Tag Archives: Montesquieu

Relativity & the Rule of Law

22 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by in Extremism, Political Philosophy

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Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu
Charles de Secondat,
Baron de Montesquieu (Photo credit: constitution.org)

The Relativity of Laws: Background

Montaigne –  Pascal – Montesquieu

A few posts ago, I quoted Pascal (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) who wrote:

« Vérité en deça des Pyrénées, erreur au-delà. » (Pensées 8, p. 68 FR)
Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error beyond. (literal translation)

Laws do change from country to country. In the 16th century, Montaigne[1] (28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592) had come to the same conclusion as Pascal, but Montesquieu (18 January 1689 – 10 February 1755) is the political philosopher who best demonstrated that laws depend on a very large number of factors, one of which is climate.

Montesquieu

The Persian Letters
the Spirit of the Laws
Turquerie

Montesquieu is the author of Les Lettres persanes (1721), The Persian Letters, and the Spirit of the Laws (1748). The notion of relativity is central to both Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes, an epistolary novel, and the Spirit of the Laws. In the Persian Letters, Paris and France are seen from the perspective of Usbek and Rica, two noblemen from Persia. The book constitutes a comparative description of two different societies.

The Persian Letters were written when “turquerie” was fashionable, from the late Renaissance, until the early part of the 19th century. It is an oblique text, a form of saying without saying. One cannot punish a foreigner for expressing views about the country he is visiting or his country, if he is elsewhere.

Three Types of Government

Relativity is also central to Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws (1748), his masterpiece. Laws depend on a large number of factors, from the country’s type of government, of which he names three: the republican, the monarchical and the despotic (« Il y a trois espèces de gouvernements: le républicain, le monarchique et le despotique. »), to the climate of the country, not a new theory but one usually associated with Montesquieu. (See L’Esprit des lois, II.1 [The Spirit of the Laws, Book 2, Chapter 1].)

Applied to three different types of governments, laws have a different impact, hence their relativity. Montesquieu critiqued laws and governments by applying laws to three types of government.

I should also note that, contrary to Thomas Hobbes, Montesquieu believed human beings were born good, but were later spoiled by society, which vilifies society.  

Advocacy

Constitutional governments
The Separation of Powers

The Spirit of the Laws is descriptive. Montesquieu claimed he was happy living in a monarchy. However, he did advocate constitutional governments. French monarchs were absolute monarchs. He also advocated the separation of powers: the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. De l’Esprit des loix served as a model to American founding fathers.

Slavery condemned
A man is innocent until a jury finds him guilty.

Moreover, although Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws is descriptive, he had opinions. For instance, Montesquieu condemned slavery and we owe him the notion that a man is innocent until a jury finds him guilty. Therefore, there is advocacy in De l’Esprit des loix.

L'Esprit des lois

De l’Esprit des loix, 1749 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Local vs international laws: a Problem

United States Declaration of Independence (1776)
Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (1789)

The relativity of laws is problematical and, therefore, an issue I would like to raise in this post, though not at great length. At the moment, we have local laws as well as an international law, and an international criminal court, at The Hague, Netherlands. Moreover, we have the United Nations‘ Universal Declaration of Human Rights /la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme (UDHR) and other international agencies. Yet, although we have endowed ourselves with international covenants, it remains possible to torture people and detain individuals rather gratuitously.

When Montesquieu wrote his Spirit of the Laws (1748), there were no official and stated “human rights.” But it should be said that, during the 18th century, the age of Enlightenment, various philosophes sought the recognition of individual and collective human rights. Voltaire (21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778) advocated freedom of religion, freedom of expression and the separation of church and state. (See Voltaire, Wikipedia.)

In fact, the 18th century culminated in the United States Declaration of Independence  drafted by Thomas Jefferson (13 April 1743 – 4 July 1826), who owned slaves, and the French Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, drafted by the Marquis de Lafayette (6 September 1757 – 20 May 1834), assisted by Thomas Jefferson, and passed by the National Constituent Assembly in August 1789.

Yet, nearly three centuries later, the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights /la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme (UDHR), adopted on 10 December 1948, seems as utopian as the United States Declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

President Obama is trying to save the middle class, but resistance is enormous. Equality is difficult to achieve. As for other abuses of human rights, they constitute a common occurrence.

I would like to suggest that, despite the very real possibility of infringements, it would be in humankind’s best interest to implement, within limits, its international covenants and, in particular, its human rights as defined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Portrait of a Painter, Ottoman Dynasty

Portrait of a Painter,
Ottoman Dynasty (Photo credit: Wikimedia)

Nature vs Culture: the Importance of  “Natural Laws”

Raif Badawi
Muath al-Kasasbeh

Given such violations as the sentence inflicted on Raif Badawi, it would be my opinion that the abolition of torture should be given serious and prompt attention at an international level. It should override local laws. There are areas where there cannot be a double standard. Torture is one such area. Moreover, ISIL must be crushed.

It is “natural,” rather than “cultural,” for a caring wife to do all she can to spare her husband punishment he does not deserve and which constitutes torture, a blatant infringement of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is also “natural,” rather than “cultural,” for Muath-al-Kasasbeh‘s father to grieve the burning alive of a beloved son and to call for revenge.

The entire world is condemning this crime against “humanity.” I have noticed that the media have started describing Mr Badawi as the “father of three.” An innocent “father of three” is a greater victim than an innocent blogger. Raif Badawi should not be tortured and arbitrarily incarcerated. In fact, this is a “natural” rather than “cultural” law.

As King Abdullah II of Jordan stated, the Muslim faith does not condone such cruelty as the burning alive of Muath al-Kasasbeh. Gone are the days, or gone should be the days, we burned at the stake 19-year-old Joan of Arc.

Humankind has long yearned for the best possible government.[2] We have already discussed the theories of such political philosophers as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, all of whom came to the conclusion that the rule of law, just laws, had to prevail.

Conclusion

President Obama is saying that “the fight against violent extremism demands a new approach.” I believe this is what I have been attempting to state in this post.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2015/02/21/combating-violent-extremism-demands-a-new-approach

It would be my opinion, that a good education would help prevent radicalization. A good education does seem the best tool we have to bring about lasting changes. What have we been teaching our children? They are still joining ISIL as though it were an option. It isn’t. Could it be that we have not been teaching our children to think? If they do not think they may fall prey to indoctrination and terrorize the world.

In short, to what extent should respecting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights  /la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme (UDHR) be based on consent and membership? And to what extent should local laws allow serious violations of human rights. Laws vary from country to country, but no local law should allow a serious infringement of international law.

So let me quote President Obama once again: “Violent extremism demands a new approach.”

I experienced difficulties writing this post. Proposing that individual nations  comply with international law is a sensitive matter. Absolute monarchs do as they please and terrorists are not amenable to reason. But when humanity is besieged, one looks for a remedy, a remedy which may consist in respecting human rights which is international law.

My kindest regards to all of you.

RELATED ARTICLES

Sources and Resources

Michel de Montaigne: Essays (complete) EN
Descartes’ Discourse on Method is Gutenberg [EBook #59] EN
Pascal Pensées is Gutenberg [EBook #18269] EN
Montesquieu: The Spirit of the laws (complete, 4 volumes) EN
Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws (Internet Archives; Book 1) EN
Persian Letters: Internet Archives (complete) EN
Persian Letters: Wikisource (complete) EN

Michel de Montaigne: Essais FR
René Descartes: Discours de la méthode is Gutenberg [EBook #13846] FR  Montesquieu: De l’Esprit des lois [EBook #27573] FR
Lettres persanes, tome 1 is Gutenberg [EBook #30268] FR
Lettres persanes, tome 2 is Gutenberg [EBook #33896] FR
Pascal: Pensées, Internet Archive FR

____________________

[1] See Essays, Book 1, last two chapters.

[2] Since Plato’s Republic, if not earlier.

download (1)

Raif.5

© Micheline Walker
22 February 2015
updated on 23 February 2015
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The Versatile Blogger Award: the Rules

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Sharing

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versatileblogger111I was nominated for this award by tuttacronaca on 28 January 2013. “Versatile” is a word people have often used to describe me.  I have taught many subjects.  I therefore became  a “versatile” teacher.  As for my students, if I mentioned Montaigne and Montesquieu when teaching Pascal, they thought I was “jumping around.”  I wasn’t.  All three wrote about the relativity of laws.

I thank tuttacronaca most sincerely.  He is an extremely versatile blogger.  In fact so are most of my readers.  They read my posts despite the diversity of subjects.  Diversity was Jean de La Fontaine‘s motto.

Choosing nominees is not easy.  For instance, two of my nominees for the Versatile Blogger could have been Sunshine award nominees.  And two of my Sunshine Award nominees could have been Versatile Blogger nominees.  But most of my Sunshine award nominees are versatile bloggers and vice versa.

Nominating a WordPress colleague for an award is a way of telling that colleague that I enjoy his or her posts.  I simply wish I could have nominated more of my WordPress colleagues.

There are rules

I apologize.  I forgot to provide the rules.

First, you must link back to me. You may do this by writing a comment when you receive this post.

Second, You must reveal seven facts about yourself.

Third, You must nominate ten other blogs.

My nominees are:

About me

  1. In my opinion, we should pay more attention to the education of little children.
  2. Facts are essential, but my main goal as a teacher was to encourage students to widen their horizon and see the many facets of subjects we were discussing.
  3. Living in France had a permanent influence on the manner I dress, cook, live and think.
  4. I have had fine friendships with exceptional men.
  5. I fear extremists.
  6. I am a pianist and an artist, which may demonstrate versatility.
  7. My chief cause is peace.

I love you all.

composer: Joseph Haydn  (31 March 1732 – 31 May 1809)
piece:  Serenade

The Versatile Blogger Award

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Sharing

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versatileblogger111I was nominated for this award by tuttacronaca on 28 January 2013. “Versatile” is a word people have often used to describe me.  I have taught many subjects.  I therefore became  a “versatile” teacher.  As for my students, if I mentioned Montaigne and Montesquieu when teaching Pascal, they thought I was “jumping around.”  I wasn’t.  All three wrote about the relativity of laws.

I thank tuttacronaca most sincerely.  He is an extremely versatile blogger.  In fact so are most of my readers.  They read my posts despite the diversity of subjects.  Diversity was Jean de La Fontaine motto.

Choosing nominees is not easy.  For instance, two of my nominees for the Versatile Blogger could have been Sunshine award nominees.  And two of my Sunshine Award nominees could have been Versatile Blogger nominees.  But most of my Sunshine award nominees are versatile bloggers and vice versa.

Nominating a WordPress colleague for an award is a way of telling that colleague that I enjoy his or her posts.  I simply wish I could have nominated more of my WordPress colleagues.

My nominees are:

About me

  1. In my opinion, we should pay more attention to the education of little children.
  2. Facts are essential, but my main goal as a teacher was to encourage students to widen their horizon and see the many facets of subjects we were discussing.
  3. Living in France had a permanent influence on the manner I dress, cook, live and think.
  4. I have had fine friendships with exceptional men.
  5. I fear extremists.
  6. I am a pianist and an artist, which may demonstrate versatility.
  7. My chief cause is peace.

I love you all.

composer: Joseph Haydn  (31 March 1732 – 31 May 1809)
piece:  Serenade

Les Indes galantes & Le Bourgeois gentilhomme: “turqueries”

30 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by in History, Literature, Music

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Louis XIV invites Molière to share his supper – an unfounded Romantic anecdote, illustrated in an 1863 painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(please click on the picture to enlarge it)

Rameau’s Les Indes galantes

There are a few points I should discuss before we leave behind Jean-Philippe Rameau‘s  Les Indes galantes.

Les Nations

As you know, Jean-Philippe Rameau was inspired to write Les Indes galantes after watching Amerindians dance.  However, after the Prologue, Rameau’s Indes galantes features

  • a gracious Turk, “un Turc généreux”
  • Incas from Peru, and
  • Persians ((Flowers – Persian Feast), “Les Fleurs – Fête persane”

In fact, only the final of the four acts is linked directly to Amerindians.  Moreover, that fourth entrée was composed later than the first three acts.  It is called

  • New Act – Les Sauvages (written [Louis Fuzelier] and composed [Rameau] a little later)

Needless to say, this piqued my curiosity.  I also noticed the frequent use of the word “nations” in the music literature of the time, beginning with the reign of Louis XIV or as of Jean-Baptiste Lully.  The final ballet constituting the Bourgeois gentilhomme is named “Ballets des Nations.”  Rameau was Lully’s successor.

For instance, Marin Marais wrote a Suitte [sic] d’un goût [taste] étranger [foreign] in 1717, performed by Jorgi Savall who has been restoring music of the 17th and 18th century.  Jorgi Savall provided the music for the film Tous les matins du monde (Every morning in the world).  Why say du monde (of the world)?

Savall’s ensemble, called the Concert des nations, has also recorded music by Rameau.   It could be that the word had a slightly different connotation, that it simply meant “d’un goût étranger” as in Marin Marais‘s Suitte d’un goût étranger. For six months Marin Marais was a student of Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe whose story is told in Tous les matins du monde.

Sifting through the music of François Couperin (10 November 1668 – 11 September 1733), I noted that François Couperin[i] wrote a piece entitled Les Nations.  I doubt that in the 17th- and 18th century France, the word nation had the same meaning as it does today.  It may have encompassed a wider territory that our current nations.  Moreover, Amerindians consisted of nations.

A Woman in Turkish Dress, pastel on parchment, by Jean-Étienne Liotard  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Orientalism or “Turquerie”

In an earlier post, I mentioned that the Byzantine Empire had fallen into the hands of Ottoman Turks in the middle of the fifteenth century (1453).  As a result, Byzantine scholars (Greek culture) fled to Western Europe prompting a Renaissance, the Renaissance.  However, if, on the one hand, the fall of the Byzantine Empire had a great impact on Western Europe, the revival of Greek culture, on the other hand, citizens of the now huge Ottoman Empire travelled north creating a taste for all things oriental, but also threatening European cities.

The Orient was not new to Europeans but Orientalism reached an apex in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Orientalism in fashion became known as “turquerie” and, in its early days, “turquerie” included Persia, which may confer a degree of unity to Les Indes galantes’ various entrées.  Matters did not change until the publication, in 1721, of Montesquieu‘s Persian Letters (Lettres persanes).

Persian Ambassadors at the Court of Louis XIV, studio of Antoine Coypel, c. 1715 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(please click on the picture to enlarge it)

Montesquieu‘s[i] Persian Letters were written after the visit, at the court of France, of ambassador Mohammed Reza Beg or Mehemet Riza Beg.  In 1715, the year Louis XIV died, he was visited by Persian ambassador Mohammed Riza Beg who established an embassy in Marseilles.  Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes were written and published after the ambassador and his entourage spent several months at the court of Louis XIV.

Turqueries à la Molière and Lully

However, the word “turquerie” has two meanings.  The first, as we have seen, is orientalism.  However, in Molière’s Bourgeois gentilhomme, a “turquerie”  is a play-within-a-play that fools Monsieur Jourdain, the senex iratus of the comedy, who is rich but untitled, into thinking he has been conferred a title, that of mamamouchi.  Cléonte, the young man who wishes to marry Lucile, who loves him, then asks for her hand in marriage dressed as the son of the Sultan of Turkey.  She resists until Cléonte succeeds in letting her know that he is wearing a disguise.  (Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, Act V, Scene 5)

Louis XIV was very fond of turqueries. The music was composed by Jean Baptiste Lully (Giovanni Battista Lulli; 28 November 1632 – 22 March 1687). The ballet was choreographed by Pierre Beauchamp. But the comedy was written by Molière (1622- 1673), one of France’s foremost dramatists ever.

« Le roi veut un ballet, et qu’il y ait une turquerie plaisante ; au poète, au musicien, aux danseurs de bâtir là-dessus un divertissement qui plaise au roi… »

“The king wants a ballet, and wants it to have a pleasant turquerie;  the poet, the musician and the dancers must therefore build from this ballet and turquerie entertainment that will please the king…”[ii]

Added to the turquerie, the fifth and final act of the Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Would-be Gentleman), is the Ballets des Nations.  It features Gascons, people from Gascony, Spaniards and Italians as well as a blend of persons from different classes.  So the idea of nation surfaces again.

In short, both the Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670) and Rameau’s Indes galantes are turqueries and illustrate the two kinds of turqueries, Orientalism and a deceitful play-within-a-play.  Each may in fact combine elements of both turqueries.

Related articles
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[i]  Montesquieu’s full name is Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (18 January 1689 – 10 February 1755), but he is referred to as Montesquieu.  His most influential book is The Spirit of the Laws, De l’Esprit des Lois, published in Geneva in 1748.
 
[ii] Charles Mazouer, Trois comédies de Molière (Bordeaux: Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 2008), p. 17.
 
Portrait of Molière by Nicolas Mignard

Portrait of Molière by Nicolas Mignard (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Molière & Lully: Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, 1670

© Micheline Walker
30 September 2012
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Pascal & the two Infinities

27 Tuesday Sep 2011

Posted by in French Literature, Human Condition

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Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal

In his writings about the human condition, Les Pensées or Thoughts, French scientist,  inventor and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), positioned mankind between the infinitely large and the infinitely small (Pensées, 199-72*).  He wrote that compared to the universe, humans are infinitely small.  However, compared to a microscopic mite, he called un ciron, humans are infinitely large.

Infinity is a central concept in Pascal’s Weltanschauung or world view.  One of his Pensées, perhaps the most poetical, expresses fear of the infinite.  He writes that “[he] fears the eternal silence of space infinite” (my translation): “Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie” (201-206 B).

That Pascal should have been in awe of space infinite is not altogether surprising.  The main discovery of the Renaissance, the sixteenth century mainly, may well have been planet Earth’s place in the Universe.  Until Copernicus (1473-1543), possibly earlier, planet Earth was looked upon as the centre of the Universe.

But Copernicus placed the Sun at the centre of the universe, thereby introducing heliocentrism.  Later, Galileo Galilei (1564-1652) also observed that the Earth revolved around the Sun.  Such was not the thinking of the Church, so Galileo had to recant on his observation for fear of facing an untimely and painful death.

Although Pascal was a scientist, the Pensées have a spiritual dimension.  In this regard, Pascal’s thoughts on the two infinites resemble his definition of man’s duality.  Humans are mortals, misère, but they can think and know, therefore, but they are miserable.  We are mere reeds, but we think:  le roseau pensant (the thinking reed). Hence our grandeur or nobility.  The fact that humans know they are mortals constitute a redeeming feature. We are neither beasts nor angels.

I have already spoken of Pascal’s symmetrical thinking:  la misère/la grandeur and must note it again.  Pascal discussed our duality, the humaine condition and also does it in his cosmology, thereby giving us, once again, a redeeming half.  Without the infinitely small, the infinitely large would engulf humankind.  So, as I used to tell my students, it was nice of Pascal to bring us back, and down, to Earth.

However, I regret the fact that we did not devote sufficient time to the infinities.  We  associate relativity with Einstein, but long before Einstein theory of relativity, relativity was also a humanistic concept.

Pascal’s two infinities are a most eloquent expression of relativity.  For instance, not unlike Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), Pascal states that what is an error on one side of the Pyrenees, is truth on the other side of same Pyrenees:  “Vérité au-deça [this side] des Pyrénées, erreur au-delà.”

This is the case with justice and jurisprudence.  An act may legal in one land and illegal in another land.  So there is arbitrariness about justice, a thought which led to French Enlightenment’s  Montesquieu’s (1689-1755) De l’Esprit des Lois (The Spirit of the Laws).  Montesquieu will be discussed in a future post.

For the time being, all I wish to reflect on is that as Christopher Colombus sailed towards India, Galileo and Pascal were exploring space and Montaigne and Pascal were pondering relativity.

*Lafuma and Brunschvicg classification

—ooo—

© Micheline Walker
27 September 2011
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