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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2009
Montesquieu is not often thought of as a significant natural law thinker. The article on natural law in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences discusses many theorists of the natural law, but Montesquieu is not among them. A valuable older survey of natural law theorizing by legal philosopher A. P. d'Entrèves cites the Frenchman but once, as a very minor character in a story with far more significant actors—Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, even Georg Hegel. A yet more comprehensive survey of the topic, Natural Law and Human Dignity, by French philosopher and social theorist Ernst Bloch, does not mention Montesquieu at all.
1 Strauss, Leo, “Natural Law,” in Sills, David L., ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1968)Google Scholar, reprinted as Strauss, Leo, “On Natural Law,” in Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 137.Google Scholar
2 d'Entrèves, A. P., Natural Law: An Historical Survey (New York: Harper and Row, 1951), 54.Google Scholar
3 Bloch, Ernst, Natural Law and Human Dignity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986).Google Scholar
4 de Secondat, Charles Louis, de la Brède, Baron et de Montesquieu, , The Spirit of the Laws, ed. Cohler, Anne M., Miller, Basia Carolyn, and Stone, Harold Samuel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, I2, XXVI. Unless otherwise indicated, references to Spirit will be given in the text by Book and chapter numbers and will be taken from this translation. Occasionally I silently revise the translation; when I have done so, I have used the French text as presented in Montesquieu, , De l'Esprit des Loix, ed. de la Gressaye, Jean Brethe (Paris: Societé les Belles Lettres, 1950).Google Scholar
5 Pangle, Thomas, Montesquieu's Philosophy of Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 309–10.Google Scholar Natural law (either droit or loi) appears in I1,2; VI13,20; X2,3; XIV12; XV7,12,17; XXIV6; and XXVL3–7,14.
6 Montesquieu, , Defense de l'Esprit des LoixGoogle Scholar, in Montesquieu, , Oeuvres Complètes, ed. Oster, Daniel (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1964), 809.Google Scholar The translation is mine.
7 Goyard-Fabre, Simone, La Philosophie du Droit de Montesquieu (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1973), 103.Google Scholar The anti-Hobbes theme is strong throughout her book and most of the rest of the scholarly literature. See Waddicor, Mark H., Montesquieu and the Philosophy of Natural Law (The Hague, The Netherlands: Nijhoff, 1970), 37, 65, 73, 75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shackleton, Robert, Montesquieu: A Critical Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 248Google Scholar; and Mason, Sheila Mary, Montesquieu's Idea of Justice (The Hague, The Netherlands: Nijhoff, 1975), 207–8, 211, 243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar There are dissenting voices, however, who see some deep affinities between Hobbes and Montesquieu on natural law. See, for example, Pangle, , Montesquieu's Philosophy;Google Scholar and Manent, Pierre, The City of Man (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 19.Google Scholar
8 See Mintz, Samuel I., The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962).Google Scholar For the works themselves, see Pufendorf, Samuel, De Jure Naturae et Gentium Libri Octo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934)Google Scholar; Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cumberland, Richard, De Legibus Naturae (London: 1672).Google Scholar
9 Waddicor, , Natural Law, 19, 181.Google Scholar See also Shackleton, , Montesquieu, 244–45.Google Scholar
10 See Lowenthal, David, “Book I of Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws,” American Political Science Review 53, no. 2 (06 1959): 493CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 Shackleton, , Montesquieu, 238.Google Scholar
12 This ambiguity is remarked upon by nearly every commentator on Spirit. Again, Waddicor supplies a helpful survey of the literature in his Natural Law, 16–21.Google Scholar
13 Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947), I–II, q. 90, a. 4.Google Scholar
14 Cf. Lowenthal, , “Book I of Spirit,” 493.Google Scholar
15 Grotius, Hugo, On the Law of War and Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913–1925), Proleg. 40.Google Scholar
16 Ibid.
17 Thus I partly agree and partly disagree with Mark Hulliung's assessment that “Montesquieu was still entrapped in the philosophical rationalism and modernized natural law of Grotius or Spinoza.” Hulliung, Mark, Montesquieu and the Old Regime (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 112.Google Scholar
18 Descartes, , Meditations on First Philosophy, in Cottingham, John, Stoothoff, Robert, and Murdoch, Duglad, trans., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)Google Scholar, Meditation III. All subsequent references to Descartes's works refer to the translations provided in this Cambridge edition.
19 See Montesquieu, , Defense, 809.Google Scholar
20 Descartes, , Discourse on Method, V, p. 133Google Scholar; see also Descartes, , Principles of Philosophy, II12.Google Scholar
21 Descartes, , Discourse on Method, V, p. 139Google Scholar; Descartes, , The World, pp. 92–93Google Scholar; Descartes, , Principles of Philosophy, Part II.Google Scholar
22 Montesquieu, , Oeuvres Complètes, 26.Google Scholar
23 Cf. Lowenthal, , “Book I of Spirit,” 489Google Scholar: “The standpoint chosen is that of human rather than angelic societies.” For a brief discussion of Montesquieu's references to “intelligences superior to man,” see Lowenthal, , “Book I of Spirit,” 489 n. 14.Google Scholar
24 Descartes, , MeditationsGoogle Scholar, Dedication. On angels as incorporeal substances, see Descartes, , Objections and Replies to the “Meditations,”Google Scholar reply to the sixth set of objections, item 3.
25 Descartes, , Principles, I51.Google Scholar
26 Descartes, , Meditations, Dedication.Google Scholar
27 Both accepted the implications regarding personal immortality that follow from rejecting such a dualism. Spinoza more or less denies that such immortality exists; Locke concedes that reason is unable to demonstrate it. See Curley, Edwin, Behind the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza's “Ethics” (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 85–86Google Scholar; Spinoza, , Ethics, in Curley, Edwin, ed. and trans., A Spinoza Reader (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, V, prop. 21; and Locke, John, On the Reasonableness of Christianity, ed. Ewing, George W. (Chicago: H. Regnery, 1965), paragraphs 243, 245.Google Scholar
28 See, for example, Hulliung, , Montesquieu, 108–9Google Scholar and the citations to Montesquieu therein.
29 Other indications abound of a subterranean Montesquieuian unease with the Cartesian dualism he invokes in I1 His proof of God, for instance, contains a logical flaw so evident as to make us wonder how serious he can be about the argument itself. He infers from the fact that unintelligent matter cannot be the source of intelligence that there must be a “primitive” intelligence; he then concludes that this intelligence is the source of everything, that is, it is the source of the intelligent beings and “matter devoid of intelligence.” Furthermore, Montesquieu challenges the doctrine of creation when he affirms both that God is unchangeable and that the laws by which the world is governed are the same as those by which God created the world. If God must be eternally the same, as Montesquieu argues, then the act of creation cannot be made intelligible. The laws that govern the universe (by which Montesquieu clearly has in mind the mechanical laws of physics) cannot be at work in creation because among other things, those laws guarantee that in the physical universe we never have a case of creation ex nihilo. For a version of this problem, see Descartes, , Discourse on Method, V.Google Scholar See also Montesquieu's intriguing appraisal of Descartes, in Montesquieu, , Mes Pensees 1720–1755Google Scholar, in Montesquieu, , Oeuvres Complètes, nos. 1283, 2070, 2072, 2077–78, 2104–5.Google Scholar On Montesquieu's proof for God's existence, see the very helpful discussion in Lowenthal, , “Book I of Spirit,” 487Google Scholar; and Pangle, , Montesquieu's Philosophy, 27Google Scholar
30 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Tuck, Richard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), chap. 13.Google Scholar
31 On Clarke as a possible influence on Montesquieu's discussion of law in general, see Goyard-Fabre, , La Philosophie, 95Google Scholar; Shackleton, , Montesquieu, 71, 73, 152, 246Google Scholar; and Waddicor, , Natural Law, 189.Google Scholar For evidence that Montesquieu knew Clarke, see Montesquieu, , Mes Pensees, no. 73.Google Scholar
32 Clarke, Samuel, A Discourse of Natural Religion, reprinted in Raphael, D. D., ed., British Moralists: 1650–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 1:222.Google Scholar
33 Ibid., 1:221.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid., 1:220.
36 Ibid., 1:222.
37 Hobbes, , Leviathan, chap. 15.Google Scholar
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 See Lowenthal, , “Book I of Spirit,” 494Google Scholar: “By nature, then, man is a being of sentiment and passion rather than reason, and primarily selfish.”
41 Cf. Pangle, , Montesquieu's Philosophy, 31.Google Scholar
42 See ibid., 32; and Lowenthal, , “Book I of Spirit,” 494.Google Scholar
43 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality Among Men, in Rousseau, Basic Political Writings, ed. and trans. Cress, Donald A. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1987), 53.Google Scholar
44 Hobbes, , Leviathan, chap. 13.Google Scholar
45 See Pangle, , Montesquieu's Philosophy, 28.Google Scholar
46 Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954).Google Scholar
47 For a similar conclusion reached by a very different route, see Lowenthal, , “Book I of Spirit,” 490–91.Google Scholar
48 Lowenthal draws a similar conclusion in his “Book I of Spirit,” 496.Google Scholar
49 Ibid., 494.
50 Ibid., 495.
51 I partially agree with Hulliung's conclusion that “[b]oth the Christian deity and the law of nature were expendable as methods of condemning evil. Of and by itself, historiography was equal to the task of condemning injustice.” Hulliung, , Montesquieu, 141.Google Scholar Hulliung means by this that historical investigation can reveal the self-defeating character of unjust actions and policies. This may be correct for Rome (Hulliung's example here), but Montesquieu is clear that despotisms have quite impressive survival power. Besides, one needs a standard of what makes for a good or bad outcome. For a discussion of Locke on self-ownership, see my Natural Rights and the New Republicanism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), chap. 9.Google Scholar
52 Hulliung, , Montesquieu, 115, 241–42, 242 n. 33.Google Scholar
