Montesquieu and the Philosophy of Natural Law

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XI

   PDF

2. Introduction to Natural Law and to the Work of Montesquieu

   • Mark H. Waddicor

   Pages 1-21

3. The Originality of Montesquieu’s Method

   • Mark H. Waddicor

   Pages 22-45

4. Montesquieu and Empiricism in Natural Law

   • Mark H. Waddicor

   Pages 46-64

5. The State of Nature and the Origin of Society

   • Mark H. Waddicor

   Pages 65-99

6. Montesquieu and Empiricism in Positive Law: The Diversity of Governments and Laws

   • Mark H. Waddicor

   Pages 100-133

7. Rationalism in Positive Law: Montesquieu the Reformer

   • Mark H. Waddicor

   Pages 134-176

8. Montesquieu’s Conception of Law

   • Mark H. Waddicor

   Pages 177-192

9. Conclusion

   • Mark H. Waddicor

   Pages 193-196

10. Back Matter

    Pages 197-215

    PDF

In the last hundred years, the philosophy of natural law has suffered a fate that could hardly have been envisaged by the seventeenth and eighteenth century exponents of its universality and eternity: it has become old-fashioned. The positivists and the Marxists were happy to throw eternal moral­ ity out of the window, confident that some magic temporal harmony would eventually follow Progress in by the front door. Their hopes may not have been fully realized, but they did succeed in discrediting natural law. What is often not appreciated is the extent to which we have adopted the tenets of the philosophy they despised, borh in the field of politics, and in the field of personal and social ethics, which Barbeyrac called "la science des mreurs" and which the positivists re­ christened "social science". Consequently, though we live in a world whose freedom, such as it is, is largely a result of the popularization of the philosophy of natural law, and whose conscious and unconscious standards, such as they are, are a result of that philosophy as it became combined with Christianity, the doctrine of natural law is itself for­ gotten. In view of the oblivion into which it has fallen, natural law is a concept which means little to the average reader. All too often, Montesquieu scholars have traded on this oblivion in order to give an exaggerated picture of his originality.

• Civil Law
• Montesquieu
• Natural Law
• empiricism
• origin of society
• philosophy of Natural Law
• state of nature

• University of Exeter, UK

  Mark H. Waddicor

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