Why We Can’t Get Enough of Montesquieu

Abstract

Montesquieu famously states in The Spirit of the Laws (Bk. 11, ch. 13) that “One can never leave the Romans; thus it is even today in their capital one leaves the new palaces to go in search of the ruins; thus it is that the eye that has rested on flower-strewn meadows likes to look at rocks and mountains.” Nathaniel K. Gilmore has taken this injunction to heart. His book presents, in as comprehensive and thorough a way as possible in the confines of a single volume, Montesquieu’s understanding and appreciation (as well as his criticisms) of that most remarkable and illustrative of all ancient republics. The book is punctuated with verve and wit (essential ingredients for anyone who writes on the Baron de La Brède), and his scholarship is phenomenal—it is hard to find a single source, past or present, that deals with Rome in a significant way that Gilmore has not researched, cited, and discussed (and he is never shy, when appropriate, from taking issue with their primary or secondary conclusions and offering, respectfully, his own). Gilmore’s ambitious aim is to “restore Rome to its proper place at the peak of Montesquieu’s thought and Montesquieu’s thought to its proper place in the history of classical study” (3–4). In this he largely succeeds. All afficionados of Montesquieu will certainly want to read this book, and future scholars will probably be required to familiarize themselves with Gilmore’s arguments and interpretation. As the subject of the book is Montesquieu’s understanding of the spirit of Rome, one might expect the entirety of the work to be a detailed evaluation and discussion of what could easily be classified as his most neglected work, namely Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness [Grandeur] of the Romans and Their Decline [Décadence]. But this is not the case per se. Gilmore helpfully reminds us that when Considerations was first published in 1734, it did not receive much fanfare: compared to Persian Letters, it was a flop. After making some “minor” alterations to the text, Montesquieu then republished Considerations in 1748, the same year he published The Spirt of the Laws. Gilmore persuasively argues, therefore, that these two books should be seen as “two parts of a single whole,” or again, that the two books are “partners” (20–21). To say somewhat the same thing in different terms, Considerations is at the very least a prolegomena to The Spirit of the Laws, and that only by studying the former would we be in a position to understand or to appreciate fully the latter (and vice versa).Why Considerations is relatively neglected today remains a mystery: certainly such luminaries as d’Alembert, Rousseau, Gibbon, and Tocqueville (among others) did not think so, considering it as a “masterpiece” (20). In order to demonstrate this partnership, what Gilmore does in the opening chapter is to trace the nine times Montesquieu references Considerations in The Spirit of the Laws. Each helps to illuminate and to bolster his point. For example, the first reference refers to the fact that Rome did not fix the number of its citizens (as opposed to Sparta), both the source of its decline but also of its greatness (25–26); the second and third citations refer to the corruption and fall of the Republic, through luxury (the sulfuric acid of virtue) and the loss of religion (the baneful result of Epicurean philosophy) (28–30); and a final cluster of citations in Book 21 introduce the difference between Roman war and modern commerce: “The Considerations mirrors Laws XXI: What the latter tells from the perspective of commerce, the former tells from the perspective of war. Montesquieu replaces the traditional division between ecclesiastical and secular history with a division between commercial and military history” (38). In short, “To understand government, the reader must understand Rome; to understand Rome, they need the Considerations” (25; cf. 34, 46). Montesquieu is then encouraging his most thoughtful readers to return to Considerations for a fuller comprehension of the Roman Republic and Empire (both its rise and ultimate demise) while at the same time outlining a new political dispensation based on commerce. By approaching Considerations in this unique way, Gilmore reveals that the center of his book for understanding the spirit of Rome will be The Spirit of the Laws (albeit replete with ample references to and discussions of Considerations). In other words, Laws is the conductor around which the book is orchestrated, but first violin is Considerations. Gilmore next turns to what we might call the popular character of this most virtuous republic. To take a sampling of quotes from his opening pages: