Abstract
The question before us now is not whether Montesquieu was a proponent of the modern Enlightenment project.1 The more useful question, arising out of this study in political economy, is whether Montesquieu’s philosophy of liberalism can properly be understood as part of the radical Enlightenment, as distinguished from the moderate mainstream, or conservative Enlightenment.2 Bound up in this interpretive question is the larger question of Western intellectual inheritance: that is, the way in which modern political rationalism, liberalism, and capitalism might be better understood by returning to the eighteenth-century intellectual battles over the meaning of commercial modernity.
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Notes
See, for example, Jonathan Israel. 2002. Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 11–13.
See Rebecca Kingston 2001. “Montesquieu on Religion and on the Question of Toleration.” In Montesquieu’s Science of Politics: Essays on the Spirit of Laws, eds. Carrithers et al., Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Montesquieu’s theory of toleration could not support separation of church and state. Montesquieu was bound to the reality of the Catholic church, its dominance in society, and its political ties to the monarchy.
One exception is Mark H. Waddicor. 1970. Montesquieu and the Philosophy of Natural Law. The Hague: Nijhoff, 162–167. “Property … for Montesquieu was a natural right; it was one aspect of the right to liberty.” I note my disagreements with Waddicor below.
In this I follow Michael Zuckert. 2004. “Natural Rights and Modern Constitutionalism.” Northwestern Journal of International Human Rights 2 (Spring): 1–25. Zuckert contests Lowenthal’s view that Montesquieu was not a natural rights thinker, pointing to book X as the place in which Montesquieu’s commitment to natural rights “becomes decisive.” While this article owes much to Zuckert’s basic insight, I am focused less on Montesquieu’s theoretical discussion of property. I also diverge from Zuckert’s analysis in a second respect. While I agree that Montesquieu’s modification of Locke’s teaching does not require a fundamental change of Lockean principles, I believe Montesquieu’s modification to be a major, not a minor, rhetorical modification.
Michael Sonenscher. 2007. Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Jean-Pierre Gross. 1993. “Progressive Taxation and Social Justice in Eighteenth-Century France.” Past and Present 140 (1): 79–126.
Carrithers, 2001. “Democratic and Aristocratic Republics.” In Carrither et al., Montesquieu’s Science of Politics.
For more on this fascinating book, see John Christian Laursen and Cyrus Masroori. 2006. The History of the Sevarambians: A Utopian Novel. Albany, NY: University of New York Press., esp. vii–xxii.
Immanuel Kant. 1991. Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 188. Kant said it was full of “brilliant ideas” “that have never been tried in practice.”
David Hume. 1987. “Of Polygamy and Divorces.” In Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
See Nannerl O. Keohane. 1980. Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 384; 395.
Tom Bethell. 1998. The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity through the Ages. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 19.
See, for example, Honore, A. M. 1961. “Ownership.” In Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Donald Kelley and Bonnie Smith. “What Was Property? Legal Dimensions of the Social Question in France (1789–1848).” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (128) 3: 204.
This is not the consensus view. Consult Paul Rahe. 2012. “Montesquieu’s Natural Rights Constitutionalism.” Social Philosophy & Policy 29 (2): 51–81.
Ibid., 119. See also Lester Crocker. 1952. “The Discussion of Suicide in the Eighteenth Century.” Journal of the History of Ideas 13 (1): 47–72. In the eighteenth century, debate on the question of suicide was heavily contested, as it was seen as a“crucial test” of man’s freedom, or in one scholar’s words “his dependence on a superior force.
XIV.12, fn.23. According to a French law of 1670, suicide was regarded as a civil crime as well as a religious offence. See Margaret Mauldon and Andrew Khan, eds. 2008. Persian Letters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, xx. Mauldon is correct in noting that “When Usbek defends suicide in PL #74 as a legitimate choice—a position that was regarded as heretical by the church and therefore as a provocation on Montesquieu’s part—it is without any foresight into the outcome of his own affairs.
Dedieu provides a historical survey of Montesquieu’s attitude, claiming that Montesquieu opposed slavery on moral and sentimental grounds in his early career; on moral and utilitarian grounds in the middle; and finally he condemned it completely on the grounds that it was selfish. (Joseph Dedieu. 1913. Montesquieu. Paris: Alcan.) See, by contrast, Waddicor, Montesquieu and the Philosophy of Natural Law, 149–162, who provides an analytical presentation.
See also Jean Jean Ehrard. 2008. Lumières et esclavage. Brussels: André Versaille;
and Russell Parsons Jameson. 1971. Montesquieu et l’esclavage: étude sur les origines de l’opinion antiesclavagiste en France au XVIIIe siècle. New York: B. Franklin. Also, Jean Goldzink. “Negro.” >http://dictionnaire-montesquieu.ens-lyon.fr/en/ article/1377621295/en/>
as well as Diana J. Schaub. 2005. “Montesquieu on Slavery.” Perspectives on Political Science 34 (Spring): 70–78
and F. T. H. Fletcher. 1933. “Montesquieu’s Influence on Anti-Slavery Opinion in England.” Journal of Negro History XVIII: 414–426. A comprehensive account of the literature on this topic is found in Jameson, Montesquieu et l’esclavage.
In some way, this section is a continuation of the “proto-feminism” which critics have often seen as a major theme of the Persian Letters. It is true that many writers in the 1970s castigated Montesquieu for misogyny and patriarchalism (e.g., Robert F. O’Reilly 1973. “Montesquieu: Anti-Feminist.” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 102: 143–156; Rosso, Montesquieu et la féminité;
M. J Pollock. 1979. “Montesquieu on the Patriarchal Family: A Discussion and Critique.” Nottingham French Studies 18: 9–21.). But, as Schaub, OBB, has pointed out, there was a shift in the 1980s toward viewing Montesquieu (albeit in varying degrees) as “sympathetic to the cause of women’s liberation.”
See also Sheila Mason. 2008. “Montesquieu, Europe, and the Imperatives of Commerce.” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 17 (1): 65–72;
Mary L. Shanley and Peter G. Stillman. 1982. “The Harem Sequence in Montesquieu’s Persian Letters: A Critique of Political and Familial Despotism.” In The Family in Political Thought, ed. Jean Elshtain, 66–79. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press;
Tenenbaum, Susan. 1982. “Woman through the Prism of Political Thought.” Polity 15 (Fall): 67–79;
Pauline Kra. 1984. “Montesquieu and Women.” In French Women and the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Samia I. Spencer, 272–284. Bloomington: Indiana University Press;
and Katherine M. Rogers. 1986. “Subversion of Patriarchy in Les Lettres Persanes.” Philological Quarterly 65 (1): 61–78. These interpretations pick up on a much earlier view of Montesquieu as “a pioneer feminist.”
See Roger Oake. 1941. “Montesquieu and Hume.” Modern Language Quarterly 2 (1): 25–41.
See, for example, Jens Beckert. 2010. Are We Still Modern? Inheritance Law and the Broken Promise of the Enlightenment. Köln: Max Planck Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung. Beckert provides a useful historical overview. As Beckert has pointed out, the danger of reform in this area was indeed something of an “open secret.” Radical changes on this dimension of family and property law was seen by many writers as the first necessary step toward the creation and eventual realization of new liberal orders in Europe.
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Bibby, A.S. (2016). The Problem of Property in The Spirit of the Laws. In: Montesquieu’s Political Economy. Recovering Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137477224_7
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