Montesquieu biography cortal consors

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Without laws to check him, and with no need to attend to anyone who does not agree with him, a despot can do whatever he likes, however ill-advised or reprehensible. Thus, for instance, Rica writes that the Pope is a magician who can "make the king believe that three are only one, or else that the bread one eats is not bread, or that the wine one drinks is not wine, and a thousand other things of the same kind" (Letter 24); when Rica goes to the theater, he concludes that the spectators he sees in private boxes are actors enacting dramatic tableaux for the entertainment of the audience.

Montesquieu compares it to monks' love for their order: "their rule debars them from all those things by which the ordinary passions are fed; there remains therefore only this passion for the very rule that torments them. He received his education at the prestigious Oratorian Collège de Juilly in Paris and obtained a law degree from the University of Bordeaux in 1708.

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The civil laws are not an appropriate tool for enforcing religious norms of conduct: God has His own laws, and He is quite capable of enforcing them without our assistance. A controversial treatise, La Monarchie universelle was printed in 1734 but immediately withdrawn, so that only one copy remains extant. A despotism requires no powers to be carefully balanced against one another, no institutions to be created and maintained in existence, no complicated motivations to be fostered, and no restraints on power to be kept in place.

Montesquieu was also born into a climate of discontent in France. To produce this unnatural self-renunciation, "the whole power of education is required" (SL 4.5). Parts of Considerations were incorporated into The Spirit of the Laws, which he published in 1748. To do so, they must do three things. He also seems to share many of Montesquieu's views.

However, Montesquieu writes that when work can be done by freemen motivated by the hope of gain rather than by slaves motivated by fear, the former will always work better; and that in such climates slavery is not only wrong but imprudent. In this role, Montesquieu possessed a unique opportunity to observe the French governing structure in action.

Montesquieu moved through other important Italian cities and then settled in England for two years during a time of great struggle between the king and Parliament. In the Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu considers religions "in relation only to the good they produce in civil society" (SL 24.1), and not to their truth or falsity. Since they are less likely to be invaded, they are less likely to be sacked and devastated; and they are more likely to be worked well, since "countries are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty" (SL 18.3).

They are relatively insensitive to pleasure and pain; Montesquieu writes that "you must flay a Muscovite alive to make him feel" (SL 14.2). London: Oxford University Press, 1961.