Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La BrÃÆ'¨de et de Montesquieu ( ; French: Ã, [m? T? SkjÃÆ'¸] ; January 18, 1689 - February 10, 1755), commonly referred to only Montesquieu , is a French judge, letter man, and political philosophers.
He is best known for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, which is applied in many constitutions around the world. He is also known for doing more than any other writer to secure the place of the word "despotism" in political lexicon.
Video Montesquieu
Biography
Montesquieu was born in Château de la BrÃÆ'¨de in southwestern France, 25 kilometers (16 miles) south of Bordeaux. His father, Jacques de Secondat, was a soldier with a noble ancestor. His mother, Marie Françoise de Pesnel, who died when Charles was seven years old, was an heir who carried the Barony of La BrÃÆ'¨de title to the Secondat family. After his mother's death, he was sent to Juve Catholic College, a prominent school for the children of French nobility, where he remained from 1700 to 1711. His father died in 1713 and he became his uncle's ward, Baron de Montesquieu. He counseled the Bordeaux Parliament in 1714. In 1715 he married Jeanne de Lartigue, a Protestant, who eventually gave birth to three children. Baron died in 1716, leaving him his wealth as well as his title, and the office PrÃÆ' Â © sident ÃÆ' Mortier in the Bordeaux Parliament.
Montesquieu's early life occurred at a time of significant governance change. Britain had declared itself a constitutional monarchy after the Great Revolution (1688-89), and had joined Scotland in Union 1707 to form the United Kingdom. In France the longstanding Louis XIV died in 1715 and was replaced by the five-year-old Louis XV. This national transformation had a major impact on Montesquieu; he will refer them repeatedly in his work.
Montesquieu withdrew from legal practice to devote himself to study and writing. He achieved literary success with the publication of his book Lettres persanes Persia Persia (1721), a satire representing society as seen through the eyes of two imaginary Persian visitors to Paris and Europe, smartly criticized the absurdity of contemporary French society. He subsequently published ConsidÃÆ' Â © rations sur les causing de la grandeur des Romains et de leur dÃÆ' Â © cadence ( Considerations of Causes of Pomp and Decadence of Rome , 1734), is considered by several scholars, among his three famous books, as the transition from The Persian Letters to his main job. De l'Esprit des Lois ( The Spirit of the Laws ) was originally published anonymously in 1748. The book is rapidly rising to deeply influence political thinking in Europe and America. In France, this book meets with an unfriendly welcome from both supporters and opponents of the regime. The Catholic Church banned l'Esprit - along with many other Montesquieu works - in 1751 and included it in the Forbidden Book Index. It received the highest praise from all over Europe, especially England.
Montesquieu is also highly regarded in British colonies in North America as the champion of freedom (though not American independence). Political scientist Donald Lutz finds that Montesquieu is the most frequently quoted authority on the government and politics of British pre-revolutionary British colonialism, cited more by American founders than any other source except for the Bible. After the American revolution, Montesquieu's work remained strongly influential on many American founders, especially James Madison of Virginia, "Father of the Constitution". The Montesquieu philosophy that "governments must be set up in order not to be afraid of others" reminds Madison and others that a free and stable foundation for their new national government requires a clear and balanced separation of powers.
In addition to drawing up additional work in society and politics, Montesquieu traveled for several years through Europe including Austria and Hungary, spending a year in Italy and 18 months in England where he became a freemason, confessing to the Horn Tavern Accommodation in Westminster, before settling back in France. He was troubled by poor eyesight, and completely blind when he died of a high fever in 1755. He was buried in Saint-Sulpice, Paris.
Maps Montesquieu
Historical philosophy
Montesquieu's historical philosophy minimizes the role of individuals and events. He outlines the views in the Considà © rations sur les de la grandeur des Romains et de leur dÃÆ'  © cadence that every historical event is driven by the main movement:
This is not a coincidence that governs the world. Ask the Romans, who have a continuous sequence of successes when they are guided by a certain plan, and the uninterrupted reversal sequence as they follow others. There are general, moral and physical causes, which act in every monarchy, lift it up, defend it, or throw it to the ground. All accidents are controlled by this cause. And if the chances of a single battle - that is, a particular cause - have brought the country to ruin, some common cause requires the country to perish from one battle. In short, the main trend is interesting with it all certain accidents.
In discussing the transition from Republican to Empire, he suggested that if Caesar and Pompey did not work to seize the Republican government, others would rise in their place. The cause is not Caesar's or Pompey's ambitions, but human ambitions.
Political view
Montesquieu is credited as one of the progenitors, including Herodotus and Tacitus, anthropology, as one of the first to extend comparative methods of classification to political forms in human society. Indeed, the French political anthropologist Georges Balandier regarded Montesquieu as "the initiator of a scientific enterprise that temporarily assumes the role of cultural and social anthropology". According to the social anthropologist DF Pocock, Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws is "the first consistent effort to survey human variety varieties, to classify and compare them and, in society, to study inter-institutional functions." The anthropology of politics Montesquieu raises his theories of government. When Catherine the Great wrote he had the Nakaz (Instructions) for the Legislative Assembly he made to clarify the existing code of Russian law, he claimed to borrow much from Montesquieu Spirit of the Laws , though it disposes or alters parts that do not support Russia's absolute bureaucratic monarchy.
Montesquieu's most influential work divides French society into three classes (or trias politica, the term he created): monarchy, aristocracy, and the common. Montesquieu sees two types of government power: rulers and administration. Administrative power is executive, legislative, and judicial. These must be separated from and dependent on one another so that the influence of one force will not be able to transcend the other, either singly or in combination. This is a radical notion because it completely eliminates the three structures of the French Monarchy Plantation: the clergy, the aristocracy, and the people represented by the Estates-General, thereby erasing the last remnants of feudalism.
His famous articulation of the theory of separation of powers is found in The Spirit of the Laws :
Ã, Â « In every government there are three types of power: the legislature; the executive in matters that depend on state law; and executives in cases that depend on civil law.
Ã, Â « Under the first, a prince or judge imposes a temporary or lasting law, and modifies or aborts the persons who have been imposed. At the second moment, he makes peace or war, sends or receives embassies, establishes public security, and provides against invasion. In the third, he punishes criminals, or determines the disputes that arise between individuals. The latter we call the power of the judiciary, and the other, only, the executive power of the state.
Montesquieu argues that every Power should only perform its own functions, that is quite explicit here:
When the legislative and executive powers unite in the same person, or within the same body of judges, there is no freedom; for fear may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should impose tyrannical law, to execute it by tyranny. Â »
Again, there is no freedom if judicial power is not separated from the legislature and the executive. If joining the legislature, the life and freedom of the subject will be subject to arbitrary controul; for judges to become legislators. If it joins the executive power, the judge may behave with violence and oppression.
There will be the end of every thing, whether the same person, or the same body, whether the nobles or the people, to use these three powers, ie enforce the law, to carry out a public resolution. , and try individual causes. Â »
If the legislature appoints executive and judicial power, as Montesquieu indicates, there will be no separation or distribution of power, for power to lift brings the power to uproot it.
The power of the executive should be in the hands of a king, because this branch of government, which requires delivery, is better managed by one than by many: on the other hand, whatever depends on the legislative power, often better governed by many people than by one person.
However, if there is no king, and executive power must be exercised for certain persons, elected from the legislature, there will be an end to freedom, for the reason that the two forces will unite; as the same people will sometimes have, and will always be able to have, share in both.
Likewise, there are three main forms of government, each supported by a social "principle": monarchy (free government headed by a hereditary figure, eg, king, queen, emperor), who depend on the principle of honor; republic (free government led by elected leaders), who depend on the principle of virtue; and despotism (a government enslaved by a dictator), which depends on fear. Free government depends on fragile constitutional arrangements. Montesquieu devotes four chapters from The Spirit of the Laws to a discussion of Britain, a contemporary free government, in which freedom is sustained by a balance of power. Montesquieu worries that in France the middle power (ie, the nobility) that moderates the prince's powers is being eroded. These power control ideas are often used in the thoughts of Maximilien de Robespierre.
Montesquieu precedes his time in advocating the renewal of great enslavement in The Spirit of the Laws. As part of his defense, he presents a list of hypothetical arguments about slavery, which has been open to context. However, like many of his generations, Montesquieu also held a number of views that may be considered controversial today. He firmly accepts the role of the hereditary aristocracy and the value of the eldest son, and while he supports the idea that a woman can become head of state, he argues that he can not be effective as a head of the family.
While speaking to the French readers of his General Theory, John Maynard Keynes describes Montesquieu as "the original French equivalent of Adam Smith, the greatest economist, your head and shoulders above the physiocrats in penetration, foresight and common sense (which is the quality one must possess economists). "
Meteorological climate theory
Another example of Montesquieu's anthropological thinking, described in The Spirit of the Laws and hinted at in Persian Letters, is his meteorological climate theory, which states that climate can greatly affect human nature and community. By placing an emphasis on environmental influences as material conditions of life, Montesquieu sees the attention of modern anthropology with the impact of material conditions, such as available energy sources, organized production systems, and technology, to the growth of complex socio-cultural systems.
He went so far as to assert that certain climates were superior to others, temperate climate France became ideal. His view is that people living in very warm countries are "too hot-tempered", while those in northern countries are "cold" or "stiff". Therefore, the climate of Central Europe is optimal. At this point, Montesquieu may have been influenced by similar statements in Herodotus's
Philip M. Parker in his book Physioeconomics endorsed Montesquieu's theory and argued that many inter-country economic variations are explained by the physiological effects of different climates.
From a sociological perspective, Louis Althusser, in his analysis of Montesquieu's revolution in methods, alludes to the seminal character of the inclusion of anthropological material factors, such as climate, in the explanations of social dynamics and political forms. Examples of certain climatic and geographic factors that give rise to an increasingly complex social system include factors that are conducive to the rise of agriculture and the domestication of wild plants and animals.
List of masterpieces
- Memoirs and discourses at the Bordeaux Academy (1718-1721): including discourse on echoes, on the kidney gland, on body weight, on body transparency and on natural history.
- SpicilÃÆ'¨ge ( Gleanings , 1715 and so on)
- SystÃÆ'¨me des idÃÆ' Â © es ( System Ideas , 1716)
- Lettres persanes ( Persian , 1721)
- Le Temple de Gnide ( Temple of Gnidos , a poetry prose; 1725)
- Histoire vÃÆ' Â © ritable ( True History , daydreams, c 1723-c 1738)
- ConsidÃÆ' Â © rations sur les cause de la grandeur des Romains et de leur dÃÆ' Â © cadence (Considerations for the Causes of Roman Greatness and Their Decline , 1734) in Gallica
- Arsace et Ismà © nie ( Arsace and IsmÃÆ' nà © nie , a novel; 1742)
- De l'esprit des lois (On) the Legal Spirit , 1748) (volume 1 and volume 2 of Gallica)
- La dÃÆ' Â © fense de Ã, Â «L'Esprit des loisÃ,» ( In Defense of the "Spirit of the Law" , 1750)
- Essay sur le goÃÆ'Â »t ( Essay on Taste , pub 1757)
- Mes PensÃÆ' Â © es ( My Mind , 1720-1755)
The definitive edition of Montesquieu's work is being published by SociÃÆ' © tà © à © Montesquieu. It is planned a total of 22 volumes, where (on February 2018) half has appeared.
See also
- Environmental determinism
- Liberalism
- The list of abolitionist pioneers
- List of liberal theories
- Napoleon
- French politics
- Jean-Baptiste de Secondat (1716-1796), his son
- US. Constitution, influence
References
Note
Bibliography
Articles and chapters
Books
External links
- Work by Montesquieu in Project Gutenberg
- Works based on or about Montesquieu in the Internet Archive
- Works by Montesquieu on LibriVox (public domain audiobook)
- Full text is free to work online
- Legal Spirit (Volume 1) 1748 English-language audio
- The complete collection of Montesquieu e-books in French.
- Lettres persanes at athena.unige.ch (in French)
- Montesquieu, "Notes on the UK"
- Montesquieu in The Catholic Encyclopedia.
- Montesquieu in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Montesquieu Life Timeline
- "Montesquieu", Institut d'histoire des reprÃÆ' Â © sentations et des idÃÆ' Â © es dans les modernitÃÆ'Â © s (in French)
- ChÃÆ' Â ¢ teau Saint Ahon - Historic house once owned by Charles de Montesquieu
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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