The French jurist, satirist, and political and social philosopher Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755), was the first of the great French men of letters associated with the Enlightenment. In order to understand the Baron de...

The French nobleman Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689–1755) is often seen, along with Machiavelli, as one of the founding fathers of modern political science. His major work, The Spirit of the Laws (1748), is an attempt to provide what...

Montesquieu, Baron De(1689 s Philosophy of Liberalism: A Commentary on the Spirit of the Laws. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. Richter, Melvin. The Political Theory of Montesquieu. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1977....

Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (January 18, 1689 in Bordeaux – February 10, 1755), was a French social commentator and political thinker who lived during the Era of the Enlightenment. He is famous for his articulation...

Elaborating Montesquieu's concept of honor illuminates a dimension of his liberalism that has been neglected by prior commentary, and calls attention to a form of political motivation that has been overlooked in contemporary political theory. While honor avoids the anti-liberal tendencies of civic...

Montesquieu. Les vendanges de la liberte. Jean Lacouture. Paris: Seuil, 2002. 380 pp. Euro21. One doesn't expect from modern biographers working on great figures of the past revelations or new facts. Their novelty stems from an original viewpoint, a systematic shift of...

In this excerpt from his study of Montesquieu's application of the idea of natural law, Waddicor examines Montesquieu's relationship to other philosophers of natural law, and to other advocates of the scientific method. In particular, Waddicor analyzes Montesquieu's methodological debt to Descartes, as well as the influence of both classical and early modern authors.

In this essay, Gilbert draws out the ethical bases of Montesquieu's philosophy, linking his sense of moral justice to his vision of a liberal, interdependent society. Gilbert focuses on Montesquieu's use of the English model to flesh out his interpretation of Montesquieu's ideal commercial state.

In this essay, Hundert and Nelles support the argument advanced by Judith Shklar that Montesquieu describes liberty as requiring a theatrical public sphere, adding that the Persian Letters reflect Montesquieu's earlier explorations of this idea. The authors focus on the structure and genre of the novel to demonstrate how Montesquieu uses the unusual form of the epistolary novel to advance his political philosophy.

This is an infomrative essay about Montesquieu's philosophies.