Hegel's Interpretation of Montesquieu

• In Event: Modern Political Theory

Abstract

Hegel finds two things to value in Montesquieu. First is Montesquieu’s neo-Aristotelian method, which (like Goethe’s natural science) avoids the twin pitfalls of “systematic” empiricism (Hobbes, Locke) and transcendental natural law (Kant, Fichte). For Montesquieu unlike Aristotle, however, politics is historical and not natural, so Hegel regards Montesquieu’s political science as a kind of “pragmatic” history-writing. The second thing Hegel values is the substance of the Montesquieu’s pragmatic history of modern constitutional government. At its core is a tripartite distinction of the kinds of monarchy that both philosophers claim was unknown to Aristotle, rendering the Politics anachronistic. In SL 11.7-8, Montesquieu distinguishes between monarchies known to the ancients, those “known to us” (monarchies with an independent nobility that had emerged after the fall of Rome), and the novel English republic-disguised-as-a-monarchy. (This form of government is characterized by legal equality, a representative legislature, and the separation and balancing of powers.) In PR § 273R Hegel, explicitly following Montesquieu, distinguishes between patriarchal, feudal, and constitutional monarchy.

Hegel’s model of constitutional government is different from Montesquieu’s, and Hegel judges England differently. Yet both derive ideal versions of a free constitution in an a priori way that is nevertheless inspired by modern politics, criticizing Harrington and Fichte for doing otherwise. Already in German Constitution Hegel follows Montesquieu in tracing both feudal and constitutional monarchy to “the woods of Germany.” Hegel’s main innovation is not political but metaphysical: Montesquieu, he says, fails to “rise to the height of the most living Idea.”

Author

• James Tussing, University of Notre Dame