Abstract
We know from Marcel Fournier’s recent biography that for his “Latin” or “complementary” thesis in 1892, Durkheim followed the lead of a trusted advisor and wrote “Montesquieu’s Contribution to the Rise of Social Science” (translated in 1960 as part of Montesquieu and Rousseau: Forerunners of Sociology). Durkheim found intriguing what Pierre Bourdieu later called “The Montesquieu Effect”—an appreciation for the relationship among climate, terrain, and governmental form. More important, though, for his own purposes was Montesquieu’s methodological program for establishing reliable data that students of social organization could use with confidence. He recommended a sober evaluation of historical social arrangements, revealing the fact that varying types of collectivities produce social structures that do not mimic one another. Durkheim also valued Montesquieu’s approach to sociological analysis wherein each component of social life is included in an overall assessment prior to any facile appraisal of a society’s evolutionary condition (Marcel Fournier, Émile Durkheim: A Biography, Polity, 2013; pp.135–38).
Every so often an unorthodox scholar will remember the young Durkheim’s mighty praise for Montesquieu and, following suit, will enlarge this appreciation by tying his ideas more closely to our current preoccupations. This requires once again illustrating how The Spirit of the Laws (1748) and The Persian Letters (1721) continue to warrant study and how even Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline (1734) deserves renewed attention. The latest entry into this mini-tradition comes from the Canadian scholar and French translator Brian C. J. Singer. His book is not a primer aimed at novices seeking a breezy introduction to a great thinker. Rather, Singer has written a densely argued and broadly conceived study that leaves little of Montesquieu’s work untouched as it bears on the origins of what we now call “the sociological imagination.” Singer’s intentions are clearly stated: “The claim of this work is that prior to the discovery of the social, the symbolic order was largely established through the political, this latter term signifying the establishment of order, coherence and a sense of collective coexistence through relations of rule (and not to be confused with politics, which concerns the more mundane struggle for political influence or advantage)” (p. xiii). Here Singer borrows Claude Lefort’s distinction between le politique and la politique.
Singer’s view of Montesquieu is not the conventional one, which holds that he fathered comparative sociology and is simply part of the Enlightenment. Instead Singer argues that Montesquieu was an aristocrat, not a Voltaire-like philosophe, and that he was, perhaps unknowingly, in search of “the social,” giving him prior paternity to the field of sociology over Comte. Singer practices vigorous hermeneutics in his reappropriation of Montesquieu’s achievements, forcing the reader to see The Spirit of the Laws and other works as they were when created rather than through a presentist lens: “The more I read the text, the more I was enticed into its many byways . . . Montesquieu is generally considered a figure of the Enlightenment, a liberal and a modern. He is all of these, but he is also none of these. Montesquieu belongs to, and identified with, a hierarchical world” (pp. xxiii, xvii).
Singer begins his five-chapter analysis by debating Durkheim’s estimate of Montesquieu and then considers how “the social” grew out of “the political” as expressed in “Laws in General” (the opening “Book” of De l’esprit des lois). He then reverses his point of view by examining the relationship between political and social reality. Following this he moves to an analysis of the three major political regimes, and finally to “the centerpiece” of De l’esprit, Book Nineteen, “which focuses on the ‘general spirit’ of moeurs and manners” (p. xxii). A concluding chapter positions Montesquieu’s ideas relative to those of others pertaining to “the social,” which Singer creatively defines in four ways. This valuable book, exhibiting sustained study of a canonical text, will serve as an inspiring introductory guide to a set of ideas which Singer convincingly shows we cannot afford to lose.