Montesquieu: biography of this French philosopher

If we say the name of Charles Louis de Secondat he may not say anything to many, despite the fact that his vision of the division of political powers has been key to many of the modern liberal constitutions.

Much better known as Montesquieu, this great French thinker lived in times of the Enlightenment, at a time when the English Monarchy had to evolve to a constitutional regime to survive and France, after the absolutist reign of Louis XIV, gave way to what would be the germ of the Revolution French.

These events did not go unnoticed in the works of this philosopher who, in fact, could not resist explaining in detail how events in his time influenced her thinking and vision politics. Let's find out through this biography of Montesquieu.

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Brief biography of Montesquieu

Charles Louis de Secondat, lord de la Brède and Baron de Montesquieu, better known as simply Montesquieu, He was a French philosopher and jurist whose work was written in the middle of the Enlightenment, a context of intense intellectual, cultural and political activity

, being he one of the most important philosophers and essayists of the movement. His theory about the separation of the powers of the State had a great impact, exerting notorious influence on the Constitution of the United States.

His thought is framed within the critical spirit of the French Enlightenment, being characterized by the religious tolerance, the aspiration and promotion of freedom and its concept of happiness in the civic sense. It must be said that he did not follow the rest of the enlightened in absolutely everything, since he distanced himself from the mainstream of abstraction and the deductive method shared by many scientists of the time, being he a supporter of more concrete and empirical knowledge.

He has been considered as a diffuser of the English Constitution and his proposal about the separation of powers is very close to the thought of John Locke. However, it must be said that Charles Louis de Secondat's thinking is complex and he has such a personality own that makes him one of the most influential thinkers in the history of doctrines policies.

Early years

Charles Louis de Secondat was born on January 18, 1689 in the castle of La Brède, a short distance from Bordeaux, France. He was the son of Jacques de Secondat and Marie-Françoise de Pesnel, his family belonging to the so-called robe nobility. His mother, who died when Charles de Secondat was barely seven years old, was the heir to an important fortune that the Baronazgo de La Brède contributed to the Secondat family.

Montesquieu he studied at the Catholic school in Juilly and later would follow the family tradition of studying law.. He would do it first at the University of Bordeaux and later at the University of Paris, coming into contact with the intellectuals of the French capital. When his father died in 1714 he returned to La Brède where he became a councilor in the Parliament of Bordeaux.

There he would go on to live under the protection of his uncle, at that time Baron de Montesquieu. A year later Charles Louis de Secondat married Jeanne Lartigue, a Protestant who brought him a significant dowry when he was only 26 years old. In 1716 his uncle died, inheriting a fortune as well as the title of Baron de Montesquieu and Président à Mortier in the Parliament of Bordeaux, a title that he would exercise between 1716 and 1727.

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A philosopher of the Old and New World

By this time England had already established itself as a solid constitutional monarchy. as a result of the Glorious Revolution (1688-1689) and had joined with Scotland in the Union of 1707, forming the Kingdom of Great Britain. Meanwhile, in France Louis XIV died in 1715, who had ruled for a long time and is succeeded by Louis XV, who was only 5 years old. These national transformations had a great impact on Montesquieu, who would refer to them in several of his writings.

Montesquieu receives literary recognition for publishing his work "Lettres persanes" ("Persian Letters", 1721), a satire based on the imaginary correspondence between a Persian visitor on a walk in Paris, highlighting the absurdities of contemporary European society. Later he published "Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et leur décadence" ("Considerations on the causes of the greatness and decadence of the Romans", 1734).

In 1748 he anonymously published “De l’ Esprit des Loix ”(“ The spirit of the laws ”), a text that quickly elevated him to a position of great influence. Although in France he had a rather low reception, both from those who supported and from those who were against the regime, had greater repercussion in the rest of Europe, especially in Great Brittany. In fact, it caused a real stir in the Catholic world, being banned by the Catholic Church, which included this book in the "Index Librorum Prohibitorum."

Montesquieu was also popular in the New World. He was highly valued among enlightened British colonists, being seen as an example of freedom, although not yet a benchmark for the Independence of the Thirteen Colonies. In fact, Montesquieu was the most cited person on government and politics in British colonial America. pre-revolutionary, being he also cited by the American founders more than any other source, excepting the own Bible.

After the American Revolution occurred, Montesquieu's works continued to strongly influence many of America's founders and thinkers, including James Madison of Virginia, one of the fathers of the US Constitution. In Montesquieu's philosophy the idea is promoted that a government should be formed in which no man he is afraid of the other, an aspect that would be vindicated and remembered by Madison when writing the Constitution.

Last years

Montesquieu he was admitted to the Bordeaux Academy of Sciences, where he presented various studies on the adrenal glands, gravity and echo. He worked as a magistrate, but this profession bored him, so in the end he ended up selling the position and He decided to dedicate himself to traveling through Europe, observing the customs and institutions of the different countries.

During his last years he dedicated himself to traveling and finishing several of his works. He had the opportunity to visit all kinds of countries, mainly Austria, Hungary, Italy and England. As he learned more about other cultures, more ideas came to mind to explain and understanding society and politics, and also ways to make men freer.

But despite being a very lucid man, enlightened by the Age of Enlightenment, there was a moment when the light could only imagine it, since he progressively lost his sight until he was blinded by full. He died on February 10, 1755 in Paris, at the age of 66.. His body is buried in the Church of Saint-Sulpice in the French capital.

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Philosophy of history

His particular philosophy of history minimizes the role of individuals and events. Montesquieu presents his point of view in "Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence", in which states that each historical event was inspired by a particular event rather than by the action of one or a group of people in concrete.

Montesquieu exemplified this principle with situations that occurred in classical Roman times. In analyzing the passage from the Republic to the Empire, Montesquieu suggested that if Julius Caesar and Pompey had not worked to usurp the government of the Republic, other men would have. The cause of the beginning and the end of the main historical events was not the ambition of specific characters, in this case Caesar and Pompey, but the ambition of the human being in general.

His vision of politics and the division of powers

Montesquieu he developed the ideas that John Locke had already cultivated about the division of power. In his work "The Spirit of Laws" he expresses his deep admiration for English political institutions, stating that the law was the most important thing in a state. By publishing his "Persian Letters" in 1721, he acquired an overwhelming success and renown in the French society of the time, concerned about the regency of the young Louis XV of France, a king who had yet to learn to be.

"The spirit of the laws" is considered his main work, originally published in Geneva in 1748 after fourteen years of work. This work was the subject of harsh criticism, especially by the Jansenists and the Jesuits. Montesquieu did not sit idly by and replied to these attacks, publishing in 1750 a defense of this work that, later, would end up being censored by Rome in 1751.

On the basis of this work, it is considered that Montesquieu's great contributions to Western thought and the scientific study of human societies are two points. The first is the fact of undertaking the scientific task of describing social reality based on an analytical and positive method, which does not stop at the mere empiricist description of facts, but rather he tries to organize the diversity of data of social reality reducing them to a specific number of types or variables.

In addition to this, it aims to give a sociological response to the diversity of social facts under the idea that there is an order or causality of these facts that is susceptible to be interpreted in a rational. That is, a social phenomenon must have some cause, and that this can be addressed without resorting to mystical or supernatural explanations.

However, his most important legacy is his theory of the separation of powers, which has made him he is considered by many to be one of the forerunners of liberalism, along with figures like John Locke. Although he was not the first to talk about the separation of powers, it should be noted that it was his theory that ended up exerting the most force on this idea, being he seen as the maximum exponent of this question. His thesis would serve as a starting model for the rulers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when drafting constitutions.

The structure presented by Montesquieu is clearly influenced by the British constitutional system, which was relatively new in his time. The political system was divided into three powers, which exercised a brake, counterweight and control of those who exercised such powers. The idea was to prevent the same person from hosting all the functions of the State, since that it would suppose an absolutist regime in which it is difficult to stop the feet of a bad ruler.

Montesquieu attributes legislative power to Parliament, that is, to create laws; to the government the executive power, that is, to exercise political power; and to the courts of justice the judicial, that is to apply the laws and dictate whether they have been complied with or not. It is through these three separate powers that abuses are prevented from abuses by Parliament, Government and Courts, which would make people less free in the country that, precisely, should grant them freedoms, protection, rights and obligations.

Bibliographic references:

• Althusser, Louis (1979). Montesquieu. Politics and history. Barcelona: Ariel.
• Spurlin, Paul M (1941) Montesquieu in America, 1760-1801. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.