Montesquieu

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brede et de Montesquieu (1689-1755) whose works on liberty, monarchism, despotism, republicanism and the separation of powers were devoured by intellectuals across Europe and New England in the eighteenth century, transforming political philosophy and influencing the American Constitution. He argued that an individual’s liberty needed protection from the arm of power, checking that by another power; where judicial, executive and legislative power were concentrated in the hands of one figure, there could be no personal liberty.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Richard Bourke 3 episodes
  Professor in the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary, University of London
• Rachel Hammersley No other episodes
  Senior Lecturer in Intellectual History at Newcastle University
• Richard Whatmore 5 episodes
  Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Director of the St Andrews Institute of Intellectual History

Reading list

• Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau in England
  John Churton Collins (Forgotten Books, 2018) Google Books →
• The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought
  Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2006) Google Books →
• Persian Letters
  Montesquieu (trans. C. J. Betts) (Penguin, 1993) Google Books →
• Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline
  Montesquieu (trans. David Lowenthal) (Hackett, 1999) Google Books →
• The Spirit of the Laws
  Montesquieu (ed. Anne Cohler, Basia Miller and Harold Stone) (Cambridge University Press, 1989) Google Books →
• The Political Theory of Montesquieu
  Melvyn Richter (Cambridge University Press, 1977) Google Books →
• Montesquieu: A Critical Biography
  Robert Shackleton (Oxford University Press, 1961) Google Books →
• Montesquieu
  Judith N. Shklar (Oxford University Press, 1987) Google Books →

Related episodes

• Tocqueville: Democracy in America
  
  22 Mar, 2018 320 Political science
• Edmund Burke
  
  3 Jun, 2010 320 Political science
• Sovereignty
  
  30 Jun, 2016 320 Political science
• Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People
  
  20 Oct, 2011 750 Painting
• The Social Contract
  
  7 Feb, 2008 320 Political science
• Republicanism
  
  3 Feb, 2000 940 History of Europe
• Hobbes
  
  1 Dec, 2005 320 Political science
• Montaigne
  
  25 Apr, 2013 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
  
  14 Oct, 2021 940 History of Europe
• Aristotle’s Politics
  
  6 Nov, 2008 320 Political science
• The Encyclopédie
  
  26 Oct, 2006 030 Encyclopedias and books of facts
• 1848: Year of Revolution
  
  19 Jan, 2012 900 History
• Deism
  
  8 Oct, 2020 210 Philosophy and theory of religion
• Hegel’s Philosophy of History
  
  26 May, 2022 900 History
• The Physiocrats
  
  20 Jun, 2013 330 Economics
• The Congress of Vienna
  
  19 Oct, 2017 940 History of Europe
• The Second Barons’ War
  
  6 May, 2021 940 History of Europe
• The Federalist Papers
  
  12 Oct, 2023 320 Political science
• Moses Mendelssohn
  
  22 Mar, 2012 100 Philosophy
• Rawls’ Theory of Justice
  
  19 Jan, 2023 320 Political science

---

Programme ID: b0b5qnfx

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b5qnfx

Auto-category: 320 (Political science)