Summary: The Spirit of Laws
The Spirit of Laws was published in 1748, in Geneva and without an author's name, so as to avoid censorship. This book presents Montesquieu's political reflections. It describes the different forms of government (monarchy, aristocracy, republic, despotism, etc.) and the laws appropriate to them. It includes his famous theory of the separation of the three powers.
The point of The Spirit of Laws is to grasp the major principles that govern the history of political societies.
In our societies, events do not unfold at random. There are general laws, which it is a matter of identifying:
I have laid down the first principles, and have found that the particular cases apply naturally to them; that the histories of all nations are only consequences of them 1.
Montesquieu defines laws as the necessary relationships that derive from the nature of things
2. Hence all things (animals, men, God, etc.) have their laws. This is the necessary condition for the world, once created, to subsist and not collapse in on itself. The existence of these laws is therefore proven by the persistence of the world.
These laws exist from time immemorial, even human laws, for they exist in potential before they are enacted.
Man, as an intelligent and free being, nevertheless has the power to violate the laws that characterise him:It is far from the case that the intelligent world is as well governed as the physical world
3.
The laws of nature which precede political laws are those which govern human beings before the establishment of societies. What can they be?
This amounts to describing the state of nature, a political theme popularised by Hobbes. Unlike the latter, Montesquieu does not describe this as a state of war, in which every man would be a wolf to man.
In this state, each man feels inferior
4 and fiercely shuns the company of other men. As a result, the state of nature is a state of peace.
Certainly Hobbes asks why men lock their houses if they are naturally friendly. However, Montesquieu shows that this is an ill-posed question: indeed, this is attributing to them elements of civil society (a house, a key), and therefore desires that cannot take place in the state of nature.
In this state of nature, four fundamental determinations characterise us: we have the idea of God, we seek to feed ourselves, we desire to reproduce and we have the desire to live in society (mixed with fear).
These, then, are the four natural laws of human beings.
As soon as we enter society, the state of war begins. Montesquieu thus describes a historical process that is the reverse of Hobbes's, for which people enter society precisely to escape the state of war that characterises the state of nature.
For Montesquieu, the state of war is twofold: men, within the same society, enter into war with each other, as each loses the sense of his weakness; similarly, nations enter into war with each other.
As a result, laws of three kinds appear (constituting three different kinds of rights):
- those governing relations between peoples: the law of nations
- those that govern the relationships of rulers to ruled: political law
- those which govern the relations of citizens to each other: civil law
What is the government most adapted to the human nature?
Many political commentators before Montesquieu attributed this characteristic to the monarchy. Indeed, the monarch commands his subjects, as the father commands his children. It therefore seems to be the most natural political system.
Montesquieu objects that after the death of the father, power passes to sons or brothers, and gives way to a government of many. The family is therefore not the paradigm from which the most natural government can be determined.
One might expect Montesquieu to say in The Spirit of Laws that democracy is the political system most in keeping with human nature. This is not the case. The most natural government is the one that best adapts to the people for whom it is established.
In fact, the diversity of peoples leads to a great diversity of laws, and in turn to a great number of different political regimes: there are few universal laws and therefore there is no political regime that would be universally valid:
Laws must be so peculiar to the people for whom they are made, that it is a very great accident if those of one nation can suit another 5.
1 The Spirit of Laws, preface
2 I, chap.1
3 ibid.
4 I, chap.2
5 I, chap.3