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Château de la Brède, Montesquieu's birthplace. Montesquieu was born at the Château de la Brède in southwest France, 25 kilometres (16 mi) south of Bordeaux. [4] His father, Jacques de Secondat (1654–1713), was a soldier with a long noble ancestry, including descent from Richard de la Pole, Yorkist claimant to the English crown.
Montesquieu's treatise, already widely disseminated, had an enormous influence on the work of many others, most notably: Catherine the Great, who produced Nakaz (Instruction); the Founding Fathers of the United States Constitution; and Alexis de Tocqueville, who applied Montesquieu's methods to a study of American society, in Democracy in America.
Montesquieu makes use of the concept of the state of nature in his The Spirit of the Laws, first printed in 1748. Montesquieu states the thought process behind early human beings before the formation of society. He says that human beings would have the faculty of knowing and would first think to preserve their life in the state.
French Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu has been credited as one of the chief proponents of the doux commerce theory.. Doux commerce (lit.sweet commerce) is a concept originating from the Age of Enlightenment stating that commerce tends to civilize people, making them less likely to resort to violent or irrational behaviors.
Between 1740 and 1789, the Enlightenment acquired its name and, despite heated conflicts between the philosophes and state and religious authorities, gained support in the highest reaches of government. Although philosophe is a French word, the Enlightenment was distinctly cosmopolitan; philosophes could be found from Philadelphia to Saint ...
Pauline Kra, Religion in Montesquieu's "Lettres persanes", Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 72 (1970). Jean Starobinski, preface to Folio edition of Lettres persanes , 1973. Jean Marie Goulemot, "Questions sur la signification politique des Lettres Persanes ," Approches des Lumières , Paris: Klincksieck, 1974, pp. 213–225.
The Age of Enlightenment was a broad philosophical movement in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The traditional theological-political system that placed Scripture at the center, with religious authorities and monarchies claiming and enforcing their power by divine right, was challenged and overturned in the realm of ideas.
In recent years, scholars have expanded the time span and global perspective of the Enlightenment by examining: (1) how European intellectuals did not work alone and other people helped spread and adapt Enlightenment ideas, (2) how Enlightenment ideas were "a response to cross-border interaction and global integration," and (3) how the ...