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Major Contributions to the Enlightenment and the Modern World

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Major Contributions to the Enlightenment and the Modern World

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Montesquieu's major contributions to the Enlightenment were that

the government should be guarded against the threat of tyranny and

corruption and he believed that to keep an equality of power, all governments

should have atleast three branches in their government. These philosophies are important to mankind because they grant a government with equal power, instead of a monarchy, dictatorship, or oligarchy, and these philosophies have impacted the USA by splitting up our government into three branches so our government can be equal

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1) Where was Montesquieu born?

A) Paris, France

B) Chateau de la Brede, France

C) Tours, France

D) Saint Come Dumont, France

2) What study did Montesquieu abandon to devote himself to writing?

A) Astronomy

B) Law

C) Biology

D) History

3) What philosophical ideal did Montesquieu create?

A) Natural Rights

B) Separation of Powers

C) People are born impure and greedy

D) All of the Above

4) (True or False) He went to the Catholic College of Juilly

5) Who were Montesquieu's parents?

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Montesquieu's philosophy of history minimized the role of individual persons and events. He expounded the view in Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence that each historical event was driven by a principal movement:

It is not chance that rules the world. Ask the Romans, who had a continuous sequence of successes when they were guided by a certain plan, and an uninterrupted sequence of reverses when they followed another. There are general causes, moral and physical, which act in every monarchy, elevating it, maintaining it, or hurling it to the ground. All accidents are controlled by these causes. And if the chance of one battle—that is, a particular cause—has brought a state to ruin, some general cause made it necessary for that state to perish from a single battle. In a word, the main trend draws with it all particular accidents.[10]

In discussing the transition from the Republic to the Empire, he suggested that if Caesar and Pompey had not worked to usurp the government of the Republic, other men would have risen in their place. The cause was not the ambition of Caesar or Pompey, but the ambition of man.

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Another example of Montesquieu's anthropological thinking, outlined in The Spirit of the Laws and hinted at in Persian Letters, is his meteorological climate theory, which holds that climate may substantially influence the nature of man and his society. By placing an emphasis on environmental influences as a material condition of life, Montesquieu prefigured modern anthropology's concern with the impact of material conditions, such as available energy sources, organized production systems, and technologies, on the growth of complex socio-cultural systems.

He goes so far as to assert that certain climates are superior to others, the temperate climate of France being ideal. His view is that people living in very warm countries are "too hot-tempered," while those in northern countries are "icy" or "stiff." The climate of middle Europe is therefore optimal. On this point, Montesquieu may well have been influenced by a similar pronouncement in  The Histories of Herodotus, where he makes a distinction between the 'ideal' temperate climate of Greece as opposed to the overly cold climate of Scythia and the overly warm climate of Egypt. This was a common belief at the time, and can also be found within the medical writings of Herodotus' times, including the 'On Airs, Waters, Places' of the Hippocratic corpus. One can find a similar statement in Germania by Tacitus, one of Montesquieu's favorite authors.

From a sociological perspective Louis Althuss, in his analysis of Montesquieu's revolution in method,alluded to the seminal character of anthropology's inclusion of material factors, such as climate, in the explanation of social dynamics and political forms. Examples of certain climatic and geographical factors giving rise to increasingly complex social systems include those that were conducive to the rise of agriculture and the domestication of wild plants and animals

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Montesquieu is credited as being among the progenitors of anthropology as being the first to extend comparative methods of

classification to the political forms in human societies.

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Montesquieu was born into a noble family, but his mother died when he was seven, and he was sent to the Catholic College of Juilly, a prominent school for the children of French nobility, until 1700 to 1711. When he was about eighteen years old, he withdrew from his original study of the practice of law to devote himself to study and writing. He wrote three major books, Lettres Persanes, considerations sur les caauses grandeur des Romains et de leur decadence, and De l'Esprit des Lois. He influenced many people and governments, including our US government, with his "separation of powers" philosophy.

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Baron De Montesquieu, who was most simply known as Montesquieu,

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Baron De Montesquieu, who was most simply known as Montesquieu,

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was born and raised on January 18, 1689, in Chateau de la Brede, France, and died February 10, 1755 in Paris France.

His parents were Jacques de Secondat and Marie Francoise de Pesnel.