On Political Liberty: Montesquieu’s Missing Manuscript

Abstract

This essay draws attention to the importance of Montesquieu’s earliest and unpublished writings on liberty for our understanding of the famous eleventh book of the Spirit of the Laws. Montesquieu’s investigation of the nature and preconditions of liberty, the author argues, was much more polemical than it is usually assumed. As an analysis of his notebooks shows, Montesquieu set out to wrest control over the concept of liberty from the republican admirers of classical antiquity, a faction that he believed to be dangerously populist and revolutionary. In order to do so, Montesquieu came up with a redefinition of the concept of liberty that allowed him to argue that monarchical subjects could be just as free as republican citizens. This conclusion has important implications not just for our understanding of Montesquieu’s writings but also and more broadly for our understanding of the intellectual history of liberalism.

A democratic critique of precarity

“…Today, scholars debate whether Montesquieu's thinking offers a defence of liberal, republican or monarchical government, as well as how these forms of governments come together in current political life (see, e.g., Richter 1977;Pangle 1973;Gay 1996;Shklar 1987;Krause 2002;Sonenscher 2007;Rahe 2009;de Dijn 2011;Spector 2012). 7.…”

On the Liberty of the English: Adam Smith’s Reply to Montesquieu and Hume

“…But on the specific matter of the origins, age, and robustness of English liberty, all three disagreed. For present purposes we may sidestep the vexed question of where England fits in Montesquieu's typology of republics versus monarchies (Pangle 1973;Rahe 2009;Spector 2012;Douglass 2012;De Dijn 2014) and hence the extent to which he was an outright admirer of the English system of government and the degree to which he thought it could or should be emulated in other historical and geographical locales (De Dijn 2011Tomaselli 2006). Instead we can focus specifically on the question of liberty-of why and to what extent Montesquieu thought the English possessed it.…”

“…This meant, however, that liberty was not unique to any specific regime type. In particular those who claimed that only democracies guaranteed freedom were mistaken because “the power of the people has been confused with the liberty of the people” (Montesquieu 1989, XI.2; Douglass 2012, 715–16; De Dijn 2011, 193–94; McDaniel 2013, 32–33). What mattered was that a regime was “moderate”—that the constitutional powers arrayed within it were organized in such a way as to check each other, ensuring that none came to dominate the others, for that would inevitably lead to “abuse”: “So that one cannot abuse power, power must check power by the arrangement of things” (Montesquieu 1989, XI.4).…”