Montesquieu: mémoire de la critique ed. by Catherine Volpilhac-Auger (review)

Abstract

MLR, 101.1, 2006 247 views of the philosophes. In this assessment, Montesquieu is accorded importance as a political thinker but only very marginally as a historian. Senarclens contests this assessment in the chapter entitled Au-dela de l'erudition et de la philosophie: l'historiographie de Montesquieu' (pp. 227-63). She considers that, while he is not deficient in erudition or careless about the need to verify facts, the crucial difference between him and the other philosopher-historians lies in his use of his imagination to transport himself into the times about which he writes, in order to understand the reasons men had for acting in ways which seemed absurd to the rationalists of the Enlightenment. She makes a good case forassessing Montesquieu as a serious historian who still has something to offer.Students should not be too much discouraged by the over-profusion of examples she gives. Some of these, at least, offerpointers to furtherinteresting explorations of the subject. Kingston-upon-Thames Iris Cox Montesquieu: memoire de la critique. Ed. by Catherine Volpilhac-Auger. Paris: Presses de l'Universitede Paris-Sorbonne. 2003. 600 pp. ?44. ISBN 2-84050230 -5. This collection gives the reader a fair taste of the reception given (almost exclusively in France) from 1721 to 1787 to Montesquieu's published works. There are extracts from private letters to the author (from e.g. Desmolets, Henault), letters between other correspondents (e.g. Voltaire, Rousseau, Delphin de Lamothe, Lord Chesterfield , Horace Walpole) as well as from contemporary reviews such as the Memoir es de Trevoux, Le Mercure, and Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques (among others). There is noth? ing post-Revolution except for some correspondence in 1795-96 concerning a new edition of his known works and the whereabouts of unpublished manuscripts. It is interesting to see that Montesquieu's daughter, Denise de Secondat, took part in this correspondence, and to read the letter in which she claimed to have been for a time her father'spetit secretaire. Though the Lettres persanes, Le Temple de Gnide, and the Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur decadence had been published anonymously , it became an open secret that Montesquieu was the author. These works became very popular, though they did not escape adverse criticism. The criticism was mainly on religious grounds forthe Lettres persanes, and on historical grounds forthe Romains, while Le Temple de Gnide incurred disapproving comment from seriousminded friends and critics who feltthat this tale of love and pleasure was not worthy of its author. When L'Esprit des lois was published in 1748, a differentapproach to the author and his work became necessary. Throughout history new and revolutionary interpretations of man's existence as an individual and in society have emerged, sometimes put forward by exceptional indi? viduals. These may bring about a new, even ifpartial, consensus ofopinion, but before that consensus there is likely to be fierceopposition. We can see this process at work in religion, when Jesus of Nazareth and his followers reinterpreted the Jewish scriptures to apply to all humankind, and in science when Galileo (and others) demonstrated that the earth revolved round the sun rather than the sun round the earth. Something similar began to happen in the understanding of human societies with the publication of L'Esprit des lois. A critic recently described this work as 'still one of the eighteenth century's most difficultbooks' (Michael Sonenschon, review of David W. Carrithers and Patrick Coleman, Montesquieu and the Spirit of Modernity (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2002), in French Studies, 58 ( 2004), 260). The difficultyis in the detail in a work of immense scope, but the governing theory,that there are differentforms of 248 Reviews human society produced by and producing differentlaws, seems like a factual assess? ment today. However, itwas controversial when set beside the universalist doctrines of the Churches, both Catholic and Reformed, and ofprevious political philosophies. We need not be surprised, therefore,to findthat L'Esprit des lois, though itquickly gained a very wide readership in France, Europe, and America, provoked fierce criticism. Montesquieu: memoirede la critique, with its preface by Catherine Volpilhac-Auger, presents a valuable survey and selection of examples of this criticism (as well as...