, 80, 84, 278 Montesquieu on, 62, 188, 258, 260 Politics, 57–60 Aron, Raymond, 54, 147 Arsaçe et Isménie (Montesquieu), 202 atheism, 27, 276 Athens, Greece, 80, 87 Atlantic slave trade, 190–1 Attila, 50 Augustus, Caesar, 46, 66 Aurelian, 48 Austria, 130 authority, 67 Aztecs, 116 Babylonians, 200 Bank of Amsterdam, 220 Bank of England, 139, 220 Banque de France, 221 Barbeyrac, Jean, 94, 96–8 Barbon, Nicholas, 10 Barre, François Poullain de la, 199 battle of Blenheim, 3–4 Bayle, Pierre, 99, 238, 271 Bel, Jean-Jacques, 115 Belisarius, 51 Bell, David, 124 Benedict XIV, 272 benevolence, 114 Berlin, Isaiah, 147, 150 Bétique, 222
329
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Bibliothèque de l’Homme Public, 281 Bodin, Jean, 1, 162, 164, 167 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne Ligne, 35, 42 Boulainvilliers, Henri de, 86, 107, 127, 249, 253, 255, 271, 276 Brède, La, 2, 8, 10, 76 British South Seas Company, 140 Burgundy, 253 Burke, Edmund, 13, 267, 280, 282 Burlamaqui, Jean-Jacques, 97 Caesar, Julius, 44, 66, 115, 117 Caligula, 47 Callanan, Keegan, 177–8, 291 Cantillon, Richard, 216 Caribbean colonies, 47, 182–3, 190 Caroline of Anspach, 9 Carolingians, 254 Carrese, Paul, 291 Carthage, 39–40, 114, 137 catamites, 206 Catherine the Great, 266 Catholicism Index of Forbidden Books, xii, 16, 245, 272 Montesquieu’s views on, 16, 23, 106, 238, 240 Cato, 44–5, 128 Cato’s Letters, 9 censorship, 12, 42, 45 Céphise et L’Amour (Montesquieu), 202 Cercle des Philadelphes, 279 Chardin, Jean, 21 Charlemagne, 110, 253–4 Charles IX, 123, 170, 302 Charlie, Bonnie Prince, 9 Charron, 94 checks and balances, 102, 126, 147, 155, 172 Chesterfield, Lord, 9 China, 82, 110, 136, 218, 228 Christianity Montesquieu’s views on, 13, 16, 50, 91, 106, 186–8, 233, 235, 239–43, 245–6 slavery and, 186–8 women in, 240 chronology, xi–xii Cicero, 45, 76, 96 Montesquieu’s Ciceronian moment, 114–17
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On Duties, 117 Philippics, 115 citizenship, 298, 300 civic improvements, 203 civic virtue, 119, see also virtue civil liberty, 158–9 Clarke, Samuel, 97 class divisions, 80, 295 classical world, 76–92 democracy in, 78–9 republics of, 57–62 Claudius, 48 Cloaca Maxima, 203 Clovis of the Franks, 250, 255 Club de 1789, 281 Code Noir, 182–3, 193 Collectio Juris, 76 Collège de Juilly, xi, 1–2, 76, 114 colonial trade, 141, 219 colonialism, 270, 284 commerce, see also trade as constitutional, 224–5 democracy founded on, 87 as economic, 87, 143–5, 269–71, 290 forms of, 225–6 international, 142 of luxury, 88, 143–5 Montesquieu’s account of, 60–1, 106, 131–3, 269–71 Montesquieu’s defense of, 299 odes to, 222 science of, 216–17, 229 spirit of, 87–8, 228 virtue vs, 85, 90 see also trade commercial monarchy, 226–7, 263 commercial republics, 88, 120 common good, 284 Compagnie des Indes, 220 Complacent Enlightenment, 244–6 Condorcet, Marquis de, 56, 249, 281, 283–4 confederate republics, 284 consciousness, false, 139 Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and on their Decline (Montesquieu), 35–52, 149, 251 chronology, xii, 11 commercial success, 12 dominant themes, 77, 84, 116–17 interpretations, 77
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Index sovereign power in, 174 virtue in, 85 women in, 202–4 Considerations on the Wealth of Spain (Montesquieu), xii, 8 Conspiracy of Cellamare, 24 Constant, Benjamin, 125, 159, 299, 305 Constantine, 48–9 constitution(s), 296–8 British model, 102, 104–5, 154–7, 171, 276–8, 298 commerce as related to, 224–5 French history, 248–64 Gothic, 255–8, 298 constitutional liberty, 62 constitutionalism, 68–9, 71, 305 Consuls, 38 corruption, 102, 138 of democracy, 82–3 in European monarchies, 108 in republics, 211–12 Roman, 207 types of, 209 women and, 211–12 cosmopolitanism, 130–3 Craftsman, The, 9 Crete, 61, 207 d’Alembert, Jean Le Rond, 276 d’Orte, Viscount, 170 Dampier, William, 237 Darius, 137 Daudin, Guillaume, 219 Davis, David Brion, 183 de Dijn, Annelien, 153, 178, 291, 304 de la Motte, Antoine Houdar, 121 debt, public, 139 Decemvirs, 198 Defense of the Spirit of the Laws (Montesquieu), xii, 16, 27, 273–4 De l’esprit des lois (Montesquieu), see Spirit of the Laws, The (Montesquieu) democracy, 79–81, 89, 91, 100, 126 based on commerce, 15, 87 classical, 78–9 corruption of, 82–3 modern, 86–8 nature of, 79–81 Plato on, 84, 214 stable forms of, 83–4
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virtue principle of, 81–4 democratic liberty, 151 demographic concerns, 25, 269 De Officiis (“On Duties”) (Cicero), 115 Derathé, Robert, 77 Descartes, René, 27, 135, 148 despotism, 6, 12–13, 23, 68–70, 78–9, 91, 108–11, 201, 218, 285 climate and, 103 corruption in, 211 enlightened, 277 as form of government, 100–1, 222 how human nature can rise up against, 109 Montesquieu’s opposition to, 292 oriental, 136 slavery as, 182 sovereign power, 171, 173 Destutt de Tracy, Antoine, 56, 249, 280, 282–4 Dialogue between Sulla and Eucrates, A (Montesquieu), xi, 8, 114 Dialogue between Xanthippus and Xenocrates (Montesquieu), 8, 114 Diderot, Denis, 277 and Catherine the Great, 267 Encyclopédie (Diderot and d’Alembert), xii, 8, 276 dignity, 295 Diocletian, 48 diplomacy, 96 Discourse on Cicero (Montesquieu), xi, 76, 115 Discourse on the Equity that Must Determine Judgments and the Execution of the Laws (Montesquieu), 114 Discourses on Livy (Machiavelli), 5 Discourse of Trade, A (Barbon), 10 Discours sur l’histoire universelle (Bossuet), 35 Dissertation on the Policy of the Romans Regarding Religion (Montesquieu), xi, 5, 76 diversity, 107–11, 136 divine laws, 92 domestic slavery, 195, 240 Domitian, 47 Domville, William, 157 Duane, William, 282
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332
Dubois, Guillaume Cardinal, 7 Dubos, Jean-Baptiste, 86, 107, 236, 250, 253, 255 Dumont, Louis, 84 Durkheim, Émile, 54 Dutch Republic (United Provinces), 88, 269, 283 economical government, 218 economics (social science), 269 économistes, 217 economy commercial, 87, 143–5, 269–71, 290 luxury, 143–5 political, 106, 139–43, 216–29 Edict of Nantes, 23, 250 egalitarianism, 290 Egypt, 136, 200 Ehrard, Jean, 77, 85, 162, 164–5, 177 elites, 81 empire(s) definition of, 134–5 of fashion, 143–5 good enough, 137–9 of imagination, 141 internationalism, cosmopolitanism, and, 130–3 of political economy, 139–43 of science, 133–6, 139 Encyclopédie (Diderot and d’Alembert), xii, 8, 194–5, 276 England Bank of England, 139, 220 checks and balances, 172 commercial economy, 143–5, 269 Constitution, 102, 104–5, 154–7, 171, 276–8, 298 House of Commons, 156 House of Parliament, 293 intermediary bodies, 293 liberty in, 102, 154–6, 158, 257 monarchy, 79, 109 Montesquieu’s misgivings regarding, 15 Montesquieu’s travels through, 9, 131 Notes on England (Montesquieu), 105, 156–7 quasi-republican features, 130, 172 as representive regime type, 228 Second Hundred Years War, 131 separation of powers, 294
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Seven Years War, 130, 132 spirit of commerce, 228 state security, 153 tranquility, 228 War of Austrian Succession, 16, 132, 219 War of Spanish Succession, 3–4, 132–3, 220 Enlightenment characteristics, 26 Complacent Enlightenment, 244–6 German Enlightenment, 268 inauguration, 20, 31 liberalism, 71 Moderate Enlightenment, 245 Montesquieu’s influence over, 266–85 Protestant Enlightenment, 244 rationalism, 35 Religious Enlightenment, 244 Scottish Enlightenment, 264, 267 enslaved people Montesquieu’s unambiguous sympathy for, 184–6 women’s domestic enslavement, 195, 240 see also slavery environmental factors and esprit général, 102–7 see also nature and climate Epicurus, 43 equality absent homage to, 291–6 political, 80, 91 Esprit des lois (Montesquieu), see Spirit of the Laws, The (Montesquieu) esprit général, 52, 102–7, 273 Essay on the Causes that Can Affect Minds and Characters (Montesquieu), xii Essay on the Nature of Commerce in General (Cantillon), 216 Essay on Taste (Montesquieu) chronology, xii, 8 “On curiosity,” 31 Ethiopia, 241 ethnocentrism, 186 ethos of liberal societies, 302 Eugene, Prince of Savoy, 9 Europe model of monarchy, 13–15, 108 Montesquieu’s travels through, 8–10, 95, 131 republics, 88 Ewald, Johann Ludwig, 281
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Index executive powers, 105 Fable of the Bees, or: Private vices, Public Benefits (Mandeville), 118, 211, 221 “Fable of the Troglodytes, The,” 76, 117–18, 251, 260–4 Faguet, Emile, 147, 291 false consciousness, 139 false honor, 123 fashion, 25, 143–5, 211 fatalisme, 274, 276 fear, 101 liberalism of, 301 of God, 238 federal republics, 88 Federalist Papers (Madison), 123 Fénelon, François, 127, 222 Ferguson, Niall, 246, 280 feudalism, 69, 254, 256 Filangieri, 280–1 Fleury, André Hércule Cardinal de, 6, 219 Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de, 199, 271, 276 France, 9 Banque de France, 221 Burgundy, 253 Code Noir, 182–3, 193 colonies, 47, 182–3, 190, 193 Committee of Public Safety, 124 constitutional history, 248–64 corruption, 108 despotism, 224 Estates General, 140 false honor, 123 financial crisis, 26–7, 139–41, 220–1 foreign trade, 219 foundings and origins, 249–51 Gothic constitution, 255–8 intermediate powers, 68 law, 250 liberty, 152, 157 localized powers, 295 luxury economy, 143–5, 226–7 monarchy, 79, 85–6, 107–8, 130, 226–7 moral virtue, 121 National Assembly, 140, 279 political life, 303 population concerns, 270 as representive regime type, 228 Salic law, 252–4
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Second Hundred Years War, 131 Seven Years War, 130, 132 slavery, 182–3, 186, 190 sovereign power, 175 spirit of liberty, 157 state security, 153 War of Austrian Succession, 16, 132, 219 War of Spanish Succession, 3–4, 132–3, 220 women in, 212 Francis I, 121 Francogallia (Hotman), 250 Franks, 249, 252–4 Frederick, Prince of Wales, 9, 16 freedom of conscience, 23 Freemasons, xii, 10 French Revolution, 124, 140, 279, 281 Fréret, Nicolas, 271, 276 functionalism, 239 Gallienus, 48 Gaul, 249 Gay, Peter, 236 Gelon, king of Syracuse, 137 Genovesi, Antonio, 269 Geographica (Montesquieu), 4, 8, 95 George II, 9 German Enlightenment, 268 German historical jurisprudence school, 264 German tribes, 107 Germanic law, 252–3 Germanic liberty, 257 Germans, 64, 66, 254 Germany, 9, 88, 131 Giannone, Pietro, 9 good common, 284 political, 92 Gothic constitution, 255–8, 298 Goths, 49 government disposition of, 59 economical, 218 forms of, 100–2 moderate, 107–11, 126, 136, 174, 218 national, 284 natural, 55–6 popular, 81 representative, 298–301 self-government, 81 social foundations of, 298–301
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334 government (cont.) theory of, 78–9 Gravina, Gian Vincenzo, 9 Grotius, Hugo, 94, 96, 98–9 Grouvelle, Philippe-Antoine, 281
humanism, 84, 264, 290 Hume, David, 105, 267, 277 Huntington, Samuel, 246
Habermas, Jürgen, 217 Hadrian, 48 Haiti, 219 Hannibal, 40 Harrington, James, 154, 260 Hegel, G. W. F., 54, 299–301, 306 Helvetius, 248–9, 276 Henri VIII, 293 Henry I, 123 Henry III, 123 Henry VII, 37 Hervey, Lord, 9 Hinduism, 236 Histoire Véritable (Montesquieu), 202 history French constitutional, 248–64 of laws, 107 Montesquieu’s science of, 35, 40 philosophy of, 35 Hoang, 21 Hobbes, Thomas, 1, 12, 35, 97, 151, 162, 164, 167, 218, 256 Holland Bank of Amsterdam, 220 colonial atrocities, 132 commercial economy, 87–8, 136, 143–5, 226 financial crisis, 140 quasi-republican features, 130 spirit of commerce, 228 United Provinces, 88, 269, 283 Holy Roman Empire, 130 homosexuality, 206, 214 honor aristocratic, 100, 122–4 false, 123 Krause’s concept of, 301–2 Montesquieu’s concept of, 28, 112, 122–3, 170, 295, 302, 306 principle of monarchy, 85–6, 122–3, 223–4 vs virtue, 278 Hotman, Francois, 250 Huguenots, 250, 302 human laws, 92
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Incas, 116 Index of Forbidden Books, xii, 16, 245, 272 India, 236 individualism, 300 Inès de Castro (de la Motte), 121 inheritance laws, 208 In Praise of Sincerity (Montesquieu), 114 institutions, 296–8 intermediary bodies, 293 intermediate powers, 68, 166–8, 279 international commerce, 142 international law, 126, 137–9 internationalism, 130–3 Ireland, 145 Irene, Empress, 204 Islam, 24, 52, 235, 238, 240 Israel, Jonathan, 245 Istoria civile del regno di Napoli (Giannone), 9 Italy, 9, 130–1 Jacob, Margaret, 245 Jameson, Russell Parsons, 190 Jansenists, 16, 23, 272 Japan, 218 Jaucourt, Louis de, 194–5 Jefferson, Thomas, 56, 280–3 Jesuits Montesquieu and, 4, 16, 28, 233 Paraguay reductions, 61, 84 Jews, 196, 224 Jornandes the Goth, 109 judicial power, 155 judicial procedures, 64, 66, 108 Julian, 49 Jullian, Camille, 77 justice, 265, 281 Justinian, 51 Kelly, George Armstrong, 125 Krause, Sharon, 122, 148, 301–2 La Beaumelle, Laurent Angliviel de, 274–6 Lacedaemonia, 207 land reform, 208 Larrère, Catherine, 167–8, 174, 226, 306 Lartigue, Jeanne de, xi, 233
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Index law best legislation, 65, 67, 104 definition of, 94, 97–8 disposition of, 59 English Constitution, 102, 104–5, 171 Frankish, 252–4 French, 250 fundamental, 80 Germanic, 252–3 history of, 107 human vs divine, 92 inheritance, 208, 252 international, 126, 137–9 Montesquieu on, see Spirit of the Laws, The (Montesquieu) natural, 94, 97–8, 111, 127 Oppian, 208 positive, 98 and reason, 70–1 Roman, 252–3 rule of, 296–8 Russian Nakaz, 266 Salic, 252–4 Voconian, 208 Law, John, 4, 7, 9, 26–7, 139–41, 220–1 Laws (Plato), 36, 57–8, 60–2, 207, 211 Laxians, 65–6 legislation, see law legislative power, 105 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 35, 97, 136 Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy, 21 Letters from Xenocrates to Pheres (Montesquieu), xi, 8, 114 Lettres persanes (Montesquieu), see Persian Letters (Montesquieu) Leviathan (Hobbes), 151, 162 Lewis, Bernard, 246 liberalism aristocratic, 290–1, 293 Enlightenment, 71 erotic, 202, 211 ethos of liberal societies, 302 of fear, 301 Montesquieu’s legacy, 71, 303–4 neo-liberalism, 144 requirements for, 303 liberty ancient, 159 citizen, 298 of the citizen, 62–3 civil, 158–9
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constitutional, 62 definitions of, 148–53 democratic, 151 English, 257 freedom of opinion, 153 Germanic, 257 love of, 156 modern, 159, 300 Montesquieu’s conception of, 71, 147–8, 285 Montesquieu’s defense of, 291–6 philosophical, 148–9 political, 63, 126, 148–56, 217–18, 293, 298, 306 real, 153 spirit of, 157, 210 of women, 198–212, 268 Livy, 208 localized powers, 295 Locke, John, 1, 12, 35, 55, 97–8, 147 definition of liberty, 152 definition of tyranny, 65 Louis des Balbes de Crillon, 123 Louis IX, 254 Louis XI, 157 Louis XIII, 186 Louis XIV, 121, 250 age, 21 Code Noir, 182–3 death of, 219 diplomacy, 21 sovereign power, 108, 175 spirit of, 260 War of Spanish Succession, 3–4, 132 wars, 139 Louis XV, 5, 20 Louis XVI, 124 Louisiana, 47, 218, 220 Lucretia, 198, 203 luxury commerce of, 88, 143–5, 226–7 corrosive effect of, 120–1 in monarchy, 205, 208 odes to, 222 Roman, 207–8 Lycia, 88 Lycurgus, 60, 62, 119, 185, 206 Lysimachus (Montesquieu), xii
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336
Mably, 124 Machiavelli, 1, 5, 40, 114, 116, 250, 260, 271 Machiavellianism, 135, 225 Madison, 84 Madison, James, 123, 297 Malebranche, Father, 69, 97, 127 Malouet, Pierre-Victor, 282 Mandeville, Bernard Fable of the Bees, The, 211, 221 influence on Montesquieu, 127, 223–4, 262 Manent, Pierre, 124, 147 Manin, Bernard, 301 Marseilles, 88 Martinique, 219, 279 Marx, Karl, 132, 216 materialism, 135 Melon, Jean-François, 216 Memorandum on the Debts of State (Montesquieu), xi Memorandum on the Silence to Impose on the Constitution (Montesquieu), xii mens legum, 55 mercantilism, 292 Mes pensées (Montesquieu), 10, 57, 76, 95, 200, 271 Mes voyages (Montesquieu), 9, 95 Mexico, 41, 135–6 military government, 47 military practices, 39 Minos, 62 Mississippi Company, 26, 140, 220 Mithradates, 65 Moderate Enlightenment, 245 moderate monarchy, 211 moderation, 107–11, 120, 126, 136, 218, 271 Condorcet on, 281 as particular liberal ethos, 303 modern liberty, 159 modern monarchy, 85–6, 285 modern mores, 131 modern republic, 85–8, 148 Mohammedanism, 200, 235, 241 monarchy, 13, 15–16, 62, 78–9, 165 commercial, 226–7, 263 d’Holbach on, 278 English, 109 European, 13–15, 108–9 form of government, 100–1, 165, 222
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French, 85–6, 107 honor associated with, 85–6, 122–3, 170, 223–4, 306 luxury in, 208 moderate, 211 modern, 69, 79, 85–6, 285 opposition between republics and, 88–9 of reason, 67–71 relations between King and Parliament, 105 sovereign power, 164–71 stability of, 263 universal, 10, 15 as “a violent State,” 6 and virtue, 85–6, 121–3 monastic orders, 84, 107 Montaigne, Michel de, 1, 94, 127, 230 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de. see also specific works advice on how to resist tendencies which endanger moderate governments, 109–10 ambition, 96 antipathy to, 279–80 apologists of, 279–80 aristocratic preferences, 278 art of writing, 26 charges of spinosisme against, 271–3 chronology, xi–xii Ciceronian moment, 114–17 and classical world, 76–92 conception of democracy, 79–81 conservative core, 271 constitutionalism, 68–9, 71 cosmopolitanism, 130–3 criticism of, 280, 282–5 debts, 8 defense of liberty, 291–6 definition of law, 94, 97–8 definition of liberty, 71, 148–53 definition of monarchy, 165 definition of state, 68 discovery of principles, 8–10 “essential,” 54 female characters, 200 first principles, 94, 96–100 fundamental principles, 99–100 fundamental purpose, 192 grand tour of Europe, 8–10, 95, 131
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Index guiding principles and foundations, 94–111 historical perspective, 100, 107 influence over the Enlightenment, 266–85 last years, 16–17 legacy on slavery, 193–5 legacy on virtue, 123–6 liberal legacy, 71, 303–4 life and letters, 1 moderation, 271 naturalism, 272–3 opposition to atheism, 276 opposition to despotism, 91, 201 opposition to imperialism, 175 political economy, 216–29 political particularism, 55, 57–62 as President of the Parliament of Bordeaux, 76 principle of honor, 112, 122–3, 306 as proponent of Complacent Enlightenment, 244–6 radical tendencies, 271 reception, 285 religious skepticism, 232–7 religious toleration, 271 science of commerce, 216–17, 229 theory of governments, 78–9 theory of political liberty, 153–6 theory of separation of powers, 147 views on despotism, 292 views on religion, 24–5, 28, 43, 107, 232, 237–43, 247, 271–2 views on slavery, 103, 188–90, 290, 305 views on sovereignty, 162–76 views on Sparta, 119–20 on virtue, 113–26 and women’s liberty, 198–212 writings influenced by ethical concerns, 114 writings that addressed ethical themes, 114 Montesquieu, Denise de, xii Montesquieu, Joseph, 233 Montesquieu, Marie de, xi moral virtue, 116, see also virtue moralism, 26 More, Thomas, 260 mores (moeurs), 60, 82, 153 modern, 131 power of, 290 Roman, 207
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Mosher, Michael A., 165–6, 175, 177 My Thoughts (Montesquieu), see Mes pensées (Montesquieu) Naples, 267 Napoleon, 221 natural government, 55–6 natural law, 94, 97–8, 111 natural religion, 243 natural slavery, 188–90 naturalism, 97 nature and climate as ambivalent force, 112, 188–90, 218 and esprit général, 102–7 Montesquieu’s laws of nature, 272 and religious practices, 236–7, 241–2 and slavery, 103, 183, 188–90 neo-liberalism, 144 Nerva, 47 Neville, Henri, 154 New Science (Vico), 9 New World, 24, 217, 279 Newton, Isaac, 27 Nicole, Pierre, 1 nobles and nobility historical perspective on, 107 primacy of, 249, 278 North America, 267, 283 Notes on Cicero (Montesquieu), 27 Notes on England (Montesquieu), 105, 156–7 Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques, xii, 272 Nugent, Thomas, 157 Numa, 36–7, 187 Oakeshott, Michael, 57 Observations Regarding Natural History (Montesquieu), 8 Octavius, 45 Old Testament, 4 On the Motives that Should Encourage Us toward the Sciences (Montesquieu), xii, 8, 133, 135 On Consideration and Reputation (Montesquieu), 8 On Duties (Cicero), 117 On Political Liberty (Montesquieu), 153–4 On Politics (Montesquieu), 114 opinion freedom of, 153
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338 opinion (cont.) tyranny of, 65–7, 153 Oppian law, 208 Oratorians, 76 Origines iuris civilis (Gravina), 9 Orleans, Philippe d’, 139 Orte, Viscount, 123, 302 Ottoman Turkish Empire, 130
paganism, 50, 69 Paine, Thomas, 280, 284 Pangle, Thomas, 77, 147 Paraguay, 61, 84 Parlement of Bordeaux, xi, 8, 76 parliamentary practices, 105 parlements, 7, 28, 295 relations between King and Parliament, 105 Parthians, 48, 65 participatory republic, 148 particularism, political, 55, 57–62 partisanship, 12 Pascal, Blaise, 1, 94 patriarchy, 55 patriotism, 43 Pepin, 187 Pericles, 81–2 Persian Letters (Montesquieu), 5–7, 20–31, 131 anti-colonial stance, 270 chronology, xi classical references, 76 comments on despotism, 68 comments on Law’s System, 141, 226 comments on religion, 232, 234–5, 241 comments on science, 139, 142 corrections, 28 “Fable of the Troglodytes, The,” 76, 117–18, 251, 260–4 letter 74 (76), 29 new (1758) edition, 30 reception, 221–2 skepticism and relativism, 95 “Some reflections on the Persian Letters,” 28–30 success, 20, 23–4 Supplementary Letter three (77), 29 supplementary letters, 28 themes, 8, 117–18 women in, 198–200 “Persian Letters” convicted for impiety (Gaultier), 28
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Persians, 21 Peru, 41, 135–6 Peter the Great, 135, 138, 211 Pettit, Philipp, 148 Philip, Duke of Orléans, 26, 114, 219 Philippe II, 5 Philippics (Cicero), 115 philosophers, 27 philosophical liberty, 148–9 Physiocrats, 216, 218 Plato, 96, 210, 292 on democracy, 84 Laws, 36, 57–8, 60–2, 207, 211 Montesquieu on, 62, 127 Republic, The, 91, 173, 207 Statesman, The, 91 plebeians, 81 pluralism, social, 292, 302, 304 Plutarch, 36, 187 Pocock, John, 133 Poland, 130 political accountability, 296–8 political economy, 106, 139–43, 216–29 political equality, 80, 91 political good, 92 political liberty definitions of, 148–53 Montesquieu’s theory of, 63, 126, 147–56, 293, 298, 306 preconditions, 147 political particularism, 55, 57–62 political sociology, principle of, 54 political sovereignty, 162–4, see also sovereignty political virtue, 116, 118–19, 122, 125–6, see also virtue Politics (Aristotle), 57–60 polysynodie, 7 Pompey, 44 Poncet, Charles Jacques, 241 popular government, 81 population concerns, 25, 269 positive laws, 98 power, 163 ambiguity of, 164 checks and balances, 102, 126, 147, 155, 172 intermediate powers, 68, 166–8, 279 judicial, 155 limits on, 174 localized, 295
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Index of moeurs (mores), 290 preventing abuses of, 303 as relational, 168–76 separation of powers, 102, 147, 155, 294 sovereign, 168–76 prejudices, 2 destructive, 16, 136 eradication of, 192 Probus, 48 proselytism, 242 Protestant Enlightenment, 244 Protestants and Protestantism, 23, 106, 238, 240 Prussia, 130 pseudo-Helvétius, 56 public debt, 139 public institutions, 296–8 public opinion, tyranny of, 65–7, 153 public tranquility, 228 Pufendorf, Samuel, 1, 94, 96–9, 115 Punic wars, 114 Pylades, 66 Quesnay, François, 106, 216, 218 Quietism, 23 race theory, 280 Rahe, Paul, 147, 258 Rancière, Jacques, 84 Rasmussen, Dennis, 188, 291 ratio legis, 55 rationalism ancient political, 36 Cartesian, 94 Enlightenment, 35 reason law and, 70–1 monarchy of, 67–71 Reflections on the Character of Certain Princes and Certain Events in Their Lives (Montesquieu), xii, 114 Reflections on Universal Monarchy in Europe (Montesquieu), xii, 11–12, 15, 133, 217 relativism, 95 religion Montesquieu’s views on, 24–5, 28, 43, 91, 106, 232, 237–43, 247, 272 natural, 243 and politics, 232–46 utility of, 237–43
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religiosity, 37 Religious Enlightenment, 244 religious skepticism, 233–7 representative government, 298–301 Republic, The (Plato), 91, 173, 207 republic(s), 6, 13, 78–9, 283, 285 classical, 57–62, 79 commercial, 88, 120 confederate, 284 corruption in, 211–12 democratic, 284 European, 88 federal, 88 form of government, 100–1, 222 moderate, 108 modern, 85–8, 148 opposition between monarchies and, 88–9 participatory, 148 of Plato, 210 Roman Empire, 37–40 sovereign power, 169, 171 stability, 263 virtuous, 44, 62, 123–6 women in, 152 republican virtue, 93, 117–21, see also virtue Ricardo, David, 216 Richelieu, Cardinal, 108 Richter, Melvin, 261–3 right to freedom, 22 rights-based theory of politics, 295 Robespierre, Maximilien, 90, 124–5 Roman Empire autopsy of, 44–6 Bossuet on, 35 class divisions, 80 climb to its acme, 40–1 Cloaca Maxima, 203 Consuls, 38 corruption, 207 decay, 41–4 decline and fall, 48–52, 270 Eastern Empire, 51–2 empire, 134 expansion, 207 founders and foundings, 36–7 inheritance law, 208, 252 judicial procedures, 64, 66 lessons drawn from, 120–1 luxury, 207–8
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340
Roman Empire (cont.) military practices, 39, 187 Montesquieu on, see Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and on their Decline (Montesquieu); see Dissertation on the Policy of the Romans Regarding Religion (Montesquieu) mores, 82 new regime, 46–7 Plutarch on, 36 religion, 234 republic, 37–40 Senate, 40–2 state security, 154 tyranny of opinion, 66–7 warlike policy, 84 Western Empire, 48–50 women in, 200, 202–5, 207–9 Roman law, 252–3, 258 Oppian, 208 Voconian, 208 Roman virtues, 38–9, 116 Romanticism, 300 Romulus, 37, 66 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 54, 90, 103, 124, 162, 202, 281 royal appointments, 7 royal power, 69 Royal Society of London, xii, 10 rule of law, 296–8 Rush, Benjamin, 195 Russia, 268 expansion, 130 Montesquieu on, 103 Nakaz (legal code), 266 women in, 211 Saint Domingue, 190, 219, 279 Saint-Just, Louis Antoine Léon de, 90, 124 Saint-Méry, Médéric-Louis Moreau de, 279–80, 282 Saint-Pierre, Abbé de, 113, 132 Salic law, 252–4 Sannar, 241 Sarmatians, 200 satire, 25, 95, 141, 183, 192 Say, Jean-Baptiste, 216, 280, 283 Schaub, Diana, 191 Schmitt, Carl, 167 science, empire of, 133–6, 139
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Scottish Enlightenment, 264, 267 Scythians, 200 Second Hundred Years War, 131 Secondat, Jean-Baptiste de, xi, 30 seigneurialism, 225 self-government, 81, 153 Senate, Roman, 40–2 Servius Tullius, 37, 80 Seven Years War, 130, 132 Sextus Tarquinius, 203 Shackleton, Robert, 133, 273 Sharp, Granville, 195 Shklar, Judith, 158, 301 Sidney, Algernon, 1, 55 Siedentop, Larry, 246 skepticism, 94–5, 135 religious, 232–7 Skhlar, Judith, 84 slavery African slave trade, 53, 191–2 arguments against, 183, 193–5 Atlantic slave trade, 190–1 and Christianity, 186–8 as despotism, 182 domestic, 195, 240 justification for, 279–80 Montesquieu’s legacy on, 193–5 Montesquieu’s treatment of, 103, 182–95, 290, 305 Montesquieu’s unambiguous sympathy for slaves, 184–6 of Montesquieu’s time, 190–3 nature and, 188–90 Smith, Adam, 106, 216, 223, 230, 256 social differentiation, 295 social mobility, 290 social pluralism, 292, 302, 304 sociology, political, 54 Socrates, 36 Solon, 80, 92, 104 Sorkin, David, 244 sovereignty, 162–76 forms of, 168–76 in monarchy, 164–8 political, 162–4 Spain conquest of Mexico and Peru, 41, 116, 135–6, 141–2 enslavement and extermination of native peoples of America by, 185–6 monarchy, 79, 130
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Index War of Spanish Succession, 3–4, 132–3, 220 Sparta, 61, 82, 119–20, 185, 214 Spector, Céline, 55, 125, 228, 291 Spicilège (Montesquieu), 4, 8, 21, 95 Spinoza, 35, 245, 271, 275 spinozism (spinosisme), 97 charges against Montesquieu, 271–3 rebuttals, 273–6 spirit of commerce, 87–8 esprit général, 52, 102–7, 273 of commerce, 87–8, 228 of liberty, 157 tranquility of, 62–7 Spirit of the Laws, The (Montesquieu), 12–16, 28, 54–71, 76, 131, 145, 147 as authority, 193 borrowings from, 90 campaigns against, 272–3 chronology, xii classical influences, 77 criticism of, 280–5 Genevan edition, 244 influence on proponents of republicanism in France, 124 legacy, 267 moral purpose, 113 reception, 16–17, 54, 279 secret design, 147 St. John, Henry, 9 Starobinski, Jean, 21 state, 68 Statesman, The (Plato), 91 Stoicism, 45, 47–8, 53, 76, 96, 116 Straumann, Benjamin, 297 Strauss, Leo, 147 suitability, principle of, 55, 57, 62, 71 Suite de la Défense (La Beaumelle), 274 Sulla, Lucius Cornelius, 44, 114 Sweden, 130 Switzerland, 88, 130, 283 Sybarites, 202 “system,” 139–43 Tacitus, 48, 65, 107, 257 Tarquins, 198, 203 Tartars, 110 taxes, 25, 152 Temple of Gnidus, The (Montesquieu), xi, 8, 95, 201–2
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terminology, 216 Thebans, 206 Theodora, Empress, 204 Theodosius, 50 theologians, 27 Thiry, baron d’Holbach, Paul Henri, 276–81, 284 Thorild, Thomas, 280–1, 284 Thucydides, 81–2 Tiberius, 46 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 54, 295, 299–301 tolerance, religious, 271 Townshend, Charles, 9 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (Spinoza), 275 trade African slave trade, 53, 191–2 Atlantic slave trade, 190–1 colonial, 141, 219 foreign, 219 world, 269 Trajan, 47, 53 tranquility public, 228 of spirit, 62–7 Treatise on Duties, A (Montesquieu), xii, 8, 76, 95, 114–16 Treaty of Utrecht, 132–3 Treaty of Westphalia, 174 triumvirs, 66 Troglodytes, 76, 117–18, 251, 260–4 Tuck, Richard, 169, 177 tyranny deaf or muffled, 138 d’Holbach on, 278 of opinion, 65–7, 153 real, 65–6, 153 Tyre, 88 Ulrica Eleanor, Queen of Sweden, 24 Unigentius, 4 United Provinces (Dutch Republic), 88, 269, 283 universal monarchy, 10, 15 University of Bordeaux, xi, 2 University of Paris, xii vanity, 210 Venice, 87–8, 285 Vernet, Jacob, 244 Versailles, 7
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342 Vico, Giambattista, 9 Vidal-Naquet, Pierre, 81–2 Virginia, 198 virtue, 85, 113–26 arete, 81–2 civic, 119 commerce vs, 85, 90 honor vs, 278 monarchies and, 85–6, 121–3 Montesquieu’s legacy on, 123–6 moral, 116 political, 116, 118–19, 122, 125–6 principle of democracy, 81–4 republican, 44, 62, 93, 100, 117–21, 123–6 Roman, 38–9, 85, 116 wealth vs, 120–1, 127 woman’s, 121 Visigoths, 253 Voconian law, 208 Volney, Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de, 280 Voltaire, 26, 123, 136, 245, 276 admiration for Montesquieu, 7, 266 on John Law, 140 lettre de cachet against, 11, 13 religious skepticism, 234, 242–3 voting by casting lots, 80, 91 by choice, 80
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Voyage a Paphos (Montesquieu), 202 Voyages en Perse (Chardin), 21 Wang, see Hoang war Roman art of, 39 and slavery, 187–8 War of Austrian Succession, 16, 132, 219 War of Spanish Succession, 3–4, 132–3, 220 Warburton, William, 243 wealth, 120–1, 127 West Indies, 219 white supremacy, 280 will, general, 285 Williams, David, 282 Winock, Michel, 296 women, 285 administration by, 212 and corruption, 211–12 enslavement in household, 195, 240 intrinsic virtues, 121, 201 liberty of, 198–212, 268 in republics, 121, 152 world trade, 269 Xanthippus, 114 Yvon, Claude, 273
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DUNS SCOTUS Edited by EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY Edited by . . EARLY MODERN PHILOSOPHY Edited by EPICUREANISM Edited by EXISTENTIALISM Edited by ‘THE FEDERALIST’ Edited by . and . FEMINISM IN PHILOSOPHY Edited by and FICHTE Edited by and FOUCAULT nd edition Edited by FREGE Edited by and FREUD Edited by GADAMER nd edition Edited by . GALEN Edited by . . GALILEO Edited by GERMAN IDEALISM nd edition Edited by GREEK AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY Edited by HABERMAS Edited by . HAYEK Edited by HEGEL Edited by . HEGEL AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY Edited by . HEIDEGGER nd Edition Edited by HERMENEUTICS Edited by . and HIPPOCRATES Edited by . HOBBES Edited by HOBBES’S ‘LEVIATHAN’ Edited by HUME nd Edition Edited by and HUME’S ‘TREATISE’
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LIBERALISM Edited by LIFE AND DEATH Edited by LOCKE Edited by LOCKE’S ‘ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING’ Edited by LOGICAL EMPIRICISM Edited by and MAIMONIDES Edited by MALEBRANCHE Edited by MARX Edited by MEDIEVAL ETHICS Edited by MEDIEVAL JEWISH PHILOSOPHY Edited by . and MEDIEVAL LOGIC Edited by and MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY Edited by . . MERLEAU-PONTY Edited by and . . MILL Edited by MONTAIGNE Edited by MONTESQUIEU Edited by and . NATURAL LAW ETHICS Edited by NEWTON nd Edition Edited by and . NIETZSCHE Edited by and THE NEW CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO NIETSZCHE Edited by NOZICK’S ‘ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA’ Edited by and OAKESHOTT Edited by OCKHAM Edited by THE ‘ORIGIN OF SPECIES’
Edited by and .
PASCAL Edited by PEIRCE Edited by PHILO Edited by PHILOSOPHICAL METHODOLOGY Edited by ’ and ø
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY Edited by . and PIAGET Edited by ¨ , . . and PLATO 2ND EDITION Edited by and PLATO’S ‘REPUBLIC’ Edited by . . . PLOTINUS
Edited by .
THE NEW CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO PLOTINUS
Edited by .
and POPPER Edited by and PRAGMATISM Edited by
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QUINE Edited by . . RAWLS Edited by RENAISSANCE PHILOSOPHY Edited by RORTY Edited by THOMAS REID Edited by and ´ ROUSSEAU Edited by BERTRAND RUSSELL Edited by SARTRE Edited by SCHOPENHAUER Edited by THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT nd Edition Edited by and ADAM SMITH Edited by SOCRATES Edited by SPINOZA nd edition Edited by SPINOZA’S ‘ETHICS’ Edited by THE STOICS Edited by LEO STRAUSS Edited by . TOCQUEVILLE Edited by . UTILITARIANISM Edited by and VIRTUE ETHICS Edited by . WITTGENSTEIN 2nd Edition Edited by and
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