Montesquieu's View of Despotism and His Use of Travel Literature
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6403619 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Young (0000-0002-4693-0663, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1978 |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 392-405 |
| Publication date | 1978-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Review of Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0034670500028564 |
| OpenAlex | W2171094057 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 13 |
| References cited | 13 |
Montesquieu'sL' Esprit des lois, first published in 1748, was an innovative and often paradoxical work. Almost as soon as a reader opened it, he was likely to be struck by a singular typology of governments: despotism, monarchy, and republic (subdivided into democracy and aristocracy). This represented a marked departure from the traditional division of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy which Aristotle and Polybius had bequeathed to later students of government. As Robert Shackleton remarks in his definitive biography of Montesquieu, “No major political writer before Montesquieu had founded his work on such an analysis.” Several commentators have remarked on the uniqueness of this typology, and it certainly offers grounds for puzzlement. If Montesquieu had meant to distinguish regimes by the number of those who hold power, then he would have followed tradition by conflating monarchy with despotism while distinguishing aristocracy from democracy more sharply. On the other hand, if he meant to introduce a moral criterion by dividing monarchy from despotism, then he should have continued by differentiating aristocracy from oligarchy and democracy from ochlocracy. The understanding of Montesquieu's typology is made no easier when he assures his readers that the most important political dichotomy is that between despotism and all other regimes. Compared to despotism, both monarchy and republic are good forms of government, and both may be called moderate
Archaeology · Aristocracy (class · Constitutional monarchy · Democracy · Monarchy · Oligarchy · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Typology · European Political History Analysis · History · Law · Philosophy · Political Theory and Influence · Religion and Society Interactions
Philosophy in the Seraglio
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Det orientalske despotis afvikling i Montesquieus Lettres persanes
Firishta’s Sultan Mahmud
Liberals and Muslims
Laws, passion, and the attractions of right action in Montesquieu
Reflections on Fear
Myths of South Asian Stasis
The Spirit of Separate Powers in Montesquieu
Liberal feminism and the language of slavery
Fearing Monarchs and Merchants
The Evil Empire? The Debate on Turkish Despotism in Eighteenth-Century French Political Culture
Facts and fiction
| Unique citing works | 13 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,36 |
| Citation span | 1990 - 2018 (29) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 13 |