Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Robert Shakleton

Critical Essay by Robert Shakleton

SOURCE: Shakleton, Robert. “Montesquieu and Machiavelli: A Reappraisal.” In Essays on Montesquieu and the Enlightenment, edited by David Gilson and Martin Smith, pp. 117-31. Oxford: Alden Press, 1988.

In this essay, first published in 1964, Shakleton details Machiavelli's influence on Montesquieu, noting the similarities in several passages from many of Montesquieu's earlier works. Shakleton suggests that while Montesquieu took much from Machiavelli on religion and the republic, many of the borrowed ideas were merely a stimulus for Montesquieu to develop a broader philosophy.

The names of the President of the Parlement of Bordeaux and of the Florentine Secretary have often been linked together, both in the realm of the history of literature and ideas, and in relation to practical politics. A nineteenth-century political writer, Maurice Joly, a fighter for freedom and a victim of oppression, died by his own hand in 1877, having published thirteen years before, almost clandestinely, a...
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