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5. Montesquieu’s Persian Letters: A Timely Classic
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95 5. montesquieu’s Persian Letters A Timely Classic If I knew something useful to my nation but ruinous to another nation, I would not propose it to my ruler because I am a human being before I am a frenchman. —montesquieu The age of enlightenment is often portrayed as the upsurge of an abstractly rational universalism completely oblivious of, and even hostile to, historical tradition and especially the rich welter of regional and local ways of life. In its home country, the age of lumières eventually led to a complete break with and attempted eradication of the past— a rupture that stood in sharp contrast to developments in the english -speaking world. Latter-day devotees of the enlightenment often propagate a bland universalism on the Jacobin model, but that outlook ignores the fact that the rays of lumières are necessarily refracted in the diversity of concrete practices and experiences on the ground. Quite apart from its general disdain for history, the Jacobin model also shortchanges the refracted character of enlightened thought in eighteenth-century france, where intellectual life was by no means monopolized by a handful of philosophes in Paris. a prominent exemplar of nonconformist thought is the Baron de montesquieu, who maintained somewhat strained relations with both ruling orthodoxies and the Parisian salons. Precisely by virtue of his nonconformism, his work reemerges today as an important guidepost pointing (however vaguely) in the direction of “alternative modernities.”1 montesquieu’s concern with cultural alternatives is demonstrated in his attention to non-Western societies and cultures, especially his 96 Prominent Searchers in the Past reflections on Persia, assembled in his famous Persian Letters (Lettres Persanes), first published in 1721. In this chapter I discuss some of the distinctive features of montesquieu’s general oeuvre, limiting myself to a few salient points. Next, I pinpoint some particularly instructive passages of his Persian Letters that illustrate his talent as a thoughtful and critical comparativist. finally, I highlight aspects that, in my view, demonstrate montesquieu’s continuing relevance, and especially the importance of the Persian Letters as a timely classic in the contemporary context. Montesquieu as a Practical Philosopher montesquieu’s work is complex and multifaceted, but it is by no means devoid of an overall philosophical coherence. although it is a relatively youthful and experimental text, the Persian Letters fits into this overall coherence, whose design has often been either dismissed or badly misconstrued. Born and raised in a country deeply imbued with Cartesian teachings, montesquieu was sufficiently a frenchman and a modernist to stand opposed to oppressive prejudices of the past and to political despotism (especially that of Louis XIV’s later reign); at the same time, however—partly under the influence of British empiricism —he was sufficiently endowed with common sense to appreciate the role of history and culture and hence to resist an abstract rationalism operating deductively from first principles. This middle position makes montesquieu an odd figure located outside the usual battle lines of his period, and certainly outside the Cartesian bifurcations of mind and matter, reason and sense experience. Several modern philosophers , including Hobbes and Spinoza, placed history outside the pale of philosophy proper, which was seen as deductive argumentation ; in retaliation, empirical historians sometimes expelled philosophy from real-life history, which was seen as a jumble of contingent data. Neither the Persian Letters nor The Spirit of Laws fits into these schemes. If Hannah arendt is correct in saying that genuine thinking means reflecting on “what we are doing” or what is going on in concrete praxis, then montesquieu is, in arendt’s sense, an eminently practical thinker or philosopher.2 montesquieu’s unconventional position—unconventional in terms of the paradigm of Western modernity—has given his interpreters [3.238.79.169] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:52 GMT) a Timely Classic 97 endless headaches and led them to strange conclusions. His contemporary and kingpin philosophe Voltaire once remarked that montesquieu was “michel montaigne turned legislator,” a comment meant as a jesting critique of the baron’s oddity (with “montaigne” standing for skeptical empiricism and “legislator” for the chief ambition of progressive philosophes).3 The bafflement persists today. although some philosophes, such as d’alembert, attempted to read him in their own light, many nineteenth-century interpreters, such as auguste Comte, construed him as an empirical sociologist and positivist, which is only a short step from his reputation as a radical historicist and perhaps even a relativist and materialist. during the twentieth century...