Home >
Law >
Administrative / Constitutional Law >
Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws - A Critical Introduction

Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws - A Critical Introduction

Author: W.B. Allen
Publisher: Anthem Press
ISBN: 9781839982941
Published In: February 2024
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

HKD 1,596.00

Download Order Form

Add to Wishlist
| Add to Compare

Description
Contents

Details

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.

Volume 1

The Spirit of the Laws by Montesquieu: Translator’s Preface

Author’s Foreword

Author’s Préface

Part One: Book I–Book VIII

Part Two: Book IX–Book XIII

Part Three: Book XIV–Book XIX

Part Four: Livre XX–Book XXIII

Part Five: Book XXIV–Livre XXVI

Part Six: Book XXVII–Book XXXI

Volume 2

The Mind behind the Laws