Writer and philosopherCharles Louis de Secondat, baron of Brède and Montesquieu. Famous for its theory of the separation of the powers, the philosophy of Montesquieu is characterized by a thorough knowledge of the history of Old and by the application of the method scientific of Newton to the political arena and social.
Founder of political liberalism, Montesquieu is also one of the founders of modern sociology.
Charles Louis de SecondatOn January 18th, 1689, Charles Louis de Secondat, future baron de Montesquieu, is born with the castle of Brède, close to Bordeaux. He is high there until his departure for the college of Juilly, where he discovers the philosophy of Malebranche. He returns to Bordeaux to follow studies of right, which he completes in Paris, where he assiduously attends the Academy of Science and the men of letters. Become president with mortar at the Parliament of Guyenne, in 1716, it continues scientific and literary activities: in 1721, it gains a great success with its Letters Persians.
To study the various systems of legislation, he traverses Europe during several years, remaining in particular in England and Italy. From 1731, sharing its life between Guyenne and Paris, he undertakes the drafting of his principal work, Of the spirit of the laws (1748). He publishes a long extract of it since 1734: Considerations on the causes of the size of the Romans and their decline. Whereas it loses little by little the sight, it continues, during the last years of its life, to defend its political theory, challenged in particular by the Jesuits and the Jansenists. He dies, in Paris, in 1755. (French Academy, 1728).
Reason and its lawsBeing based on the experimental method, Montesquieu defines the laws as “necessary reports which derive from the nature of the things”; they rationally explain the constant reports of divine creation, physics, of the animal life, but also of the men, even if impassioned nature, human ignorance and freedom lead to their violation and the revision of the laws morals, policies and civil. Unlike Hobbes, Montesquieu believes in a natural sociability and considers that with the companies the formation of positive laws starts, distinct according to their objects: law of nations, who regulates the reports of the nations, the political right, which draws up the relationship between controlling and controlled, and the civil law, which organizes the relationship between the citizens. By stating reports, the laws register the infinity of the particular cases in a general rational system. They are thus relating to the physique of a country, its climate, its manners, its economy, the religion which it practices, with the values, and, especially, with the nature and the principle of its government. This whole of reports forms the “spirit of the laws”, which must be in harmony with human nature and freedom.
Systems of laws
Montesquieu takes again the traditional typology of the political regimes - republic, monarchy, despotism - in order to define their nature, and especially their principle of action, essence to understand their respective systems of laws. Within the republican mode, it distinguishes the forms democratic and aristocratic according to whether sovereignty belongs to all or with some. The monarchical power is practiced in relation to fundamental laws and through intermediate bodies. The despotism, as for him, is exerted by only one for its only pleasure. This typology makes it possible to establish one second distinction, news, between the governments republican and monarchical, which are likely to be moderate, while the despotic mode, against nature, is put out of order. More than this categorization, it is the description within the “competence” of each government which is new. The republican mode has as a principle the virtue, which makes compatible the exercise of sovereignty by the people and his obedience; also it moderates the power of the aristocrats. The honor is the principle of monarchy because it forms and maintains distinctions and social statuses. Lastly, limiting the ambitions of the aristocrats and forcing the people, fear is the principle of the despotism. The combination of natures and the principles of the governments makes possible the moderation of the republic and monarchy, and marks the extreme disordered state of the despotism, that only the religion can attach. The moderate governments must establish the laws necessary to the conservation of their principles against the danger of their corruption in despotism.
Freedom by moderation
Political freedom, relating to the relationship between the citizen and the Constitution, and the civil liberty, which relates to the relationship between the citizen and the laws, form the essential object of spirit of the laws. Affirming that “any man who has power is carried to misuse it”, Montesquieu tries to find the means by which “the power stops the power” and to guarantee by there the freedom of the citizens. The Constitution of England, established on the separation of the powers, provides a model of moderate government of which the goal is freedom.
Distribution of the powers
Montesquieu distinguishes the legislative power and the executive power, but it attaches also an major importance to the distribution of the powers of the State: to prevent that part of the company does not fear another part, each one of them must have at least a power; in addition, it is advisable to establish functional bonds between legislature, executive and legal. This is why each power will have a double faculty: that to rule and that to prevent. Thus, none them could rule without being at the same time prevented by the counterweight of the one of the others. In fact, it is their collaboration which carries out the safety of the men and which protects them from the abuses from the power.
Political liberalism
But the opposition inaugurated by Montesquieu between being able and freedom, which does of him one of the founders of political liberalism, is not reduced to the separation of the powers. In the line of Locke, he considers that the political representation offers “the best species of government than the men could imagine”. Executive and legislature form two parties among the citizens free and jealous of their independence. To preserve this one, the citizens balance the power of the two parties. Thus placed in an impotent reciprocal hatred, the powers are maintained without never harming freedom. The principle of moderation is translated in this model, on the one hand, by the distribution of the powers of the State, on the other hand, by the representation of free citizens. While seeking “peace of mind which comes from the opinion that each one has its safety”, which defines political freedom, Montesquieu discovers the capacity of the laws to guarantee freedom.
The freedom of all
In the liberal design of the magistrate, freedom not means the right to do everything but “to do all that the laws allow; and if a citizen could do what they defend, it would not have any more freedom, because the others would have this power all the same”. Registered in legality, freedom is defined negatively, by the absence of encroachment on freedoms of others. It is the consequence not of a specific political regime but of the moderation of the governments which regulates the freedom of independence and excesses of the power. Montesquieu thus studies with an special attention the criminal laws and tax which relate to the situation of the citizen in the civil life and which make it possible the government to ensure the freedom of all.
The general spirit of a nation
Montesquieu is a sociologist as much as a political thinker and a philosopher of the history. The political writer allots an influence determining to the geographical factors on the mentality of a nation and the spirit of the laws. He thus inaugurates a theory of the climates and grounds, according to which the human society would vary according to physical factors whose consequences must be counterbalanced by the legislators: the laws have to fight against the negative tendencies generated by Asian heat or the cold, but they have to preserve the beneficial effects of the moderate climate. Montesquieu thus establishes an opposition between Asia and Europe, whose respective climates make first the ground of election of the constraint and second that of freedom.
This new assumption, anchored in the spirit of the Lights, according to which the geographical differences and the level in exploitation of the grounds would take part in the degree of freedom of the people, the evolution of their manners and the formulation of the civil laws, falls under a theory, more total, of “the general spirit of a nation”, which Montesquieu defines all at the same time by “the climate, the religion, the laws, the maxims of the government, the examples of the things passed, manners, manners”.
Economy
The economy is a fundamental means of the companies to moderate the political power. Thus, the trade and the currency, outlaws of the companies despotic but supported by the moderated governments, constitute a form of communication between the nations: they soften manners and contribute to peace, insofar as they bring closer the people by holding account to their mutual interest.
History and the spirit of the nations
Montesquieu, for which the great diversity of the laws and the nature of the governments is due to the variety of the social facts which determine them, is a philosopher of the history, neither fatalist nor relativist. In the picture which it draws of the history of the people, the institutions and manners, the whole of the factors which form the general spirit of the nations obeys a rational causality, already perceptible in the Considerations on the causes of the size of the Romans and their decline. According to him, it reigns a balance between the various causes: “When the ones act with force, the others yield to them of as much.” Also admits he with the men the capacity to inflect and correct all the tendencies which deviate from the principle of the moderate governments and which lead to the despotism.