Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic

by Paul Anthony Rahe

This fresh examination of the works of Montesquieu seeks to understand the shortcomings of the modern democratic state in light of this great political thinker’s insightful critique of commercial republicanism.

The western democracies’ muted response to victory in the Cold War signaled the presence of a pervasive discontent, a sense that despite this victory liberal democracy itself was deeply flawed. Paul A. Rahe argues that to understand this phenomenon we must re-examine—starting with Montesquieu—the nature of liberal democracy, its character, and its propensities. In a brilliant exposition of the works of Montesquieu Rahe identifies the profound sense of uneasiness fostered by the modern republic as a source of weakness and as the principal cause of the present discontents.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, History

400 pages, Hardcover

First published September 22, 2009

About the author

Paul A. Rahe is the Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in Western Heritage and professor of history at Hillsdale College. His previous books include the seminal three-volume work Republics Ancient and Modern. Rahe lives in Hillsdale, MI.

Reviews

[Brant Bishop · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough, academic -- and therefore somewhat difficult -- study of Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, which both reveals the connections of the book to the affairs of Montesequieu's time and reflects on the less historically contingent relationship between government forms and the human soul. As the long subtle suggests, an understanding of government requires a sensitive and subtle attention to a host of considerations (war, religion, commerce, climate, terrain, technology .... etc.). In the context of Montesequieu's time, attention to these subtle considerations allowed Montesequieu to see how monarchy had declined and seemed inevitably poised to perish, while commercial republics such as England at the time seemed poised to thrive. But, at the same time, Montesequieu's insight was clear enough to see that such commercial republics were not impervious to their own forms of decadence, which would reach a crisis point where the legislative power became more corrupt than the executive. At that point, the elimination of the intermediary powers that accompanied the decline and abolition of monarchy would subject the people to a thorough-going despotism that we witnessed in some of the despotic, totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century. This understanding, moreover, set the stage for the analysis of Alexis de Tocqueville, who saw the possibility as well of a more gentle sort of despotism of benign governments whose mode of consolidating power would be to keep the people in a docile sort of permanent adolescence and reliance on the state -- all of which is explored in Rahe's companion work, Soft Desptism, Democracy's Drift.