Montesquieu's 'The Spirit of the Laws'

A Critical Edition

Edited and translated by W. B. Allen

The Spirit of the Laws is the canonical text of modern republicanism and the English translation – always deficient heretofore – is critical to an appreciation of those deliberations that led to adoption of the Constitution of the United States. The present update recovers the sense of the original French.

Hardback, 984 Pages

ISBN:9781839982941

February 2024

£120.00, $165.00

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About This Book

The Spirit of the Laws not only systematizes the foundational ideas of “separation of powers” and “balances and checks,” it provides the decisive response to the question of whether power in the nation-state can be limited in the aftermath of the Westphalian settlement of 1648. It describes a civilizational change through which power becomes domesticated, with built-in resistance to attempts to absolutize (or make total) political power. As such, it is the Bible of modern politics, now made more accessible to English readers than it ever has been.

There have been in English only two prior translations of this work that first appeared in 1748. The deficiencies of those two efforts have been broadly identified in the scholarship. Although the text is still used with regularity in university instruction (having been recovered after a lull in the 1950s and 60s), it deserves – and now receives – a presentation that enhances its usefulness in the analysis both of politics and the philosophical foundations of human life.

Montesquieu’s singularity – the first secular argument against race-based slavery and only the second secular argument against the servitude of women – provides a special heritage for the modern word to preserve and a key to making operational those fundamental insights within the context of sustained political and cultural development. The replacement of blood and tribe with the universal attributes of humanity (while recognizing the highly variable ecologies of communities) constitutes the single-most important moral and political development of the modern world. And The Spirit of the Laws bears a primary responsibility for that accomplishment.

Reviews

“William Barclay Allen has been wrestling with Montesquieu’s œuvre now for more than fifty years; and, to his great credit, he has resisted the propensity, nearly universal among scholars, to treat the French philosopher as a partisan of one or another form of government. In this brilliant, provocative book, he challenges the consensus that the author of The Spirit of the Laws was a liberal on the Lockean model by drawing attention to passages on natural law in that work that do not fit this hypothesis. Then he elaborates an account of Montesquie’s thinking that places him in between Plato and Aristotle, on the one hand, and Hobbes and Locke, on the other. No one who reads this work with care and ruminates on the implication of Allen’s argument can rest satisfied with the reigning orthodoxy. —Paul A. Rahe, Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage, Hillsdale College Roger and Martha Mertz Vising Fellow in Classics, The Hoover Institution

In his new translation and commentary on The Spirit of the Laws, W. B. Allen has unveiled the plan, structure, and political profundity of Monesquieu's magnum opus. He has also captured that oh-so-very elusive idea of "esprit" that restlessly occupies the nucleus of Montesquieuu2019s work. Allen's book is a show of philosophical brilliance revealing philosophical brilliance, set against a backdrop of political moderation and hushed grandeur. -- Colleen Sheehan, Professor of Politics with the School of Civic and Economic Thought at Arizona State University.

A wide-ranging, deeply reflective, and richly thought-provoking contribution to the study of Montesquieu and of his influence on the American constitutional tradition. -- Thomas L. Pangle, Joe R. Long Endowed Chair in Democratic Studies, Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin

“William Barclay Allen has provided not just a major new translation but a major reinterpretation of Montesquieu’s magnum opus—a work that is both timeless and startlingly timely in an era when profound issues of what regimes are appropriate in different locales are being renewed around the globe.”—Rogers M. Smith, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania

“A searching commentary on Montesquieu’s great work, a book of many puzzles. William Allen identifies them and finds new ones, offering and providing convincing solutions with erudition and careful reasoning. His book gives readers a pleasurable entry to the features of Montesquieu’s wisdom.”—Harvey C. Mansfield, Research Professor of Government, Harvard University

“In this timely translation of Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws, Professor Allen not only sheds valuable new light on the original work but also gives one pause to contemplate the present state of democratic government and politics, in the United States and elsewhere.”—Agnes M. Herzberg, Professor Emeritus, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

W. B. Allen’s Montesquieu has one foot in the classical world and another in the early modern and seeks a politics superior to either. -Law & Liberty

Author Information

W. B. Allen studies and writes broadly in political philosophy and history, with special focus on traditions of self-government and liberalism.

Series

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Acknowledgments; Translator’s Preface; Foreword; THE SPIRIT OF THE LAWS BY MONTESQUIEU Concerning the Spirit of the Laws; PART ONE, Book One Concerning Laws in General; Book Two Concerning the Laws Which Derive Directly from the Nature of the Government; Book Three Concerning the Principles of the Three Governments; Book Four That Education Laws Ought to Be Relative to the Principles of the Government; Book Five The Legislator’s Laws Must Be Relative to the Principle of the Government; Book Six Consequences of the Principles of Different Governments, in Relation to the Simplicity of Civil and Criminal Laws, the Method of Judgment, and the Establishment of Penalties; Book Seven Consequences of the Differing Principles of the Three Governments, in Relation to Sumptuary Laws, Luxury, and the Status of Women; Book Eight Concerning the Corruption of the Principles of the Three Governments; PART TWO, Book Nine Concerning the Laws in the Relation They Have with Defensive Strength; Book Ten Concerning the Laws in Their Relation to Offensive Force; Book Eleven About Laws Which Create Political Liberty, in Its Relation to the Constitution; Book Twelve About the Laws Which Create Political Liberty, in Its Relation to the Citizen; Book Thirteen About the Relations Which the Levying of Taxes and the Extent of Public Revenues Hold with Liberty; PART THREE, Book Fourteen Concerning the Laws, in the Relation They Have with the Climate’s Nature; Book Fifteen How the Laws of Civil Slavery Have Some Relation to the Nature of the Climate; Book Sixteen How the Laws of Domestic Slavery Have Some Relation to the Nature of the Climate; Book Seventeen How the Laws of Political Servitude Are Related to the Nature of the Climate; Book Eighteen Concerning the Laws, in the Relation Which They Have to the Nature of the Terrain; Book Nineteen Concerning the Laws in the Relation Which They Have with the Principles That Create the General Spirit, the Morals, and the Manners of a Nation ; PART FOUR, Book Twenty About the Laws in the Relation That They Have with Commerce, Considered in Its Nature and Its Distinctions; Book Twenty-One About the Laws in the Relation They Have with Commerce, Considered Under the Revolutions Which There Have Been in the World; Book Twenty-Two About the Laws in the Relation That They Have with the Use of Money; Book Twenty-Three About the Laws in the Relation Which They Have to the Number of Inhabitants; PART FIVE, Book Twenty-Four Concerning the Laws in the Relation Which They Have to the Religion Instituted in Each Country, Considered in Its Practices and in Itself; Book Twenty-Five Laws in Relation to the Religion of Each Country and Its External Politics; Book Twenty-Six Concerning the Laws in the Relation That They Have with the Arrangement of Matters over Which They Are Set Up; PART SIX, Book Twenty-Seven Concerning the Origin and Revolutions of the Roman Laws on Successions; Book Twenty-Eight Concerning the Origin and Revolutions of the Civil Laws Among the French; Book Twenty-Nine About the Manner of Composing the Laws; Book Thirty A Theory of Feudal Laws Among the Francs in the Relation That They Have with Instituting the Monarchy; Book Thirty-One A Theory of Feudal Laws Among the Franks, in the Relation That They Have with the Revolutions in Their Monarchy; THE MIND BEHIND THE LAWS: THE TRANSLATION OF POWER; Epilogue: Montesquieu and America; Notes; Bibliography