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Jan 8, 2023 · Today he is chiefly remembered for his views on the legal separation of governmental powers, which ultimately found expression in the US Constitution. Yet he has also been described as a pioneer in the fields of sociology, anthropology and comparative politics.
- Overview
- Early life and career
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 Juilly in 1705, continued his studies at the faculty of law at the University of Bordeaux, graduated, and became an advocate in 1708.
Who were Montesquieu’s parents?
Montesquieu’s father, Jacques de Secondat, belonged to an old military family of modest wealth that had been ennobled in the 16th century for services to the crown, while his mother, Marie-Françoise de Pesnel, was a pious lady of partial English extraction.
What was Montesquieu best known for?
French political philosopher Montesquieu was best known for The Spirit of Laws (1748), one of the great works in the history of political theory and of jurisprudence. Among its influential arguments were the classification of governments as republics, monarchies, or despotisms; the theory of the separation of powers; and the political influence of climate.
How did Montesquieu get famous?
Montesquieu’s father, Jacques de Secondat, belonged to an old military family of modest wealth that had been ennobled in the 16th century for services to the crown, while his mother, Marie-Françoise de Pesnel, was a pious lady of partial English extraction. She brought to her husband a great increase in wealth in the valuable wine-producing property of La Brède. When she died in 1696, the barony of La Brède passed to Charles-Louis, who was her eldest child, then aged seven. Educated first at home and then in the village, he was sent away to school in 1700. The school was the Collège de Juilly, close to Paris and in the diocese of Meaux. It was much patronized by the prominent families of Bordeaux, and the priests of the Oratory, to whom it belonged, provided a sound education along enlightened and modern lines.
Charles-Louis left Juilly in 1705, continued his studies at the faculty of law at the University of Bordeaux, graduated, and became an advocate in 1708; soon thereafter he appears to have moved to Paris in order to obtain practical experience in law. He was called back to Bordeaux by the death of his father in 1713. Two years later he married Jeanne de Lartigue, a wealthy Protestant, who brought him a respectable dowry of 100,000 livres and in due course presented him with two daughters and a son, Jean-Baptiste. Charles-Louis admired and exploited his wife’s business skill and readily left her in charge of the property on his visits to Paris. But he does not appear to have been either faithful or greatly devoted to her. In 1716 his uncle, Jean-Baptiste, baron de Montesquieu, died and left to his nephew his estates, with the barony of Montesquieu, near Agen, and the office of deputy president in the Parlement of Bordeaux. His position was one of some dignity. It carried a stipend but was no sinecure.
The young Montesquieu, at 27, was now socially and financially secure. He settled down to exercise his judicial function (engaging to this end in the minute study of Roman law), to administer his property, and to advance his knowledge of the sciences—especially of geology, biology, and physics—which he studied in the newly formed academy of Bordeaux.
In 1721 he surprised all but a few close friends by publishing his Lettres persanes (Persian Letters, 1722), in which he gave a brilliant satirical portrait of French and particularly Parisian civilization, supposedly seen through the eyes of two Persian travellers. This exceedingly successful work mocks the reign of Louis XIV, which had only recently ended; pokes fun at all social classes; discusses, in its allegorical story of the Troglodytes, the theories of Thomas Hobbes relating to the state of nature. It also makes an original, if naive, contribution to the new science of demography; continually compares Islam and Christianity; reflects the controversy about the papal bull Unigenitus, which was directed against the dissident Roman Catholic group known as the Jansenists; satirizes Catholic doctrine; and is infused throughout with a new spirit of vigorous, disrespectful, and iconoclastic criticism. The work’s anonymity was soon penetrated, and Montesquieu became famous. The new ideas fermenting in Paris had received their most-scintillating expression.
Montesquieu now sought to reinforce his literary achievement with social success. Going to Paris in 1722, he was assisted in entering court circles by the duke of Berwick, the exiled Stuart prince whom he had known when Berwick was military governor at Bordeaux. The tone of life at court was set by the rakish regent, the duc d’Orléans, and Montesquieu did not disdain its dissipations. It was during this period that he made the acquaintance of the English politician Viscount Bolingbroke, whose political views were later to be reflected in Montesquieu’s analysis of the English constitution.
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- Robert Shackleton
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It also traces Montesquieu’s influence on the American founders’ attempt to separate power along essentialist lines, and considers some sub-optimal consequences of that attempt, including the nondelegation quandary and the emergence of an unchecked judicial lawmaker. 1. Montesquieu’s theory of checked separation.
- Laurence Claus
- 2005
Jul 18, 2003 · 1. Life. Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, was born on January 19th, 1689 at La Brède, near Bordeaux, to a noble and prosperous family. He was educated at the Oratorian Collège de Juilly, received a law degree from the University of Bordeaux in 1708, and went to Paris to continue his legal studies.
Nov 17, 2023 · Definition. Montesquieu (1689-1757) was a French philosopher whose ideas in works like The Spirit of the Laws helped launch the Enlightenment movement in Europe. His ideas on the separation of powers, that is, between the executive, legislative, and judiciary, were influential on other Enlightenment thinkers and on the 13 colonies that became ...
- Mark Cartwright
Related Links: Works by French Enlightenment Source: M.J.C. Vile's Chapter 4 in Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers (2nd ed.) (Indianapolis, Liberty Fund 1998). Montesquieu The name most associated with the doctrine of the separation of powers is that of Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron Montesquieu. His influence upon later thought and upon the development of institutions far ...
1 Some weeks after the death of the Maréchal de Berwick, killed by a canonball on 12 June 1734 during the siege of Philipsburg, the Comte de Bulkeley, Berwick’s brother-in-law and a witness to his death, wrote to Montesquieu: I saw in the Holland gazette [= Gazette d’Amsterdam, 29 June 1734] a sort of pitiful eulogy of the deceased marshall.
