MONTESQUIEU, CHARLES-LOUIS DE SECONDAT, baron of - Jurist and philosopher, b. at La Brède on 18 January 1689, d. at Paris on 10 February 1755. Of a noble family of magistrates, he completed his studies at Juilly under the Oratorians (1700-1705). He then studied law at Bordeaux, where he became a lawyer in 1708; he completed his legal training at Paris (1709-1713). A councillor in the Parliament of Bordeaux in 1714, in 1716 he inherited from an uncle the name and barony of M. as well as the office of président à mortier in the Parliament of Bordeaux. More than to law, however, he devoted his attention to historical and scientific problems. In 1716 he was a member of the Académie des sciences of Bordeaux.
Numerous and of various subjects were the memoirs he presented to the aforesaid Academy: among them important are the Observations sur la politique des Romains dans la religion (1717), in which, anticipating the Considérations, he evaluates religion as a social fact. Numerous are the scientific writings, such as Sur la cause de l'écho; Sur l'usage des glandes rénales (1718); Sur la pesanteur des corps (1720) etc., of little value however, but which left an indelible imprint on the soul of M., accustoming him to the patient analysis of facts. But celebrity came to him from the publication of the Lettres Persanes (1721), received with the greatest favour. Against an Oriental background, often conventional, M. describes, through the mouth of two Persian travellers, the society of the Regency, with the eye of a moralist attentive to noting the licence of morals and the spiritual and political anarchy. Beneath the irony of the moralist one feels alive the passion of the scholar: hostility to despotism, love of tolerance, the search for a general law of human development founded on equilibrium and liberty: guiding principles of the Lettres which anticipate the profound analysis of the Esprit.
The success of the work opened to M. the most famous salons of Paris, those of Mme de Lambert and Mme de Tencin, where he formed ties with Fontenelle, Maupertuis, D'Alembert, Helvétius. Returned to his studies, he reads at the Entreval a Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate (1724), plans a Traité général des devoirs de l'homme, writes a spicy little novel, Le temple de Guyde (1725). But at the same time he attends to his major work: the interpretation of the general laws that regulate social life. For this reason, having sold his office in 1726, after being elected in '28 a member of the Académie Française, he sets out on a long journey in search of direct experience of institutions and customs. From 1729 to 1731 he is travelling through Europe. Important is his stay in England, which allows him to see the problem of political liberty in a new light. In 1734 there appear at Amsterdam the Considérations sur la grandeur et la décadence des Romains, a true philosophical interpretation of the history of Rome, in which he considers love of country, of liberty, of work and the equilibrium between institutions and the greatness of the country as the surest guarantees of the prosperity of a State. In 1748 the Esprit des lois comes out anonymously at Geneva, received with great approval. The work, in 31 books, aims to give a scientific systematization to social institutions, and is divided into three parts: in the first (bks. I-XIII) the various forms of government are studied with their animating principles, to which all institutions are traced back. In bk. XI, dedicated to the English Constitution, the theory of the separation of powers is set out. There follows (bks. XIV-XIX) the examination of the influence of physical and moral factors on the laws, the first example of a positive sociological inquiry. M. then examines the economic, demographic and religious aspects of the life of peoples (bks. XXI-XXV); there follow particular studies on the evolutions of Roman, French and feudal law. The political ideal that springs from the Esprit is an ideal of liberty, not however rationalistically determined, but rather derived from an attentive study of historical and environmental conditions. For this reason he studies attentively feudal forms, inasmuch as he finds in them the historical conditions of the development of French liberty, consecrated by the participation in power of the privileged classes. For this reason, although animated by a lively desire for reforms, M. is the champion of conservative liberalism, and therefore his work will be set aside by the democratic currents. In 1750, to react to the accusations of Spinozism and deism, he writes the Défense de l'Esprit des lois, to avoid the condemnation of Rome. As a sign of his submission, he wanted the priest at his deathbed.
Bibliography22 works
Sergio Cotta
Among the works of M. the following are on the Index: Les Lettres Persanes (decree 26 May 1762) for the anti-religious spirit that preludes the philosophical movement of the 18th century; openly anti-Catholic, in it he approves divorce, maintains the equality of religions, satirizes the dogmas, derides submission to the pope; he declares every question of doctrine vain, reducing all religion to social morality; L'esprit des lois (decree 29 Nov. 1751), where, perhaps for fear of censorship, he becomes more cautious, far less caustic, and does not fail even to praise the social task of the Church; nevertheless he continues to condemn celibacy, to proclaim all religions equal; he gives the laws a purely relative value, dependent on climate, customs, culture and the different utility that these elements come to create in society; he pursues a social utilitarianism, whereby political vices are not moral vices and moral vices are not political vices; proclaiming a clear and absolute division between morality and politics (cf. C. Costantin, s. v. in DThC, X, coll., 2377-88).