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2 results

  • iii - Reflections on National Character

  • Edited and translated by David W. Carrithers, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, Philip Stewart, Duke University, North Carolina
  • Book:
    Montesquieu
    Published online:
    02 November 2020
    Print publication:
    19 November 2020, pp 86-97

  • Summary

    In his Notes on England (1729–1731) and his Reflections on the Inhabitants of Rome (1732) Montesquieu displays the keen interest in national character that was evident in Persian Letters (1721), where he had juxtaposed the mores and politics of Christian France with the customs and government of Muslim Persia. Montesquieu finds much to admire about English politics and culture, including strong support for freedom of the press. The people of England, he remarks, are allowed to write what in other countries one can only think. His Notes reveal, however, that at the same time he was composing the idealized portrait of the English constitution that became Book XI, chapter 6 of The Spirit of Law he was aware that there was widespread political corruption in England. Money, rather than honor and virtue, is what the English most prize, he noted. In his Reflections on the Inhabitants of Rome (1732) Montesquieu explores several causes, some physical and others moral, for the striking contrasts between ancient and modern Romans.

  • 11 - Colonies and Empire in the Political Thought of Hegel and Marx

  • Edited by Sankar Muthu, University of Chicago
  • Book:
    Empire and Modern Political Thought
    Published online:
    05 October 2012
    Print publication:
    17 September 2012, pp 292-323

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses whether empire for Montesquieu was potentially a way of containing the particularities of human life and giving expression to its normative unity. Montesquieu's epistolary novel Persian Letters already exhibits the territorial logic of despotic empire made explicit in the Laws. Montesquieu never excludes any region of the world from despotism. Asia's geography is more favorable to despotic rule. The continent possesses larger and wider plains unbroken by mountains or broad rivers. Anti-imperial sentiments are a feature of all of Montesquieu's writings. Persian Letters summarizes the indictment. In the guise of a fantasy about Descartes in Mexico, Montesquieu gives the reader a picture of a European spiritual civil war between faith and enlightenment. For Montesquieu, women are the natural agents of change. For Montesquieu, Gelon, the king of ancient Syracuse, made "the finest peace treaty mentioned in history".