Montesquieu And The Despotic Ideas Of Europe

Author : Vickie B. Sullivan
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 301 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2017-09-05
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780226483078

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Montesquieu & the Despotic Ideas of Europe by Vickie B. Sullivan Pdf

Montesquieu is rightly famous as a tireless critic of despotism, which he associates in his writings overtly with Asia and the Middle East and not with the apparently more moderate Western models of governance found throughout Europe. However, a careful reading of Montesquieu reveals that he recognizes a susceptibility to despotic practices in the West—and that the threat emanates not from the East, but from certain despotic ideas that inform such Western institutions as the French monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church. Nowhere is Montesquieu’s critique of the despotic ideas of Europe more powerful than in his enormously influential The Spirit of the Laws, and Vickie B. Sullivan guides readers through Montesquieu’s sometimes veiled, yet sharply critical accounts of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Aristotle, and Plato, as well as various Christian thinkers. He finds deleterious consequences, for example, in brutal Machiavellianism, in Hobbes’s justifications for the rule of one, in Plato’s reasoning that denied slaves the right of natural defense, and in the Christian teachings that equated heresy with treason and informed the Inquisition. In this new reading of Montesquieu’s masterwork, Sullivan corrects the misconception that it offers simple, objective observations, showing it instead to be a powerful critique of European politics that would become remarkably and regrettably prescient after Montesquieu’s death when despotism wound its way through Europe.

Author : Charles de Secondat baron de Montesquieu
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 492 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 1886
Category : Jurisprudence
ISBN : UIUC:30112111571060

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The Spirit of Laws by Charles de Secondat baron de Montesquieu Pdf

Author : Sankar Muthu
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 419 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2012-09-17
Category : History
ISBN : 9780521839426

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Empire and Modern Political Thought by Sankar Muthu Pdf

This collection of original essays by leading historians of political thought examines modern European thinkers' writings about conquest, colonization, and empire. The creation of vast transcontinental empires and imperial trading networks played a key role in the development of modern European political thought. The rise of modern empires raised fundamental questions about virtually the entire contested set of concepts that lay at the heart of modern political philosophy, such as property, sovereignty, international justice, war, trade, rights, transnational duties, civilization, and progress. From Renaissance republican writings about conquest and liberty to sixteenth-century writings about the Spanish conquest of the Americas through Enlightenment perspectives about conquest and global commerce and nineteenth-century writings about imperial activities both within and outside of Europe, these essays survey the central moral and political questions occasioned by the development of overseas empires and European encounters with the non-European world among theologians, historians, philosophers, diplomats, and merchants.

Author : Charles de Secondat baron de Montesquieu
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 1777
Category : French literature
ISBN : NYPL:33433067312748

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Complete Works by Charles de Secondat baron de Montesquieu Pdf

Author : David William Bates
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2011-11-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780231528665

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States of War by David William Bates Pdf

We fear that the growing threat of violent attack has upset the balance between existential concepts of political power, which emphasize security, and traditional notions of constitutional limits meant to protect civil liberties. We worry that constitutional states cannot, during a time of war, terror, and extreme crisis, maintain legality and preserve civil rights and freedoms. David Williams Bates allays these concerns by revisiting the theoretical origins of the modern constitutional state, which, he argues, recognized and made room for tensions among law, war, and the social order. We traditionally associate the Enlightenment with the taming of absolutist sovereign power through the establishment of a legal state based on the rights of individuals. In his critical rereading, Bates shows instead that Enlightenment thinkers conceived of political autonomy in a systematic, theoretical way. Focusing on the nature of foundational violence, war, and existential crises, eighteenth-century thinkers understood law and constitutional order not as constraints on political power but as the logical implication of that primordial force. Returning to the origin stories that informed the beginnings of political community, Bates reclaims the idea of law, warfare, and the social order as intertwining elements subject to complex historical development. Following an analysis of seminal works by seventeenth-century natural-law theorists, Bates reviews the major canonical thinkers of constitutional theory (Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau) from the perspective of existential security and sovereign power. Countering Carl Schmitt's influential notion of the autonomy of the political, Bates demonstrates that Enlightenment thinkers understood the autonomous political sphere as a space of law protecting individuals according to their political status, not as mere members of a historically contingent social order.

Author : Simon Kow
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2016-08-25
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781317611219

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China in Early Enlightenment Political Thought by Simon Kow Pdf

China in Early Enlightenment Political Thought examines the ideas of China in the works of three major thinkers in the early European Enlightenment of the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries: Pierre Bayle, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and the Baron de Montesquieu. Unlike surveys which provide only cursory overviews of Enlightenment views of China, or individual studies of each thinker which tend to address their conceptions of China in individual chapters, this is the first book to provide in-depth comparative analyses of these seminal Enlightenment thinkers that specifically link their views on China to their political concerns. Against the backdrop especially of the Jesuit accounts of China which these philosophers read, Bayle, Leibniz, and Montesquieu interpreted imperial China in three radically divergent ways: as a tolerant, atheistic monarchy; as an exemplar of human and divine justice; and as an exceptional but nonetheless corrupt despotic state. The book thus shows how the development of political thought in the early Enlightenment was closely linked to the question of China as a positive or negative model for Europe, and argues that revisiting Bayle’s approach to China is a salutary corrective to the errors and presumptions in the thought of Leibniz and Montesquieu. The book also discusses how Chinese reformers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries drew on Enlightenment writers’ different views of China as they sought to envisage how China should be remodeled.

Author : Constantine Christos Vassiliou,Jeffrey Church,Alin Fumurescu
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 293 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2023-05-08
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781666913286

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The Spirit of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters by Constantine Christos Vassiliou,Jeffrey Church,Alin Fumurescu Pdf

The Spirit of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters explores Montesquieu’s careful treatment of the spiritual, ethical, and civic dilemmas France encountered in the early 18th Century. In examining Montesquieu’s response to Bourbon France’s commercial and political culture of this time, it will help deepen our understanding of his political philosophy.

Author : Stephen W. Sawyer
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2024-06-19
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226833392

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Demos Assembled by Stephen W. Sawyer Pdf

An intelligent, engaging, and in-depth reading of the nature of the state and the establishment of the modern political order in the mid-nineteenth century. Previous studies have covered in great detail how the modern state slowly emerged from the early Renaissance through the seventeenth century, but we know relatively little about the next great act: the birth and transformation of the modern democratic state. And in an era where our democratic institutions are rife with conflict, it’s more important now than ever to understand how our institutions came into being. Stephen W. Sawyer’s Demos Assembled provides us with a fresh, transatlantic understanding of that political order’s genesis. While the French influence on American political development is well understood, Sawyer sheds new light on the subsequent reciprocal influence that American thinkers and politicians had on the establishment of post-revolutionary regimes in France. He argues that the emergence of the stable Third Republic (1870–1940), which is typically said to have been driven by idiosyncratic internal factors, was in fact a deeply transnational, dynamic phenomenon. Sawyer’s findings reach beyond their historical moment, speaking broadly to conceptions of state formation: how contingent claims to authority, whether grounded in violence or appeals to reason and common cause, take form as stateness.

Author : Montesquieu,Melvin Richter
Publisher : Hackett Publishing
Page : 314 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 1990-01-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0872200906

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Selected Political Writings by Montesquieu,Melvin Richter Pdf

Rev. ed. of: The political theory of Montesquieu. 1977.

Author : Keegan Callanan
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 317 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2018-08-23
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781108428170

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Montesquieu's Liberalism and the Problem of Universal Politics by Keegan Callanan Pdf

Montesquieu's liberalism and critique of universalism in politics, often thought to stand in tension, comprise a coherent philosophical and political project.

Author : Thomas Paine
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226653518

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The Daily Thomas Paine by Thomas Paine Pdf

"We can call Thomas Paine-eminent Founder, verbal bomb-thrower, Deist, revolutionary, and rationalist-the spark of the American Revolution. In his influential pamphlets, Paine codified both colonial outrage and the intellectual justification for independence, arguing consistently and convincingly for Enlightenment values and the power of the people. He was a master of political rhetoric, from the sarcastic insult to the diplomatic aperçu. Today, we are living in times that, as Paine said, try men's souls. Whatever your politics, if you're seeking a new Paine-with rhetoric to ignite social and political transformations-where better to start than at the source? This is a work that provides quotes from Thomas Paine's writings"--

Author : David W. Carrithers,Philip Stewart
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 287 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2020-11-19
Category : History
ISBN : 9781108841467

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Montesquieu by David W. Carrithers,Philip Stewart Pdf

The first complete translation of twenty-one texts by Montesquieu , presenting his views on politics, science, economics, and religion.

Author : Thomas L. Pangle
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 205 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2010-05-15
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780226645520

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The Theological Basis of Liberal Modernity in Montesquieu's "Spirit of the Laws" by Thomas L. Pangle Pdf

The Spirit of the Laws—Montesquieu’s huge, complex, and enormously influential work—is considered one of the central texts of the Enlightenment, laying the foundation for the liberally democratic political regimes that were to embody its values. In his penetrating analysis, Thomas L. Pangle brilliantly argues that the inherently theological project of Enlightenment liberalism is made more clearly—and more consequentially— in Spirit than in any other work. In a probing and careful reading, Pangle shows how Montesquieu believed that rationalism, through the influence of liberal institutions and the spread of commercial culture, would secularize human affairs. At the same time, Pangle uncovers Montesquieu’s views about the origins of humanity’s religious impulse and his confidence that political and economic security would make people less likely to sacrifice worldly well-being for otherworldly hopes. With the interest in the theological aspects of political theory and practice showing no signs of diminishing, this book is a timely and insightful contribution to one of the key achievements of Enlightenment thought.

Author : Montesquieu
Publisher : Indoeuropeanpublishing.com
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2023-02-06
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9798889420996

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Persian Letters by Montesquieu Pdf

Persian Letters is a satirical work by Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, recounting the experiences of two Persian noblemen, Usbek and Rica, who are traveling through France. In 1711 Usbek leaves his seraglio in Isfahan to undertake the long journey to France, accompanied by his young friend Rica. He leaves behind five wives (Zachi, Zéphis, Fatmé, Zélis, and Roxane) in the care of a number of black eunuchs, one of whom is the head or first eunuch. During the trip and their long stay in Paris (1712-1720), they comment, in letters exchanged with friends and mullahs, on numerous aspects of Western, Christian society, particularly French politics and mores, ending with a biting satire of the System of John Law. Over time, various disorders surface back in the seraglio, and beginning in 1717 (Letter 139 [147]), the situation there rapidly unravels. Usbek orders his head eunuch to crack down, but his message does not arrive in time and a revolt brings about the death of his wives, including the vengeful suicide of his favorite, Roxane, and, it appears, most of the eunuchs... About the author: Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (18 January 1689, La Brède, Gironde - 10 February 1755), was a French social commentator and political thinker who lived during the Era of the Enlightenment. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, taken for granted in modern discussions of government and implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. He was largely responsible for the popularization of the terms feudalism and Byzantine Empire. Persian Letters is a satirical work by Montesquieu, recounting the experiences of two Persian noblemen, Usbek and Rica, who are traveling through France.

Author : John Keane
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2020-05-12
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780674246690

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The New Despotism by John Keane Pdf

An Australian Book Review Best Book of the Year A disturbing in-depth exposé of the antidemocratic practices of despotic governments now sweeping the world. One day they’ll be like us. That was once the West’s complacent and self-regarding assumption about countries emerging from poverty, imperial rule, or communism. But many have hardened into something very different from liberal democracy: what the eminent political thinker John Keane describes as a new form of despotism. And one day, he warns, we may be more like them. Drawing on extensive travels, interviews, and a lifetime of thinking about democracy and its enemies, Keane shows how governments from Russia and China through Central Asia to the Middle East and Europe have mastered a formidable combination of political tools that threaten the established ideals and practices of power-sharing democracy. They mobilize the rhetoric of democracy and win public support for workable forms of government based on patronage, dark money, steady economic growth, sophisticated media controls, strangled judiciaries, dragnet surveillance, and selective violence against their opponents. Casting doubt on such fashionable terms as dictatorship, autocracy, fascism, and authoritarianism, Keane makes a case for retrieving and refurbishing the old term “despotism” to make sense of how these regimes function and endure. He shows how they cooperate regionally and globally and draw strength from each other’s resources while breeding global anxieties and threatening the values and institutions of democracy. Like Montesquieu in the eighteenth century, Keane stresses the willing complicity of comfortable citizens in all these trends. And, like Montesquieu, he worries that the practices of despotism are closer to home than we care to admit.