ABSTRACT
The legislator is a key figure in L'Esprit des lois, and require only a brief discussion to establish the fact that Baron de Montesquieu's science of politics. This chapter explains Montesquieu's political theory as political science, while his political science will be explained in light of fundamental beliefs about the nature of science, especially scientific law, held by many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers. It shows that there are two inseparable faces to Montesquieu's science of politics – the 'pure science' of sociology and the 'applied science' of legislation – and that the latter is predicated upon a belief in absolute values. Montesquieu's belief in the mechanism of nature is especially important in light of his opinion that mechanics explains more than the mere workings of the inanimate world. Though there is a disparity of attitude in L'Esprit des lois between belief in absolute values and ethical relativism, it is a latent contradiction, existing beneath the surface of the work.
