Montesquieu's Science of Politics [Paperback]

David W. Carrithers (Editor), Michael A. Mosher (Editor), Paul A. Rahe (Editor), Cecil Courtney (Contributor), Paul A. Rahe. Michael A. Mosher. Sharon Krause (Contributor), Rebecca E. Kingston (Contributor), Catherine Larrere (Contributor), Iris Cox (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 20, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0742511812 | ISBN-13: 978-0742511811

Montesquieu's The Spirit of Laws is one of a handful of classic works of political philosophy deserving a fresh reading every generation. The product of immense erudition, Montesquieu's treatise has captured since its first printing (1748) the imagination of an impressive array of intellectuals including Rousseau, Voltaire, Beccaria, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, Herder, Siey_s, Condorcet, Robespierre, Bentham, Burke, Constant, Hegel, Tocqueville, Emile Durkheim, Raymond Aron, and Hannah Arendt. In what constitutes the only English-language collection of essays ever dedicated to the analysis of Montesquieu's contributions to political science, the contributors review some of the most vexing controversies that have arisen in the interpretation of Montesquieu's thought. By paying careful attention to the historical, political, and philosophical contexts of Montesquieu's ideas, the contributors provide fresh readings of The Spirit of Laws, clarify the goals and ambitions of its author, and point out the pertinence of his thinking to the problems of our world today.

Editorial Reviews

Review

For over two centuries Montesquieu has been viewed as an indecipherable genius--a great analyst of political facts who rarely gave away his own values. But in this lucid and intelligent set of essays, readers will find a different Montesquieu. Here the author of The Spirit of the Laws appears in all his colors as the most important expositor, in his time and ours, of a liberal science of politics. (Daniel Gordon )

Montesquieu's classic work is universally admired but less well understood. Over the years Montesquieu has been all things to all people: a constitutional monarchist, a liberal Anglophile, an enlightened cosmopolitan, a scientific sociologist. This collection will aid our understanding of the generosity and esprit of the author of The Spirit of the Laws. (Smith, Steven B )

This book is essential for future Montesquieu studies and will be highly useful to upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers, and faculty. (Choice Magazine )

A superb volume. . . A valuable collection of essays from some of the leading Montesquieu scholars writing today, which clearly establishes the depth and breadth of Montesquieu's political science. It is difficult to put together a collection of papers on a single philosopher that can at once appeal to the general reader and yet present challenges and insights to the specialist. This volume succeeds brilliantly on both fronts. A reader new to Montesquieu will find comprehensive and lucid analyses of his political thought; the Montesquieu specialist will find intriguing insights and challenging arguments, not to mention a lively critical debate in the volume's endnotes. (History Of Political Thought )

Were there no other reasons to place this volume high on any Enlightenment (and related subjects) reading list, his [Carrithers'] introduction would constitute sufficient cause. The remainder of the book does, however, afford plenty more. (English Historical Review )

Were there no other reasons to place this volume high on any Enlightenment (and related subjects) reading list, his [Carrithers'] introduction would constitute sufficient cause. The remainder of the book does, however, afford plenty more..... (English Historical Review )

This notable volume, explicitly and its quality, stands as an encomium to the monumental significance of Montesquieu's work. From the very outset in the editorial introduction by David Carrithers, the achievement of Montesquieu, the sovereign importance of discerning his decisive meaning, and his crucial emphasis on moderation in all things pertinent to human affairs is impressed on the reader with great cogency. This volume will educate the novice and will be valued by the learned. (Cropsey, Joseph )

About the Author

David W. Carrithers is professor of government at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Michael A. Mosher is professor of political science at the University of Tulsa. Paul A. Rahe is professor of history at the University of Tulsa.

Product Details

• Paperback: 472 pages
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (December 20, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0742511812
• ISBN-13: 978-0742511811
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,103,861 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

After reading Litterae Humaniores at Wadham College, Oxford, on a Rhodes Scholarship from 1971-1974, Paul A. Rahe completed a Ph.D. in ancient history at Yale University under the direction of Donald Kagan in 1977. In subsequent years, he taught at Cornell University, Franklin and Marshall College, and the University of Tulsa, where he spent twenty-four years before accepting a position at Hillsdale College, where he is Professor of History and holds The Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage.

Professor Rahe's entire scholarly career has been focused on studying the origins and evolution of self-government within the West. His range is considerable. His first book, Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (1992), was 1200 pages in length and surveyed the origins and development of self-government in ancient Greece and Rome, its re-emergence in a new form in the Middle Ages, the transformation it underwent at the hands of the political philosophers of early modernity, and the statesmanship of the American Founding Fathers. Within the first thirteen months of publication, the hardback edition sold out. Thereafter, it reappeared as an alternative selection of the History Book Club. In 1994, it was reissued in a three-volume paperback edition by the University of North Carolina Press, and it remains in print.

In the course of his career, Professor Rahe has published dozens of chapters on related subjects in edited books and scholarly articles in journals such as The American Journal of Philology, Historia, The American Journal of Archaeology, The American Historical Review, The Review of Politics, The American Journal of Business and Professional Ethics, The Journal of the Historical Society, The National Interest, The Woodrow Wilson Quarterly, and History of Political Thought. He spent two years in Istanbul, Turkey in the mid-1980s as a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs; he has been awarded research fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Earhart Foundation; and he has held research fellowships at the Center for Hellenic Study, the National Humanities Center, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D. C. , Clare College at Cambridge University, All Souls College at Oxford University, and the American Academy in Berlin; and he has given a host of public lectures at universities in the United States and abroad--most recently at the Hebrew University and at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, at the Sorbonne in Paris, at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in England and the Free University in Berlin. In 1997-98, he was named to the Templeton Honor Rolls for Education in a Free Society by The John M. Templeton Foundation, and in 2006 the Society for French Historical Studies awarded him the Koren Prize for the Best Article Published in French History the preceding year.

Professor Rahe co-edited Montesquieu's Science of Politics: Essays on the Spirit of Laws (2001) with David W. Carrithers and Michael A. Mosher, and he edited Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy (2006). His second book, Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic, which examines the political thought inspired by the abortive republican experiment that took place in England in the period stretching from 1649 to 1660, was published by Cambridge University Press in April, 2008. His third and fourth books, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic and Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Tocqueville on the Modern Prospect, were published by Yale University Press in 2009. For his fifth book, The Spartan Way of War, which he hopes to finish in 2011 or 2012, Professor Rahe has received a contract from Yale University Press.