ABSTRACT
From the 1760s onward, “Locke and Montesquieu were the two Enlightenment philosophers most often quoted in every sort of political discourse. Death confronted the young Montesquieu early, for he lost both a brother and a sister while in their infancy, with complications from the latter further leaving him bereft of his mother in 1696. In 1748, Montesquieu published The Spirit of the Laws. In the Preface to The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu notes that his work discusses an “infinite number of things.” Montesquieu begins his work by speaking “in general” about laws and the various “things” and “beings” of both “the physical world” and “the intelligent world”—that is, of bodies in space and the operations of mind and will. For Montesquieu, the English constitution alone aims at and embodies this combination of liberty and moderation, as elaborated in his famous account of the separation of powers legislative, executive, and that of “the power of judging” in England.
