John Locke, 1632—1704
The ideas and writings of the seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke deeply influenced the political outlook of the American colonists. Locke spelled out his political ideas in Two Treatises on Civil Government, first published in 1690. His writings were widely read and discussed in both Europe and America. Locke's ideas seemed to fit the American colonial experience Colonial leaders such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison regarded these ideas as political truth. Locke's ideas became so influential that they have been called the "textbook of the American Revolution,"
Locke reasoned that all people were born free, equal, and independent. They possessed natural rights to life, liberty, and property at the time they lived in a state of nature, before governments were formed. People contracted among themselves to form governments to protect their natural rights. Locke argued that if a government failed to protect these natural rights, the people could change that government. The people had not agreed to be governed by tyrants who threatened their rights but by rulers who defended their rights.
Locke}s ideas were revolutionary in an age when monarchs still claimed they had God-given absolute powers. Locke denied that people were born with an obligation to obey their rulers. Rather, in his Second Treatise an Civil Government, Locke insisted that freedom of people under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it
Government, then, was legitimate only as long as people continued to consent to it. Both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, written nearly a century after Locke, reflected Locke's revolutionary ideas.
Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu, 1689—1755
Montesquieu is a French political philosopher whose major work appeared under the title The Spirit of Laws. It consisted of two volumes, comprising 31 books in 1,086 pages- It is one of the
Reader. Part II 217
g
reatest
works in the history of political theory and in the history of
jurisprudence. Its author had acquainted himself with all previous
schools of thought but identified himself with none.
Of the multiplicity of subjects treated by Montesquieu, none remained unadorned. His treatment of three was particularly memorable.
The first of these is his classification of governments. Abandoning the classical divisions of his predecessors into monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, Montesquieu produced his own analysts and assigned to each form of government an animating principle: the republic, based on virtue; the monarchy, based on honour; and despotism, based on fear. His definitions show that this classification rests not on the location of political power but on the government's manner of conducting policy; it involves a historical and not a narrow descriptive approach.
The second of his most noted arguments is the theory of the separation of powers. Dividing political authority into the legislative, executive, and judicial powers, he asserted that, in the state that most effectively promotes liberty, these three powers must be confided to different individuals or bodies, acting independently. It at once became perhaps the most important piece of political writing of the 18th century. Though its accuracy has in more recent times been disputed, in its own century it was admired and held authoritative; it inspired the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Constitution of the United States.
The third of Montesquieu's most celebrated doctrines is that of the political influence of climate, Basing himself on the experience of his travels, and on experiments, he stressed the effect of climate, primarily thinking of heat and cold, on the physical frame of the individual, and, as a consequence, on the intellectual outlook of society. According to Montesquieu, other factors (laws, religion, and maxims of government) are of a non-physical nature, and their influence, compared with that of climate, grows as civilization advances.
After the book was published, praise came to Montesquieu from the most varied headquarters. The Scottish philosopher David Hume wrote from London that the work wouJd win the admiration of all the ages; an Italian friend spoke of reading it in an ecstasy of admiration; the Swiss scientist Charles Bonnet said that Montesquieu had discovered the laws of the intellectual world as Newton had those of the physical world. The philosophers of the Enlightenment accepted him as one of their own, as indeed he was. His fame was
8*
218 Jusl. English. Аееглийский для юристов
n ow worldwide. But renown lay lightly on his shoulders. His affability and modesty are commented on by all who met him. He was a faithful friend, kind and helpful to young and unestablished men of letters, witty, though absent-minded, in society.