6 - Montesquieu’s Guiding Principles and Foundations

Summary

Chapter 6 takes up the crucial question of foundational principles and Montesquieu’s relationship to the natural law tradition. Montesquieu rejects the traditional skeptical argument that history and cultural diversity indicate that humankind is ruled simply by “fancy.” His explanation of diversity is elaborated in terms common to the natural law tradition: laws defined as “necessary relations” derived from “the nature of things.” For the natural lawyers, “the nature of things” meant “man” defined as “a rational and sociable being”; the laws of morals and justice were a logical deduction from this definition. But the natural lawyers held that positive laws could not be deduced in this way. Montesquieu’s originality is to take as his starting point not a monolithic definition of man as a rational and social being but an account of the “nature” of the different forms of government or possibilities of human nature and to deduce, from the definition of each, the laws that ought to guide both rulers and subjects or citizens.