X-Nico

12 unusual facts about Montesquieu


Alan Macfarlane

His Riddle of the Modern World (2000) and Making of the Modern World (2001) are contributions to the field of history of ideas, addressing the work of Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Ernest Gellner, Yukichi Fukuzawa and Frederic Maitland.

Constitution of Denmark

The Constitution is heavily influenced by the French philosopher Montesquieu, whose separation of powers was aimed at achieving mutual monitoring of each of the branches of government.

Johann Heinrich Gottlob Justi

In Göttingen Justi started his systematic study of contemporary French works, in particular Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws.

In so doing, Justi took recourse to ideas of French thinkers such as Fénelon, Saint-Pierre, d'Argenson and Montesquieu.

Josip Vilfan

He was also highly influenced by the social theories of Enlightenment thinkers such as Montesquieu, Lessing, Diderot, as well as by the Scottish enlightenment, Latin classics (mostly Cicero and Seneca), and the constitutional thought of the American founding fathers.

Karl Loewenstein

Loewenstein considered it was extremely difficult to try to change the division of power into the executive, legislative and judicial branches -as established by Montesquieu- which is a sort of “sacred dogma” for the constitutional theory and practice of liberal democracies.

Letters to the inhabitants of Canada

The text quotes a passage of Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishment and multiple excerpts of Montesquieu's The Spirit of Laws.

Nahapet Rusinian

While in Paris, Rusinian audited courses on literature and philosophy at the Sorbonne, and was influenced by the ideas of Lamartine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, Victor Hugo, and other political philosophers.

Parliamentary Ombudsman

The Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsmen was established in connection with the adoption of the Swedish Regeringsform (Instrument of Government) that came into effect after the deposition of the Swedish King in 1809 and which was based to some extent on Montesquieu's ideas about the division of powers.

Samuel David Luzzatto

In 1811 he received as a prize Montesquieu's "Considérations sur les Causes de la Grandeur des Romains," etc., which contributed much to the development of his critical faculties.

Svetomir Nikolajević

In his Listići iz književnosti (Leaves from Literature), published in two volumes (Belgrade, 1883 and 1888), Nikolajević rendered great services to the study of foreign writers and poets such as Tacitus, Shakespeare, Ludovico Ariosto, Montesquieu, Byron, Luis de Camões and Torquato Tasso.

William Grayson

Montesquieu was not wrong when he said the democratical might be as tyrannical as the despotic, for where is there greater act of despotism than that of issuing paper to depreciate for the paying debts, on easy terms.


Club de l'Entresol

It was frequented by 20 of the finest forerunners of the Age of Enlightenment, with regular attendees including Montesquieu, Helvétius, the marquis d'Argenson, Andrew Michael Ramsay, Horace Walpole and Viscount Bolingbroke.

Cold War liberal

The History of liberalism is the belief in freedom and equal rights generally associated with such thinkers as John Locke and Montesquieu.

French Penal Code of 1791

It was France's first penal code, and was influenced by the Enlightenment thinking of Cesare Beccaria and Montesquieu.

International Institute for the Sociology of Law

The founding director of the IISL, André-Jean Arnaud, had bronze plaques put on the walls of the renaissance building with the names of some of the forefathers of modern sociology of law: Montesquieu, Henry James Sumner Maine, Francisco Giner de los Ríos, Henri Lévy-Bruhl, Achille Loria, Leon Petrażycki, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, Eugen Ehrlich, Karl Renner, Karl N. Llewellyn, Theodor Geiger, Georges Gurvitch, Nicholas S. Timasheff.

Jacob Vernet

In 1728 he took his charge to Italy, where he met Lodovico Muratori, Montesquieu and the economist John Law, and to Holland where he met several of the Collegialists and Jean Barbeyrac, a prominent advocate of Moderation.

Jean Chardin

Montesquieu, Rousseau, Gibbon, and Helvetius acknowledge the value of his writings; and Sir William Jones says he gave the best account of Mahometan nations ever published.

Jean Lacouture

He is mainly known to the public because of his biographies, including the lives of Ho Chi Minh, Nasser, Léon Blum, De Gaulle, François Mauriac, Pierre Mendès-France, Mitterrand, Montesquieu, Montaigne, Malraux, Germaine Tillion, Champollion, Rivière, Stendhal and Kennedy.

Johann Bachstrom

The novel drew from his own experiences of his time in Constantinople and on French and British novels, like Montesquieu's Lettres persanes and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.

José Cadalso

The Cartas marruecas have often been compared to Montesquieu's, (1689–1755), own Lettres Persanes, (Persian Letters, 1721), although in reality both works represented the period's fascination with epistolary narrative.

Juan Huarte de San Juan

His influence can be seen (though not always cited) in the work of Miguel de Cervantes (whose Don Quixote was inspired by him), Francis Bacon, Pierre Charron, Immanuel Kant, Noam Chomsky, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, David Hume, Montesquieu, Friedrich Nietzsche, Francisco de Quevedo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Arthur Schopenhauer, Jakob Thomasius, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.

Légion des Allobroges

Created by Dessaix in 1792, it was at first part of the army of General Montesquieu that invaded Savoy.

Melchor de Talamantes

Also many books were found, including some banned ones (for instance the works of Montesquieu and Adam Smith).

Place des Quinconces

The white-marble statues of Montaigne and Montesquieu (by sculptor Dominique Fortuné Maggesi) were added in 1858.

Property Law in Colonial New York

According to political scientist Donald Lutz, no European authorities were cited more often than Blackstone and Montesquieu during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and each were quoted nearly three times as often as the next person on the list, John Locke.

Rameau's Nephew

Society does not allow the talented to support themselves because it does not value them, leaving them to beg while the rich, the powerful and stupid poke fun at men like Buffon, Duclos, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire, D'Alembert, Diderot.

The American Senator

In Senator Gotobed, Trollope employs a device similar to that used by Montesquieu in the Lettres Persanes and by Goldsmith in The Citizen of the World.