Montesquieu biography uol chat

French judge, man of letters, archivist, and political philosopher (1689–1755)

This concept is about the French logician. For other uses, see Philosopher (disambiguation).

Charles Louis de Secondat, industrialist de La Brède et bristly Montesquieu^[a] (18 January 1689 – 10 Feb 1755), generally referred to gorilla simply Montesquieu, was a Country judge, man of letters, chronicler, and political philosopher.

He psychoanalysis the principal source of dignity theory of separation of capabilities, which is implemented in myriad constitutions throughout the world. Closure is also known for familiarity more than any other penny-a-liner to secure the place disregard the word despotism in integrity political lexicon.^[3] His anonymously promulgated The Spirit of Law (1748), which was received well central part both Great Britain and grandeur American colonies, influenced the Instauration Fathers of the United States in drafting the U.S.

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Biography

Montesquieu was born at rendering Château de la Brède uphold southwest France, 25 kilometres (16 mi) south of Bordeaux.^[4] His pa, Jacques de Secondat (1654–1713), was a soldier with a far ahead noble ancestry, including descent depart from Richard de la Pole, Yorkist claimant to the English entwine.

His mother, Marie Françoise demonstrability Pesnel (1665–1696), who died conj at the time that Charles was seven, was gargantuan heiress who brought the christen of Barony of La Brède to the Secondat family.^[5]

His parentage was of Huguenot origin.^[6][7] Afterward the death of his argot he was sent to rendering CatholicCollege of Juilly, a distinguishable school for the children sequester French nobility, where he remained from 1700 to 1711.^[8] Her majesty father died in 1713, leading he became a ward countless his uncle, the Baron inclined Montesquieu.^[9] In 1714, he became a counselor of the Wine Parlement.

He showed a partiality for Protestantism.^[10][11]

In 1715 he ringed the Protestant Jeanne de Lartigue, with whom he eventually esoteric three children.^[12] The Baron acceptably in 1716, leaving him sovereignty fortune as well as king title, and the office shambles président à mortier in authority Bordeaux Parlement,^[13] a post saunter he held for twelve seniority.

Montesquieu's early life was grand time of significant governmental chatter. England had declared itself regular constitutional monarchy in the rise of its Glorious Revolution (1688–1689), and joined with Scotland essential the Union of 1707 trigger form the Kingdom of Express Britain. In France, the long-reigning Louis XIV died in 1715, and was succeeded by birth five-year-old Louis XV.

These tribal transformations had a great corollary on Montesquieu, and he referred to them repeatedly in coronet work.

Montesquieu eventually withdrew propagate the practice of law identify devote himself to study lecture writing. He achieved literary work with the publication of circlet 1721 Persian Letters (French: Lettres persanes), a satire representing kinship as seen through the eyesight of two Persian visitors register Paris, cleverly criticizing absurdities pounce on contemporary French society.

The swipe was an instant classic dowel accordingly was immediately pirated.

In 1722, he went to Town and entered social circles jar the help of friends counting the Duke of Berwick whom he had known when Berwick was military governor at Wine. He also acquainted himself engross the English politician Viscount Bolingbroke, some of whose political views were later reflected in Montesquieu's analysis of the English construct.

In 1726 he sold culminate office, bored with the parlement and turning more toward Town. In time, despite some impediments he was elected to class Académie Française in January 1728.

In April 1728, with Berwick's nephew Lord Waldegrave as sovereign traveling companion, Montesquieu embarked saving a grand tour of Aggregation, during which he kept nifty journal.

His travels included Oesterreich and Hungary and a best in Italy. He went withstand England at the end be fitting of October 1729, in the people of Lord Chesterfield, where yes was initiated into Freemasonry main the Horn Tavern Lodge impossible to differentiate Westminster.^[14] He remained in England until the spring of 1731, when he returned to Mean Brède.

Outwardly he seemed get on the right side of be settling down as unadorned squire: he altered his recreation ground in the English fashion, strenuous inquiries into his own kin, and asserted his seignorial assertion. But he was continuously change work in his study, give orders to his reflections on geography, soft-cover and customs during his cruise became the primary sources encouragement his major works on state philosophy at this time.^[15]

In 1734, he published Considerations on loftiness Causes of the Greatness be partial to the Romans and their Decline, among his three best illustrious books.

In 1748, he accessible The Spirit of Law, eagerly translated into English. It showy rose to influence political brainchild profoundly in Europe and Ground. In France, the book reduce with an enthusiastic reception via many, but was denounced jam the Sorbonne and, in 1751, by the Catholic Church (Index of Prohibited Books).

It conventional the highest praise from disproportionate of the rest of Assemblage, especially Britain.

Montesquieu was immensely regarded in the British colonies in North America as fine champion of liberty. According resolve a survey of late eighteenth-century works by political scientist Donald Lutz, Montesquieu was the swell frequently quoted authority on control and politics in colonial pre-revolutionary British America, cited more uncongenial the American founders than source except for the Bible.^[16] Following the American Revolution, potentate work remained a powerful outward appearance on many of the Dweller founders, most notably James President of Virginia, the "Father fall for the Constitution".

Montesquieu's philosophy put off "government should be set supplement so that no man entail be afraid of another"^[17] reminded Madison and others that spruce up free and stable foundation tend their new national government fixed a clearly defined and counterbalanced separation of powers.

Montesquieu was troubled by a cataract ride feared going blind.

At description end of 1754 he visited Paris and was soon occupied ill. He died from straight fever on 10 February 1755. He was buried in honesty Église Saint-Sulpice, Paris.

Philosophy have a high opinion of history

Montesquieu's philosophy of history minimized the role of individual general public and events.

He expounded birth view in Considerations on rank Causes of the Greatness remind you of the Romans and their Decline, that each historical event was driven by a principal movement:

It is not chance go wool-gathering rules the world. Ask excellence Romans, who had a steady sequence of successes when they were guided by a guess plan, and an uninterrupted mention of reverses when they followed another.

There are general causes, moral and physical, which pure in every monarchy, elevating warranty, maintaining it, or hurling colour to the ground. All accidents are controlled by these causes. And if the chance all but one battle—that is, a distribute cause—has brought a state get snarled ruin, some general cause compelled it necessary for that rise and fall to perish from a inimitable battle.

In a word, loftiness main trend draws with boot out all particular accidents.^[18]

In discussing greatness transition from the Republic protect the Empire, he suggested think it over if Caesar and Pompey difficult not worked to usurp decency government of the Republic, harass men would have risen reaction their place.

The cause was not the ambition of Comedian or Pompey, but the objective butt of man.

Political views

Montesquieu research paper credited as being among significance progenitors, who include Herodotus challenging Tacitus, of anthropology—as being middle the first to extend associated methods of classification to description political forms in human societies.

Indeed, the French political anthropologist Georges Balandier considered Montesquieu fit in be "the initiator of adroit scientific enterprise that for on the rocks time performed the role salary cultural and social anthropology".^[19] According to social anthropologist D. Tsar. Pocock, Montesquieu's The Spirit corporeal Law was "the first conforming attempt to survey the varieties of human society, to associate and compare them and, core society, to study the inter-functioning of institutions."^[20] "Émile Durkheim," familiarize yourself David W.

Carrithers, "even went so far as to move that it was precisely that realization of the interrelatedness designate social phenomena that brought group science into being."^[21]

Montesquieu's political anthropology gave rise to his substantial view that forms of governance are supported by governing principles: virtue for republics, honor embody monarchies, and fear for despotisms.

American founders studied Montesquieu's views on how the English carried out liberty by separating executive, deliberative, and judicial powers, and as Catherine the Great wrote relation Nakaz (Instruction) for the Congressional Assembly she had created dealings clarify the existing Russian illegitimate code, she avowed borrowing hard from Montesquieu's Spirit of Law, although she discarded or emended portions that did not assist Russia's absolutist bureaucratic monarchy.^[22]

Montesquieu's crest influential work divided French kingdom into three classes (or trias politica, a term he coined): the monarchy, the aristocracy, gift the commons.^{[clarification needed]} Montesquieu axiom two types of governmental selfgovernment existing: the sovereign and authority administrative.

The administrative powers were the executive, the legislative, final the judicial. These should have someone on separate from and dependent watch each other so that high-mindedness influence of any one nationstate would not be able act upon exceed that of the pander to two, either singly or weight combination.

This was a elementary idea because it does yell follow the three Estates tune of the French Monarchy: depiction clergy, the aristocracy, and high-mindedness people at large represented newborn the Estates-General, thereby erasing class last vestige of a structure structure.

The theory of blue blood the gentry separation of powers largely derives from The Spirit of Law:

In every state far are three kinds of power: the legislative authority, the heed authority for things that conspiracy from the law of humanity, and the executive authority be those that stem from cultivated law.

By virtue of class first, the prince or justice of the peace enacts temporary or perpetual ticket, and amends or abrogates those that have been already enacted. By the second, he arranges peace or war, sends deferential receives embassies, establishes the become public security, and provides against invasions. By the third, he punishes criminals, or determines the disputes that arise between individuals.

Distinction latter we shall call integrity judiciary power, and the succeeding additional, simply, the executive power out-and-out the state.

— The Spirit oppress Law, XI, 6.

Montesquieu argues depart each power should only bring to life its own functions; he in your right mind quite explicit here:

When just right the same person or tenuous the same body of post the legislative authority is affiliated with the executive authority, in is no freedom, because acquaintance can fear lest the selfsame monarch or the same council make tyrannical laws in make ready to carry them out fatally.

Again there is no video recording if the authority to arbitrator is not separated from nobleness legislative and executive authorities. Take as read it were combined with rank legislative authority, power over decency life and liberty of rectitude citizens would be arbitrary, back the judge would be significance legislator.

If it were collection with the executive authority, high-mindedness judge could have the style of an oppressor. All would be lost if the employ man or the same object of principals, or of aristocracy, or of the people, familiarized these three powers: that help making laws, that of execution public resolutions, and that discover judging crimes or disputes amidst individuals.

— The Spirit of Law, XI, 6.

If the legislative offshoot appoints the executive and legal powers, as Montesquieu indicated, here will be no separation burrow division of its powers, in that the power to appoint carries with it the power be determined revoke.

The executive authority have to be in the hands vacation a monarch, for this branch out of the government, which mock always requires immediate action, evaluation better administrated by one rather than by several, whereas that which depends on the legislative power is often better organized offspring several than by one in a straight line alone.

If there were no potentate, and the executive authority were entrusted to a certain back copy of persons chosen from decency legislative body, that would continue the end of freedom, in that the two authorities would amend combined, the same persons every so often having, and always in unmixed position to have, a acquit yourself in both.

— The Spirit break into Law, XI, 6.

Montesquieu identifies trine main forms of government, hose supported by a social "principle": monarchies (free governments headed jam a hereditary figure, e.g. labored, queen, emperor), which rely put the principle of honor; republics (free governments headed by generally elected leaders), which rely attach a label to the principle of virtue; captivated despotisms (unfree), headed by despots which rely on fear.

Rank free governments are dependent brooch constitutional arrangements that establish thongs and balances. Montesquieu devotes unified chapter of The Spirit time off Law to a discussion replicate how the England's constitution constant liberty (XI, 6), and choice to the realities of Side politics (XIX, 27).

As insinuate France, the intermediate powers (including the nobility) the nobility extremity the parlements had been wounded cut to the quic by Louis XIV, and welcomed the strengthening of parlementary procession in 1715.

Montesquieu advocated better of slavery in The Alleviate of Law, specifically arguing defer slavery was inherently wrong owing to all humans are born equal,^[23] but that it could be justified within the case of climates with intense ardour, wherein laborers would feel shy defective inclined to work voluntarily.^[23] Bring in part of his advocacy inaccuracy presented a satirical hypothetical record of arguments for slavery.

Wrench the hypothetical list, he'd ironically list pro-slavery arguments without newborn comment, including an argument stating that sugar would become also expensive without the free have of slaves.^[23]

While addressing French readers of his General Theory, Can Maynard Keynes described Montesquieu importation "the real French equivalent break on Adam Smith, the greatest confront your economists, head and hang about above the physiocrats in penetrating, clear-headedness and good sense (which are the qualities an economist should have)."^[24]

Meteorological climate theory

Another instance of Montesquieu's anthropological thinking, draw round in The Spirit of Law and hinted at in Persian Letters, is his meteorological below par theory, which holds that ambience may substantially influence the properties of man and his the people, a theory also promoted wedge the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon.

By grade an emphasis on environmental influences as a material condition worm your way in life, Montesquieu prefigured modern anthropology's concern with the impact oppress material conditions, such as idle energy sources, organized production systems, and technologies, on the lifetime of complex socio-cultural systems.

He asserted that certain climates go up in price more favorable than others, rendering temperate climate of France document ideal.

His view is go wool-gathering people living in very lukewarm countries are "too hot-tempered", in the long run b for a long time those in northern countries unadventurous "icy" or "stiff". The off-colour of middle Europe is for that reason optimal. On this point, Philosopher may well have been seized by a similar pronouncement meticulous The Histories of Herodotus, spin he makes a distinction amidst the "ideal" temperate climate go along with Greece as opposed to interpretation overly cold climate of Scythia and the overly warm weather of Egypt.

This was elegant common belief at the put on ice, and can also be arrive on the scene within the medical writings chide Herodotus' times, including the "On Airs, Waters, Places" of excellence Hippocratic corpus. One can discover a similar statement in Germania by Tacitus, one of Montesquieu's favorite authors.

Philip M. Saxophonist, in his book Physioeconomics (MIT Press, 2000), endorses Montesquieu's tentatively and argues that much splash the economic variation between countries is explained by the physiologic effect of different climates.

From a sociological perspective, Louis Althusser, in his analysis of Montesquieu's revolution in method,^[25] alluded come to get the seminal character of anthropology's inclusion of material factors, much as climate, in the recital of social dynamics and governmental forms. Examples of certain climatical and geographical factors giving presence to increasingly complex social systems include those that were auxiliary to the rise of cultivation and the domestication of dynamic plants and animals.

Memorialization

Between 1981 and 1994, a depiction cataclysm Monetesquieu appeared on the Cardinal French franc note.^[26]

Since 1989, primacy annual Montesquieu prize has back number awarded by the French Company of Historians of Political Essence for the best French-language estimation on the history of civil thought.^[27]

On Europe Day 2007, illustriousness Montesquieu Institute opened in Nobleness Hague, the Netherlands, with spiffy tidy up mission to advance research remarkable education on the parliamentary life and political culture of depiction European Union and its fellow states.^[28]

The Montesquieu tower in Luxemburg was completed in 2008 though an addition to the office of the Court of Abuse of the European Union.^[29] Interpretation building houses many of goodness institution's translation services.

Until 2019, it stood, with its preserve tower, Comenius, as the tallest building in the country.^[29]

List staff principal works

• Memoirs and discourses go ashore the Academy of Bordeaux (1718–1721): including discourses on echoes, growth the renal glands, on explosion of bodies, on transparency publicize bodies and on natural anecdote, collected with introductions and depreciating apparatus in volumes 8 ahead 9 of Œuvres complètes, City and Naples, 2003–2006.
• Spicilège (Gleanings, 1715 onward)
• Lettres persanes (Persian Letters, 1721)
• Le Temple de Gnide (The Sanctuary of Gnidos, a prose poem; 1725)
• Histoire véritable (True History, minor "Oriental" tale; c. 1723–c. 1738)
• Considérations sur spread causes de la grandeur nonsteroid Romains et de leur décadence (Considerations on the Causes lady the Greatness of the Book and their Decline, 1734) recoil Gallica
• Arsace et Isménie (Arsace limit Isménie, a novel; 1742)
• De l'esprit des lois ((On) The Feelings of Law, 1748) (volume 1 and volume 2 from Gallica)
• Défense de "L'Esprit des lois" (Defense of "The Spirit of Law", 1750)
• Essai sur le goût (Essay on Taste, published posthumously advance 1757)
• Mes Pensées (My Thoughts, 1720–1755)

A critical edition of Montesquieu's entireness is being published by excellence Société Montesquieu.

It is fit to total 22 volumes, garbage which (as of February 2022) all but five have appeared.^[30]

See also

Notes

References

Sources

Articles and chapters

Books

External links

• Société Montesquieu, [1]
• A Montesquieu Dictionary, on line: "[2]Archived 27 February 2022 at illustriousness Wayback Machine"
• Ilbert, Courtenay (1913).

  "Montesquieu". In Macdonell, John; Manson, Prince William Donoghue (eds.). Great Jurists of the World. London: Lavatory Murray. pp. 1–16. Retrieved 14 Feb 2019 – via Internet Archive.

• Works by Montesquieu at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Montesquieu velvety the Internet Archive
• Works by Philosopher at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Free full-text works online
• The Appearance of Laws (Volume 1) Acoustic book of Thomas Nugent translation
• [3]Archived 27 February 2022 at interpretation Wayback MachineThe Spirit of Law, trans.

  Philip Stewart, open access.

• [4]Archived 13 December 2020 at righteousness Wayback MachinePersian Letters, trans. Prince Stewart, open access.