Everything about Charles De Secondat Baron De Montesquieu totally explained
Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (
January 18,
1689 in
Bordeaux –
February 10,
1755), was a
French social commentator and
political thinker who lived during the
Era of the Enlightenment. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of
separation of powers, taken for granted in modern discussions of
government and implemented in many
constitutions throughout the world. He was largely responsible for the popularization of the terms
feudalism and
Byzantine Empire.
Biography
After having studied at the Catholic
College of Juilly, he married. His wife, Jeanne de Latrigue, a Protestant, brought him a substantial dowry when he was 26. The next year, he inherited a fortune upon the death of his uncle, as well as the title Baron de
Montesquieu and
Président à Mortier in the
Parlement of Bordeaux. By that time, England had declared itself a constitutional monarchy in the wake of its
Glorious Revolution (1688–89), and had joined with
Scotland in the
Union of 1707 to form the
Kingdom of Great Britain. And in 1715 the long-reigning
Sun King, Louis XIV died and was succeeded by the weaker and more feeble Louis XV. These national transformations impacted Montesquieu greatly; he'd later refer to them repeatedly in his work.
Soon afterwards he achieved literary success with the publication of his
Lettres persanes (
Persian Letters, 1721), a
satire based on the imaginary correspondence of an
Persian visitor to
Paris, pointing out the absurdities of contemporary society. He next published
Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence (
Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans, 1734), considered by some scholars a transition from
The Persian Letters to his master work.
De l'Esprit des Lois (
The Spirit of the Laws) was originally published anonymously in
1748 and quickly rose to a position of enormous influence. In France, it met with an unfriendly reception from both supporters and opponents of the regime. The Roman Catholic Church banned
l'Esprit – along with many of Montesquieu's other works – in 1751 and included it on the papacy's notorious
Index. But from the rest of Europe, especially Britain, it received the highest praise.
Montesquieu was also highly regarded in the British colonies in America as a champion of British liberty (though not of American independence). Political scientist Donald Lutz found that Montesquieu was the most frequently quoted authority on government and politics in colonial pre-revolutionary British America. Following the American secession, Montesquieu's work remained a powerful influence on many of the
American Founders, most notably
James Madison of
Virginia, the "Father of the Constitution." Montesquieu's philosophy that "government should be set up so that no man need be afraid of another" reminded Madison and others that a free and stable foundation for their new national government required a clearly defined and balanced separation of powers.
Besides composing additional works on society and politics, Montesquieu traveled for a number of years through
Europe including
Austria and
Hungary, spending a year in
Italy and eighteen months in
England before resettling in
France. He was troubled by poor eyesight, and was completely blind by the time he died from a high fever in
1755. He was buried in L'église
Saint-Sulpice in Paris, France.
Political views
Montesquieu's most influential work divided French society into three classes (or
trias politica, a term he coined): the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the commons. Montesquieu saw two types of governmental power existing: the sovereign and the administrative. The administrative powers were the
legislative, the
executive, and the
judicial. These should be separate from and dependent upon each other so that the influence of any one power wouldn't be able to exceed that of the other two, either singly or in combination. This was radical because it completely eliminated the three
Estates structure of the French Monarchy: the
clergy, the aristocracy, and the people at large represented by the
Estates-General, thereby erasing the last vestige of a
feudalistic structure.
Likewise, there were three main forms of government, each supported by a social "principle":
monarchies (free governments headed by a hereditary figure, for example king, queen, emperor), which rely on the
principle of honor;
republics (free governments headed by popularly elected leaders), which rely on the
principle of virtue; and
despotisms (enslaved governments headed by
dictators), which rely on
fear. The free governments are dependent on fragile constitutional arrangements. Montesquieu devotes four chapters of
The Spirit of the Laws to a discussion of England, a contemporary free government, where liberty was sustained by a balance of powers. Montesquieu worried that in France the intermediate powers (for example, the nobility) which moderated the power of the prince were being eroded.
Like many of his generation, Montesquieu held a number of views that might today be judged controversial. While he endorsed the idea that a woman could head a government, he held that she couldn't be effective as the head of a family. He firmly accepted the role of a hereditary aristocracy and the value of
primogeniture. His views have also been abused by modern
revisionists; for instance, even though Montesquieu was ahead of his time as an ardent opponent of
slavery, he's been quoted out of context in attempts to show he supported it.
One of his more exotic ideas, outlined in
The Spirit of the Laws and hinted at in
Persian Letters, is the
meteorological climate theory, which holds that
climate may substantially influence the nature of man and his society. He goes so far as to assert that certain climates are superior to others, the temperate climate of France being ideal. His view is that people living in very warm countries are "too hot-tempered," while those in northern countries are "icy" or "stiff." The climate of middle Europe is therefore optimal. On this point, Montesquieu may well have been influenced by a similar pronouncement in The Histories of Herodotus, where he makes a distinction between the 'ideal' temperate climate of Greece as opposed to the overly cold climate of Scythia and the overly warm climate of Egypt. This was a common belief at the time, and can also be found within the medial writings of Herodotus' times, including the 'On Airs, Waters, Places' of the Hippocratic corpus. One can find a similar statement in
Germania by
Tacitus, one of Montesquieu's favorite authors. In a different perspective
Louis Althusser, in his analysis of Montesquieu's work, has pointed out the seminal character of the inclusion of material factors, such as climate, in the explanation of social dynamics and political forms
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