Montesquieu – Universal History

montesquieu He was a nobleman, cosmopolitan, merchant, jurist, political scientist, as well as an ironic and incisive writer. Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brédey, and Lord of Montesquieu, embodies like no one else the spirit of the Age of Enlightenment, the century of total trust in human reason and optimistic faith in progress. His political doctrine, which seeks to effectively curb the abuses of despotism in the separation and independence of the three branches of the State (legislative, executive and judicial), has been incorporated by all civilized nations and remains in force three hundred years after the birth of his actor.

Main events in the life of Montesquieu

• 1689 He was born in the castle of La Bréde, in Bordeaux.
• 1716 He inherited from his uncle the presidency of the Bordeaux parliament.
• 1721 Publishes the Lettres persans.
• 1748 publish De l’esprit des lois.
• 1753 write your essay Le goüt for the Encyclopédie.
• 1755 He dies in Paris.

Montesquieu thought

Possessor of a rich and varied thought, difficult to circumscribe, Montesquieu has been interpreted in multiple ways, sometimes with a partisan spirit, to make him play in the opposite field. He is, for some, a nostalgic feudalist, a fervent Anglophile, “the bible of retrograde opposition”; for others, a liberal thinker whose ideas are dictated by a deep respect for the human being. It seems beyond any doubt that his love for freedom and his repugnance towards tyranny were, ultimately, what led him to the formulation of a thought that constitutes an essential part of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a text that , voted on August 26, 1789, proclaimed the equality of men and their rights: liberty, property, security and resistance to tyranny. Used as a preamble to the French revolutionary Constitution, it had a great influence on all subsequent constitutional texts.

Birth: A noble president of provinces

Charles-Louis de Secondat was born in the castle of La Bréde, south of Bordeaux, on January 18, 1689, into a family of noble house magistrates. and suggestive Latin motto: “Virtutem fortuna secundat” (“Fortune second virtue”). Among the division of the nobility that existed in France —of sword and toga—, the Montesquieus owed theirs to the latter. “Three hundred and fifty years of proven nobility” of which the future Monsieur de Montesquieu and Baron de La Bréde would later declare himself proud. He was, by birth, the first son of Marie-Frangoi-se de Pesnel, heiress to La Bréde, and Jacques de Secondat, grandson of the first president of the Bordeaux parliament and former captain of the light cavalry retired to his lands, where he he will die when the child is seven years old.

Montesquieu’s education

At eleven he entered the Juilly College, near Paris, governed by the Oratorian community, founded by Saint Philip Neri. He stayed there for five years soaking up classical antiquity and, after leaving it, following the family tradition, he began his law studies in Bordeaux. Bachelor’s degree—the first degree of the career—in 1708, graduated a few months later, he became a lawyer in the Bordeaux parliament. The following year he will leave for Paris to perfect his knowledge of jurisprudence.

Montesquieu’s marriage and family

In the capital, in addition to interacting with members of the different academies, he will be introduced to Parisian society. The death of his father, which occurred on November 15, 1713, led him back to Bordeaux, of whose parliament he was appointed counselor in 1714.
On April 30, 1715, at the age of twenty-six, he married the Calvinist Jeanne de Lartigue., who belongs to a family of recent nobility, wealthy enough for the bride to contribute to the marriage the considerable dowry of one hundred thousand pounds. They settle in rue Margaux in Bordeaux and ten months after the wedding, Jean-Baptiste de Secondat is born, the first and only son of the couple, who will be followed by Marie, in 1717, and Denise, in 1727.

Montesquieu’s research for the Academy of Sciences

The same year as his son’s birth, Montesquieu was elected a member of the Bordeaux Academy of Sciences, where he funded a 300-pound anatomy prize, and inherited property and functions from his uncle Jean-Baptiste de Secondat, President of Parliament. Bordeaux, which happens on April 13. Not finding any pleasure in the performance of the position, of which he according to him said “I did not understand anything”, is dedicated, in addition to writing, to experimental research, and year after year he presents the fruit of his work in the form of scientific studies to the Academy of Sciences. Essays on the echo, the renal glands or the transparency of the bodies are some results of his interest.

Publication of Lettres persanes and Le temple de Guide de Monstersquieu

montesquieu

In 1721 the appearance in Amsterdam, without the author’s name, of letters for sans (Persian Letters) attests to the birth of a satirical writer. These are 159 letters supposedly exchanged between two Persian travelers and their friends in Persia, which give him the opportunity to lash out at priests, financiers and nobles. Not even the king or the pope, “an old idol to which incense is given out of habit”they escape his irony. These letters catapulted him to fame and opened wide salons as prestigious as those of Madame de Lambert or Madame de Tencin, which brought together all the characters playing a prominent role in Paris at the time. From 1721 to 1728 Montesquieu will live on horseback between Bordeaux and Paris. He sells his post as Speaker of Parliament, publishes a short and licentious novel, Le temple de Guide (Guido’s Temple), enters the French Academy and, from 1628, undertakes the discovery of Europe for three years.:Vienna, Hungary, the Italian republics, southern Germany, and above all England —he will live in London for just over a year— parade before his eyes with their political systems, to which he pays special attention.
On his return he remained voluntarily confined to his castle at La Bréde for two years and in 1734 he published Considerations on the causes of grandeur et de la décadence des romains. (Considerations on the causes of the greatness of the Romans and their decline), a timid and limited outline of his great work, to which he will devote himself from this moment on.

In search of the law of laws

For fourteen years, the one who had been a young and brash president will work tirelessly on serious things: “Why should I occupy myself with writing frivolities? I aspire to immortality and it is in myself». In her effort, he ruins her health, her eyesight above all, and her hair turns gray. In 1748 the fruit of so much effort finally appeared, De I’esprit des lois (The Spirit of the Laws), or more precisely, De I esprit des lois ou du rapport que les lois doivent avoir avec la Constitution de chaqué gouvernement, les moeurs, le climat, la réligion, le commerce. The extensive title covers an immense work: 29 books of 555 chapters, with which it intends to demonstrate, and it succeeds, that within the confusion of the laws of all countries and of all times there is an order: «There are some universal principles that allow us to understand the entirety of human history in its smallest details. Which are? The type of government, the climate, the soil, the customs, the commerce, the currency and the religion». And one by one it presents the necessary relationship that derives from the nature of things. The climate, for example, which makes men apathetic and lascivious, predisposing them to despotism and slavery; he also explains polygamy, because women spoil themselves before. One solution: political science, since a good constitution will be able, in a civilized people, to correct some natural defects. And an ultimate purpose: the social utility and happiness of humanity.
The work, written with extreme simplicity, in an impeccable, rigorous and elegant language, represented, due to its great scope, a gigantic effort. In March 1749 he writes to a friend: «I confess that this job has thought of killing me… I am going to rest, I will not work anymore». But he is forced to take up the pen again to write the Befense of I’esprit des lois (Defense of the spirit of the laws), which appears in 1750, in response to its many detractors, Jansenists and Jesuits above all, who for once and without serving as a precedent appear united.

Death of Mosteuquieu

In 1753 he wrote his essay le gout (The taste), article of the encyclopédie —the most representative work of the 18th century, through which the encyclopedists, who were also called philosophers, intended to make all branches of knowledge available to a broad sector of the public, through a powerful effort of popularization—, and at the end of December 1754 he left for Paris, faithful to his habit of dividing his time between the capital and Bordeaux. On January 29, 1755, he felt ill and a few days later, on February 11, he died at the age of sixty-six.. The burial ceremony took place in the church of Saint-Sulpice, although no one knows for sure if he died as a Christian, as his friend Suard claims, or as a philosopher, as Voltaire claims. Among the philosophers, only Diderot attended the event.

Unpublished notes by Montesquieu

When he died, he left a large number of unpublished notes, his Pensées, thanks to which we know about his balance: “My machine is so happily constructed that objects impress me with enough force to cause me pleasure, and not with enough force to cause me pain.”; also of his lucidity and method, both in the administration of his Gascon lands and in his life. Curious viewer, capable of being amused by anything and everything, skeptical and somewhat cynical in early life, grows in indulgence, understanding, and optimism with age. A tireless worker, shy, distracted, fearful of passions and outpourings, he confesses that he has never been in a bad mood, much less bored: «I wake up in the morning with a secret joy; I see the light with a kind of rapture. The rest of the day I’m happy.” For many reasons he declares himself a good citizen of France, of Europe and, ultimately, of the world: «If I knew of something useful for my nation that would be ruinous for another, I would not propose it to my prince, because before being French I am a man, or because I am necessarily a man, and I am French only by chance».