Montesquieu

Overview

Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, was a French magistrate and man of letters whose The Spirit of the Laws took some twenty years to write. It treats law comparatively, asking how the laws of a country relate to its climate, religion, commerce, customs and form of government, which makes it an ancestor of political science and sociology as well as of constitutional theory. Its most consequential passage describes the English constitution as securing liberty by placing legislative, executive and judicial power in separate hands - a reading disputed as a description of England, but one that became the template for later constitution-writers, particularly in the United States. He also argues that each form of government rests on an animating principle, virtue in a republic, honour in a monarchy, fear in a despotism, and survives only as long as that principle holds. Books XI and XII are the place to start; the work is long and the rest can be sampled.

Where to start reading

• The Spirit of the Laws 1748

  A comparative study of legal and political systems, containing the account of separated powers that later constitutions were built on.

• Persian Letters 1721

  A satirical novel in letters, using two Persian travellers in Paris to examine French institutions and manners from the outside.

Part of

• Liberalism
• Republicanism

Sources

1. Baron de Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
2. Montesquieu Wikipedia