Baron de Montesquieu
Montesquieu’s Life:
Montesquieu was born Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu on the 19th of January 1689. Montesquieu was born in the Château de la Brède near Bordeaux to a wealthy and noble family, as his mother is related to the barony, and his father also had noble lineage.
Montesquieu was first educated at the Oratorian Collège de Juilly, and received his degree in law from the University of Bordeaux in 1708, after which he moved to Paris to continue his legal studies. However, after the tragic death of his father in 1713 he moved back home to La Brède in order to manage the estates he had inherited. Two years later, in 1715, he married to Jeanne de Lartigue, a protestant whom he would later have two children with. Only one year after that, he officially enherited the title of Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu from his uncle (from his mother’s side). However he also inherited the office of Président à Mortier in the Parliement of Bordeaux, an esteemed judicial and administrative body. This would later bring him to the Tournelle, the Parliament’s criminal division.
After much success with his works, he decided to leave France to travel abroad, and after visiting countries like Italy, Germany, Austria, and many others, he arrived in England, where he decided to settle down for two years. He was very impressed with the British political system, on which he would later base many of the ideas in his masterpiece: The Spirit of the Laws.
Sadly, in 1731 he was forced to return to France due to failing eyesight. After returning to La Brède he began working on some of his most famous books, and spent his last decades doing so, until February 10, 1755, when he died of a fever in Paris.
Fun Fact:
- Montesquieu despised slavery, often calling it an evil institution that went against the natural way of things, claiming that “slavery is not good by its nature; it is useful neither to the master nor to the slave…”
Montesquieu’s Work:
- Montesquieu’s most influential work is The Spirit of the Laws (1748), and is widely considered to be his masterpiece. Despite the fact that he wrote it simply to analyse the various types of political institutions seen throughout history, it ended up being used as one of the primary sources of the United States constitution, and as one of the major influences on the development of democratic institutions in Europe after the French Revolution.
In The Spirit of the Laws he denounces the abuse of power in the French monarchy, while praising the idea of “separation of power” in the English government. The idea of “separation of power” is that the state is separated into different branches with specific areas of power and responsibility. Because of this no branch could become too powerful (like the kings of absolute monarchies) and could always be checked by another branch of the government. Therefore this avoided one branch from having complete executive, legislative, and judiciary power.
- Another important work of his is Persian Letters (1721). In this book Montesquieu tells the tales of two Persian noblemen traveling through France. The book is told through 161 letters written by various fictional characters, in which he describes Parisian society and the customs in the early seventeenhundreds. The book is satire, meaning it uses humour or exaggeration to critique something, which in this case is French society. Montesquieu was inspired to write this book after reading books such as The Spectator, Amusements, and the Decameron which are thought to be some of his favourite books.
