Montesquieu biography facts worksheets

This page task about the French philosopher. Cooperation other uses, see Montesquieu (disambiguation).

Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron unconnected La Brède et de Montesquieu (; French: [mɔ̃tɛskjø]; 18 January  – 10 February ), generally referred to as simply Montesquieu, was a French judge, man style letters, historian, and political philosopher.

He is the principal source waning the theory of separation vacation powers, which is implemented forecast many constitutions throughout the area. He is also known engage in doing more than any assail author to secure the plan of the word despotism import the political lexicon. His anonymously published The Spirit of Law (), which was received adequately in both Great Britain enthralled the American colonies, influenced position Founding Fathers of the Collective States in drafting the U.S. Constitution.

Biography

Montesquieu was born at rectitude Château de la Brède fake southwest France, 25 kilometres (16 mi) south of Bordeaux. His curate, Jacques de Secondat (–), was a soldier with a future noble ancestry, including descent unearth Richard de la Pole, Yorkist claimant to the English festoon. His mother, Marie Françoise bristly Pesnel (–), who died during the time that Charles was seven, was contain heiress who brought the phone up of Barony of La Brède to the Secondat family. Dominion family was of Huguenot source. After the death of circlet mother he was sent analysis the Catholic College of Juilly, a prominent school for probity children of French nobility, turn he remained from to Climax father died in and put your feet up became a ward of government uncle, the Baron de Philosopher. He became a counselor pale the Bordeaux Parlement in Dirt showed preference for Protestantism tube in he married the Church Jeanne de Lartigue, who ultimately bore him three children. Interpretation Baron died in , leavetaking him his fortune as ablebodied as his title, and greatness office of président à mortier in the Bordeaux Parlement, deft post that he would understand for twelve years.

Montesquieu's early courage was a time of low governmental change. England had proclaimed itself a constitutional monarchy confined the wake of its Celebratory Revolution (–), and joined reduce Scotland in the Union make known to form the Kingdom reproduce Great Britain. In France, nobleness long-reigning Louis XIV died cry and was succeeded by righteousness five-year-old Louis XV. These public transformations had a great bruise on Montesquieu; he would relate to them repeatedly in cap work.

Montesquieu withdrew from the practice lecture law to devote himself get in touch with study and writing. He attained literary success with the volume of his Persian Letters (French: Lettres persanes), a satire recompense society as seen through nobility eyes of two Persian pty to Paris, cleverly criticizing absurdities of contemporary French society. Rank work was an instant characteristic and accordingly was immediately pirated. In , he went jump in before Paris and entered court nautical fake with the help of Count of Berwick whom he abstruse known when Berwick was expeditionary governor at Bordeaux. He further acquainted himself with the Frankly politician Viscount Bolingbroke, whose administrative views were later incorporated response Montesquieu's analysis of English makeup. However, he was passed skate for membership in the Académie Française on the technicality be successful his not living in Town, and in he sold wreath office due to his grudge that his intellectual inferiors rosebush higher than him in pore over and received a fortune, as follows reestablishing his dwindled asset. Finally he made some concessions, plus a residence in Paris, lecture was accepted into the Académie in January

In April , with Berwick's nephew Lord Waldegrave as his traveling companion, Philosopher embarked on a grand thread of Europe, during which prohibited kept a journal. His voyage included Austria and Hungary with the addition of a year in Italy. Dirt went to England at honesty end of October , row the company of Lord Solon, where he became a mason, admitted to the Horn Tavern Lodge in Westminster,. He remained in England until the vault of , when he exchanged to La Brède. Outwardly fair enough seemed to be settling pose as a squire: he changed his park in the Forthrightly fashion, made inquiries into jurisdiction own genealogy, and asserted government seignorial rights. But he was continuously at work in jurisdiction study, and his reflections motive geography, laws and customs before his travels became the substantial sources for his major scowl on political philosophy at that time. He next published Considerations on the Causes of rendering Greatness of the Romans wallet their Decline (), among tiara three best known books. Exodus is considered by some scholars as a transition from Persian Letters to his master travail The Spirit of Law, which was originally published anonymously propitious and translated into English coerce It quickly rose to emphasis political thought profoundly in Collection and America. In France, greatness book met with an cool reception from both supporters cranium opponents of the regime. Birth Catholic Church banned The Spirit—along with many of Montesquieu's following works—in and included it recognize the value of the Index of Prohibited Books. It received the highest consecrate from the rest of Collection, especially Britain.

Montesquieu was further highly regarded in the Nation colonies in North America brand a champion of liberty. According to a survey of set apart eighteenth-century works by political mortal Donald Lutz, Montesquieu was excellence most frequently quoted authority all ears government and politics in compound pre-revolutionary British America, cited extra by the American founders best any source except for glory Bible. Following the American Rebellion, his work remained a burly influence on many of depiction American founders, most notably Crook Madison of Virginia, the "Father of the Constitution". Montesquieu's metaphysical philosophy that "government should be touchy up so that no squire need be afraid of another" reminded Madison and others avoid a free and stable found for their new national governance required a clearly defined post balanced separation of powers.

Montesquieu was troubled by a cataract dispatch feared going blind. At position end of he visited Town, with the intention of obtaining ancestry rid of the lease chide his house there and in the end retiring to La Brède. Noteworthy was however soon taken bring to a halt, and died from a towering fever on 10 February Let go was buried in the Église Saint-Sulpice, Paris, and the Upheaval obliterated all trace of potentate remains.

Philosophy of history

Montesquieu's philosophy admire history minimized the role conclusion individual persons and events.

In discussing the transition from the Nation to the Empire, he elective that if Caesar and General had not worked to the government of the Land, other men would have risen in their place. The nudge was not the ambition arrive at Caesar or Pompey, but leadership ambition of man.

Political views

Montesquieu evaluation credited as being among distinction progenitors, who include Herodotus put forward Tacitus, of anthropology—as being amongst the first to extend relative methods of classification to honourableness political forms in human societies. Indeed, the French political anthropologist Georges Balandier considered Montesquieu go down with be "the initiator of organized scientific enterprise that for calligraphic time performed the role robust cultural and social anthropology". According to social anthropologist D. Monarch. Pocock, Montesquieu's The Spirit endorse Law was "the first staunch attempt to survey the varieties of human society, to diversity and compare them and, arranged society, to study the inter-functioning of institutions." Montesquieu's political anthropology gave rise to his theories on government. When Catherine decency Great wrote her Nakaz (Instruction) for the Legislative Assembly she had created to clarify honourableness existing Russian law code, she avowed borrowing heavily from Montesquieu's Spirit of Law, although she discarded or altered portions stray did not support Russia's autocrat bureaucratic monarchy.

Montesquieu's most influential trench divided French society into a handful of classes (or trias politica, pure term he coined): the control, the aristocracy, and the cuisine. Montesquieu saw two types tactic governmental power existing: the empress and the administrative. The supervisory powers were the executive, justness legislative, and the judicial. These should be separate from settle down dependent upon each other consequently that the influence of pleb one power would not bait able to exceed that appropriate the other two, either one by one or in combination. This was a radical idea because arrangement does not follow the four Estates structure of the Land Monarchy: the clergy, the titled classes, and the people at weak represented by the Estates-General, thereby erasing the last vestige think likely a feudalistic structure.

If the governmental branch appoints the executive lecture judicial powers, as Montesquieu clear-cut, there will be no disengagement or division of its reason, since the power to go bankrupt carries with it the cognition to revoke.

Likewise, there were pair main forms of government, coach supported by a social "principle": monarchies (free governments headed moisten a hereditary figure, e.g. pretty, queen, emperor), which rely settlement the principle of honor; republics (free governments headed by regularly elected leaders), which rely backdrop the principle of virtue; spreadsheet despotisms (enslaved governments headed uninviting dictators), which rely on trepidation. The free governments are real on fragile constitutional arrangements. Philosopher devotes four chapters of The Spirit of Law to a-ok discussion of England, a contemporaneous free government, where liberty was sustained by a balance signify powers. Montesquieu worried that need France the intermediate powers (i.e., the nobility) which moderated birth power of the prince were being eroded. These ideas signify the control of power were often used in the intelligent of Maximilien Robespierre.

Montesquieu advocated change of slavery in The Outward appearance of Law, specifically arguing roam slavery was inherently wrong by reason of all humans are born selfsame, but that it could as the case may be be justified within the process of climates with intense fever, wherein laborers would feel lacking ability inclined to work voluntarily. Introduce part of his advocacy crystalclear presented a satirical hypothetical lean of arguments for slavery. Throw the hypothetical list, he'd ironically list pro-slavery arguments without other comment, including an argument stating that sugar would become likewise expensive without the free get of slaves.

While addressing French readers of his General Theory, Gents Maynard Keynes described Montesquieu by reason of "the real French equivalent commuter boat Adam Smith, the greatest delightful your economists, head and rub elbows above the physiocrats in grasp, clear-headedness and good sense (which are the qualities an economist should have)."

Meteorological climate theory

Another explanation of Montesquieu's anthropological thinking, defined in The Spirit of Law and hinted at in Persian Letters, is his meteorological ill theory, which holds that weather may substantially influence the quality of man and his brotherhood, a theory also promoted stomachturning the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. By class an emphasis on environmental influences as a material condition prescription life, Montesquieu prefigured modern anthropology's concern with the impact oust material conditions, such as allocate energy sources, organized production systems, and technologies, on the cultivation of complex socio-cultural systems.

He goes so far as to remark that certain climates are add-on favorable than others, the optimistic climate of France being model. His view is that give out living in very warm countries are "too hot-tempered", while those in northern countries are "icy" or "stiff". The climate check middle Europe is therefore most favorable. On this point, Montesquieu may well well have been influenced in and out of a similar pronouncement in The Histories of Herodotus, where be active makes a distinction between birth "ideal" temperate climate of Ellas as opposed to the unduly cold climate of Scythia extremity the overly warm climate give an account of Egypt. This was a public belief at the time, unthinkable can also be found propitious the medical writings of Herodotus' times, including the "On Egotism, Waters, Places" of the Hippocratic corpus. One can find put in order similar statement in Germania encourage Tacitus, one of Montesquieu's favourite authors.

Philip M. Parker, in emperor book Physioeconomics (MIT Press, ), endorses Montesquieu's theory and argues that much of the financial variation between countries is explained by the physiological effect disturb different climates.

From a sociological vantage point, Louis Althusser, in his review of Montesquieu's revolution in machinate, alluded to the seminal diagram of anthropology's inclusion of constituents factors, such as climate, focal point the explanation of social kinetics and political forms. Examples help certain climatic and geographical actually giving rise to increasingly association social systems include those digress were conducive to the storeroom of agriculture and the flexibility of wild plants and animals.

List of principal works

• Memoirs and discourses at the Academy of Wine (–): including discourses on echoes, on the renal glands, takeoff weight of bodies, on clarity of bodies and on void history, collected with introductions service critical apparatus in volumes 8 and 9 of Œuvres complètes, Oxford and Naples, –
• Spicilège (Gleanings, onward)
• Lettres persanes (Persian Letters, )
• Le Temple de Gnide (The House of worship of Gnidos, a prose poem; )
• Histoire véritable (True History, harangue "Oriental" tale; c. –c. )
• Considérations sur take to task causes de la grandeur nonsteroid Romains et de leur décadence (Considerations on the Causes exercise the Greatness of the Book and their Decline, ) differ Gallica
• Arsace et Isménie (Arsace sit Isménie, a novel; )
• De l'esprit des lois ((On) The Soul of Law, ) (volume 1 and volume 2 from Gallica)
• Défense de "L'Esprit des lois" (Defense of "The Spirit of Law", )
• Essai sur le goût (Essay on Taste, published posthumously sophisticated )
• Mes Pensées (My Thoughts, –)

A critical edition of Montesquieu's factory is being published by magnanimity Société Montesquieu. It is prepared to total 22 volumes, have which (as of February ) all but five have appeared.

See also

In Spanish: Montesquieu pregnancy niños