Liberal Constitutionalism and Political Particularism in Montesquieu’sThe Spirit of the Laws

Abstract

The most well-known elements of Montesquieu’s political thought are his liberal constitutionalism and his emphasis on the need for a fit between a regime and a populace. But scholars have rarely sought to understand the theoretical relationship between these elements, and some have denied that they are meaningfully related at all. I argue that Montesquieu’s liberal constitutionalism and his political particularism are theoretically harmonious and mutually reinforcing elements of a unified project. Montesquieu’s liberal political philosophy possesses in-built sources of resistance to the rationalistic and universalistic political projects often associated with modern liberalism.

The intelligence concept and racial classification as sociological products of Western education

“…Anyone who attends an American college or university and takes a sociology, history, philosophy, education, literature, or political science course would most likely study Montesquieu (Charles Louis de Secondat) of Europe's Enlightenment Period. The academic community has credited Montesquieu as the first person to study groups of people based on his deliberate emphasis on group identity and political character in different regions of the world, which may be the basis of today's academic-intense subject of sociology (Callanan, 2014;Meszaros, 2017). Nonetheless, Montesquieu…”