Montesquieu. Charles Louis de Secondat, Lord of the Brède and Baron de Montesquieu. He was a French chronicler and political thinker who lived in the so-called Enlightenment.
He is one of the most relevant illustrated philosophers and essayists especially for the articulation of the separation of powers theory, which is taken for granted in modern debates about governments, and has been implemented in many constitutions throughout the world.
His thought must be framed within the critical spirit of the French Enlightenment , evident in features such as religious tolerance, the aspiration for freedom and his concept of happiness in the civic sense, although he will distance himself from other authors of the time for his search of a more concrete and empirical knowledge as opposed to the dominant abstraction and deductive method.
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 2 Philosophy of its history
- 3 His greatest work
- 4 Vision and legacy
- 5 Works
- 6 Phrases
- 7 Religion
- 1 Death
- 8 Sources
- 9 External links
Biographical synthesis
He was born on 18 of January of 1689 at La Brède, near Bordeaux, in a noble and prosperous family.
He studied at the Juilly Catholic School of Oratory and a law degree following family tradition, first at the University of Bordeaux and later in Paris, coming into contact with the intellectuals of the French capital. In 1714 , after the father’s death, he returned to La Brède where he joined the Parliament of Bordeaux as a counselor. He will come to live under the protection of his uncle, the Baron de Montesquieu, who upon his death will leave as a legacy both his fortune, as well as his title of Baron and the position of President of Parliament ( 1716 – 1727 ). In 1715 he married Jeanne Lartigue, a Protestant who brings him a significant dowry when he was 26 years old.
In 1716 he inherited from his uncle the title of Baron de La Brède and de Montesquieu and the office of the President a Mortier in the Parliament of Bordeaux, which was at the time primarily a judicial and administrative body. For the next eleven years he chaired La Tournelle , the criminal division of parliament, in which the ability to hear court proceedings, the prisons supervised and administered various punishments such as torture. During this time he has also actively participated in the Bordeaux Academy, where he kept abreast of scientific advances, and gave him papers on topics ranging from the causes of the echoes to the reasons that should lead us to continue the sciences.
In 1721 Montesquieu published The Persian Letters , which was an immediate success and made Montesquieu a literary celebrity. (He has published the Persian Letters anonymously, but their author was an open secret.) He began to spend more time in Paris, where he frequented salons and acted on behalf of parliament and the Bordeaux Academy. In 1725 he sold his interest in life in his office and left parliament. In 1728 he was elected to the French Academy, despite religious opposition, and shortly afterwards he left France to travel abroad. After visiting Italy , Germany , Austria and other countries, he went to England, where he lived for two years.
Upon his return to France in 1731 , concerned about poor vision, Montesquieu returned to La Brède and began work on his masterpiece, The Spirit of the Laws. In 1755 Montesquieu died of a fever in Paris , leaving behind him an unfinished essay on the flavor of Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie .
Philosophy of its history
Montesquieu’s philosophy of history minimizes the role of individuals and events. He presents his point of view in Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence that each historical event was inspired by an event, movement in particular. “If a particular cause, such as the accidental result of a battle, has ruined a state, then there was a general cause that determined the fall of that state as a result of a single battle.
His greatest work
Montesquieu’s two most important works are the Persian Letters and The Spirit of the Laws. While these works share certain themes – most notably the fascination with non-European societies, and a horror of despotism – that are very different from each other, and will be treated separately.
Vision and legacy
Montesquieu developed John Locke’s ideas about the division of power. In his work “The Spirit of the Laws” he expresses admiration for English political institutions and stated:
the law is the most important thing in the State.
He is considered one of the precursors of liberalism and was the one who developed the theory of the separation of powers.
Plays
- Les causes de l’écho
- The Kidney Glans
- The cause of the pesanteur des corps
- The damnation éternelle des païens ( 1711)
- Système des Idées ( 1716)
- Persian Letters ( 1721)
- Le Temple de Gnide (novel 1724)
- Arsace et Isménie ( 1730novel )
- Considerations on the causes of the greatness of the Romans and their decline ( 1734)
- The spirit of the laws ( 1748)
- Defense of “The Spirit of the Laws” ( 1750)
- Pensées suivies de Spicilège
Phrases
- Friendship is a contract by which we make ourselves small
favors for others so that others make them great.
- To be really great, you have to be with people, not above them.
- To be successful in the world, you have to look crazy and be wise.
- When one seeks so much the way of making oneself fear, one always finds first that of making oneself hated.
Religion
Religion plays a minor role in the Spirit of the Laws. God is described in book 1 as the creation of nature and its laws, if he had done so, he disappears, and no further motives play a role. In particular, Montesquieu does not explain the laws of any country, appealing to divine enlightenment, providence, or orientation. In the spirit of the laws, Montesquieu considers religions “in relation only to the good that they produce in civil society “, and not to their truth or falsity. He refers to different religions in his case to different environments and forms of government. Protestantism is best suited to republics, Catholic monarchies and Islam to despotism, the Islamic ban on eating pork is appropriate toArabia , where pigs are scarce and contribute to the disease, while in India, where livestock are urgently needed but not thriving, the ban on eating meat is adequate. Thus, “when Moctezuma so obstinately insisted that the religion of the Spanish was good for his country, and his for Mexico , he did not assert an absurdity.”
Religion can help alleviate the effects of bad laws and institutions, it is the only thing capable of serving as a control over despotic power. However, in Montesquieu’s view it is generally a basic error of civil laws on religious principles. Religion aims at the perfection of the individual, civil laws aim at the welfare of society. Given these different goals, what these two sets of laws often require differ, for this reason, religion “should not always serve as a first principle of civil law.” Civil laws are not an adequate instrument to enforce religious standards of conduct: God has His own laws, and He is very capable of enforcing them without our help.
Death
He dies on February 10 , 1755 .
