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Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (18 January 1689 – 10 February 1755), generally referred to as simply Montesquieu, was a French judge, man of letters, historian, and political philosopher.
May 15, 2024 · Montesquieu, French political philosopher whose principal work, The Spirit of Laws, was a major contribution to political theory. It inspired the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Constitution of the United States. Learn more about Montesquieu’s life and work.
- Robert Shackleton
- Montesquieu was sent in 1700 to the Collège de Juilly, close to Paris, which provided a sound education on enlightened and modern lines. He left Ju...
- Montesquieu’s father, Jacques de Secondat, belonged to an old military family of modest wealth that had been ennobled in the 16th century for servi...
- French political philosopher Montesquieu was best known for The Spirit of Laws (1748), one of the great works in the history of political theory an...
- In 1721 Montesquieu published Lettres persanes (Persian Letters, 1722), a brilliant satirical portrait of French, particularly Parisian, civilizati...
Nov 17, 2023 · Montesquieu is a French political philosopher best known for championing liberty and a separation of powers between a government's executive, legislative, and judiciary. His views influenced the Founding Fathers of the United States.
- Mark Cartwright
Jul 18, 2003 · Montesquieu was one of the great political philosophers of the Enlightenment. Insatiably curious and mordantly funny, he constructed a naturalistic account of the various forms of government, and of the causes that made them what they were and that advanced or constrained their development.
Abandoning the classical divisions of his predecessors into monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, Montesquieu produced his own analysis and assigned to each form of government an animating principle: the republic, based on virtue; the monarchy, based on honour; and despotism (see tyranny), based on fear.
Montesquieu’s masterpiece is one of the most influential studies in the history of political theory and jurisprudence. Montesquieu envisioned The Spirit of Laws as a major work of law and politics, and he applied himself accordingly to its composition.
Montesquieu (1689-1757) was a French philosopher whose ideas in works like The Spirit of the Laws helped launch the Enlightenment movement in Europe.
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