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2016 | Buch

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Montesquieu’s Political Economy

verfasst von: Andrew Scott Bibby

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan US

Buchreihe : Recovering Political Philosophy

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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This book contributes to the recovery of political philosophy by analyzing Montesquieu's economic thought. Engaging, eclectic, and inventive, this fresh examination clarifies the longstanding controversy over the purpose and meaning of Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Introduction

Economic Liberalism Before Adam Smith

Abstract

Montesquieu’s Political Economy has two central aims. The first is to provide scholars and students of Montesquieu with an introductory survey of Montesquieu’s economic ideas. Although a number of works have explained Montesquieu’s economic ideas in isolation,¹ there are currently no book-length treatments of Montesquieu’s economic philosophy as it relates to Montesquieu’s political philosophy of liberalism.²

Andrew Scott Bibby

Chapter 1. Montesquieu Économiste

Abstract

Montesquieu’s lifelong interest in matters of political economy can be divided into three major themes: first, the controversy over public debt, coinciding with the period of the Regency (1715–26) during which Montesquieu wrote the Persian Letters (1721). Second, the problem of war finance, coinciding generally with Fleury’s France (1726–34), during which time Montesquieu composed and wrote Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline (1734). Third, the emerging “science of commerce,” a topic that interested Montesquieu during what Colin Jones has called the “Unsuspected Golden Years” (1743–56) in France. During this time, Montesquieu put the finishing touches on The Spirit of the Laws and published “In Defense” of The Spirit of the Laws (1750).¹

Andrew Scott Bibby

Chapter 2. Commerce in The Spirit of the Laws

Abstract

Book 20 of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws opens with two of the most famous, and compelling, arguments in defense of commerce.¹ In the first chapter of book 20, Montesquieu highlights the “good things” that have resulted from the spread of commerce and trade in the realm of mores:

Commerce cures destructive prejudices, and it is an almost general rule that everywhere there are gentle mores, there is commerce and that everywhere there is commerce, there are gentle mores.

Therefore, one should not be surprised if our mores are less fierce than they were formerly. Commerce has spread knowledge of the mores of all nations everywhere; they have been compared to each other, and good things have resulted from this.²

Andrew Scott Bibby

Chapter 3. Commerce, Honor, and Monarchy

Abstract

Scholars generally do not invite students and readers to look at the second half of book 20 closely. The neglect of this section of Book 20 leaves the political dimension of Montesquieu’s argument for free trade in modern monarchy not only incomplete; it has also tended to add to the confusion surrounding Montesquieu’s larger political goal in The Spirit of the Laws. In the second half of book 20, Montesquieu mounts an important challenge to the tradition of honor, while preparing for a much longer discussion, in book 21, of the ways in which commerce as a profession can be made honorable.

Andrew Scott Bibby

Chapter 4. The Maligned Merchant and the New History of Commerce

Abstract

In the previous chapter, we saw that Montesquieu presented a modified case for a mobile aristocracy. Rejecting a mercantile nobility in favor of an ennobled status of the merchant class, Montesquieu offered a model of growth for French commerce that might incorporate the existing structure of honor within the larger imperative of economic growth. Traders were not nobles, but “they can have the expectation of becoming noble without the drawback of being nobles.”¹ In principle, this solution offered two explicit advantages and one understated benefit. First, it would avoid class-based monopolies. Second, traders could compete as true rivals in the economic sphere, stimulating industry (a thing “badly needed” in monarchy). If it might also weaken the warrior nobility, while entrenching existing privileges for the robe, Montesquieu seems not to mind, or at least, to offer no opinion.

Andrew Scott Bibby

Chapter 5. Commerce and the Rhetoric of Toleration

Abstract

To appreciate the importance of religion in Montesquieu’s political economy, it will be useful to think more broadly about Montesquieu’s reference to a “cure for Machiavellianism.” We begin by noting a semantic nuance: the “cure” for Machiavellism was not presented as a remedy for Machiavelli’s teaching, but for Machiavellianism. Joining Francis Bacon, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Hume, later, Montesquieu separated the two.¹ Letters of exchange, in other words, do not apply to the political philosophy of Machiavelli, but to the failure of Machiavellianism. This leaves open the possibility, in other words, that Montesquieu’s political economy preserves part of Machiavelli’s adversial position in regard to the Papacy, or more broadly, the Florentine’s criticism of the “preachers of meekness and superstition.”²

Andrew Scott Bibby

Chapter 6. The Problem of Property in The Spirit of the Laws

Abstract

The question before us now is not whether Montesquieu was a proponent of the modern Enlightenment project.¹ The more useful question, arising out of this study in political economy, is whether Montesquieu’s philosophy of liberalism can properly be understood as part of the radical Enlightenment, as distinguished from the moderate mainstream, or conservative Enlightenment.² Bound up in this interpretive question is the larger question of Western intellectual inheritance: that is, the way in which modern political rationalism, liberalism, and capitalism might be better understood by returning to the eighteenth-century intellectual battles over the meaning of commercial modernity.

Andrew Scott Bibby

Conclusion

Abstract

In recent years, Montesquieu scholarship has seen a number of attempts to explain, critique, attack, or revise Montesquieu’s philosophy of liberalism. Today, scholars are less likely than they were in the past to take extreme positions, defending him either as the hero of the liberal tradition, or, even less plausibly, a “rationalizer of reaction.”¹

Andrew Scott Bibby

Backmatter

Titel: Montesquieu’s Political Economy
verfasst von: Andrew Scott Bibby
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan US
Electronic ISBN: 978-1-137-47722-4
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-56707-2
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137477224

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Über dieses Buch

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Introduction

Chapter 1. Montesquieu Économiste

Chapter 2. Commerce in The Spirit of the Laws

Chapter 3. Commerce, Honor, and Monarchy

Chapter 4. The Maligned Merchant and the New History of Commerce

Chapter 5. Commerce and the Rhetoric of Toleration

Chapter 6. The Problem of Property in The Spirit of the Laws

Conclusion

Backmatter

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