Montesquieu and the Making of the Modern World

by Alan Macfarlane

The Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) was one of the greatest thinkers of all time. He was a leading member of the French Enlightenment and laid the foundations for thought in many of the social sciences. His greatest book, 'The Spirit of the Laws', was the first detailed survey of the customs and cultures of the world and their deeper structures. It build on other important work in his 'Persian Letters', 'Considerations on the Decline of the Romans'. His wide learning and analytic brilliance does not always make his work easily accessible. But if we consider all the work together, and combine the life with the writing, it is possible to see deep insider the mind of one of the most profound thinkers of modern times and someone who shaped our modern world.

56 pages, Paperback

First published May 9, 2013

About the author

Alan Macfarlane was born in Shillong, India, in 1941 and educated at the Dragon School, Sedbergh School, Oxford and London Universities. He is the author of over twenty books, including The Origins of English Individualism (1978) and Letters to Lily: On How the World Works (2005). He has worked in England, Nepal, Japan and China as both an historian and anthropologist. He was elected to the British Academy in 1986 and is now Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and a Life Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.

Reviews

[Dominic Muresan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book itself is free on the author's webpage - the reason being the fact that it is not a book per se, but a chapter of a larger work.

A stellar account of Montesquieu's brilliant historical thinking and analitical power. With a lot of quotations from the man himself and without any unfounded criticisms regarding his historical method, is well balanced and enjoyable foray into this first expert in many domains: history, sociology, geography, legal philosophy.

[Lee]

'' ‘This work has almost killed me,’ he wrote, after revising the final proofs, ‘I am going to rest; I shall labour no more.’ ''