Montesquieu full name

He was a follower of John Locke and the outstanding champion in France of the supposedly "English" notions of freedom, toleration, moderation, and constitutional government. He was also a pioneer in the philosophy of history and in the sociological approach to problems of politics and law.

What did montesquieu write

Honored in his own country, Montesquieu was even more revered in the English-speaking world. He described the constitution of England as "the mirror of liberty," and although his analysis of the English principles of government was generally considered defective by later historians, it was hailed as marvelously penetrating by English readers of his own time.

Charles Yorke, the future lord chancellor , told Montesquieu, "You have understood us better than we understand ourselves. Especially influential was his theory that the freedom of the individual could best be guaranteed by the division of the powers of the state between three distinct organs that could balance and check one another — a separation of powers Montesquieu, rightly or wrongly, believed to be characteristic of the English system.

Montesquieu belonged to the noblesse de robe. Part of his design in recommending the separation of powers in France was to elevate the French aristocracy to a position comparable to that of the English, for whereas Rousseau believed that political liberty could be achieved only in a democracy and Voltaire believed it could best be achieved by a philosopher-king, Montesquieu held that liberty was most secure where there was a potent aristocracy to limit the despotic tendency of both the monarch and the common people.

He believed that the way to preserve freedom was to set "power against power. No one wrote with greater eloquence against despotism than did Montesquieu, yet he was far from sharing the conventional liberal outlook of the eighteenth-century philosophes. He had all the conservatism characteristic of the landowner and the lawyer.

Where did montesquieu live

In many respects he was positively reactionary; for instance, he wished to strengthen rather than diminish hereditary privileges. But like Edmund Burke , whom he influenced considerably, Montesquieu was able to reconcile his reforming and reactionary sentiments by insisting that he sought to restore old freedoms, not promote new ones.

He argued that the centralizing monarchistic policy of Louis XIV had robbed Frenchmen of their ancient liberties and privileges. The only kind of revolution Montesquieu advocated was one that would give back to the French Estates — and to the nobility and the parlements in particular — the rights they had enjoyed before the seventeenth century.

The actual French Revolution , which sought to enfranchise the bourgeoisie and the common people and to bring about a variety of other innovations, was far from the sort of change that Montesquieu had favored, although he inadvertently did help to inspire the events of and after. Montesquieu's parents were not well off.