The spirit of the laws
by Charles-Louis de Secondat baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu · first published 2010
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…changing needs and circumstances of its citizens and responsive at a local level to local differences, etc. * * * The why is in my opinion best described in Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws, Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and Madison/Hamilton/Jefferson’s Federalist Papers (and you might look at Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, etc. too if you’re feeling extra ambitious). The complexities are…
on “Too Rich to Live?” ↗…government works in practice as opposed to as an idealism, which is the foundation for understanding constitutional governance and it's practices. Reading Hobbes as well as Montesquieu, particularly the Spirit of Laws should dispel the notion of security theater in a pejorative sense. Also, unless you have some special insight, you cannot for sure say what has been prevented. Therefore any speculation on "true purposes"…
on “U.S. Google antitrust case set to expand with GOP states joining” ↗Not wholly on topic, but for some added depth to that "love or fear" dynamic, I suggest reading Montesquieu's "The Spirit of the Laws." He analyzes different forms of government (democracy, aristocracy, monarchy, and despotism) and their animating principles. For democracy, it's virtue. For monarchy, it's honor. For despotism, it's…
on “Facebook is planning to build a real community with parks, stores and apartments” ↗…themselves is useful! Plato: The Republic Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics; and Politics Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan John Locke: Two Treatises of Government Rousseau: The Social Contract Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws De Toqueville: Democracy in America Karl Marx: The Communist Manifesto; and Das Kapital. JS Mill: On Liberty (the classic Utilitarian Enlightenment work) John Rawls: A Theory of Justice (A hugely important…
on “Show HN: A political news aggregator you can comment on” ↗The idea of "Checks and Balances" was coined by Montesquieu in his "The Spirit of the Laws" treatise, where it is justified as "balanced forces of equal leverage amongst one another having an embedded tension against each other". The problem is, despite the Founding Fathers' near-fetishization…
on “The FBI’s most controversial surveillance tool is under threat” ↗…(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition#Democratic): > The idea that democracy is associated with sortition remained common in the 18th century. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu writes in The Spirit of the Laws, "The suffrage by lot is natural to democracy, as that by choice is to aristocracy."
on “You're a Slave to Money, Then You Die” ↗Can anyone recommend a good text on sociopharmacology? Something like Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws except about the differences between national / regional cultures based on their differing diets of psychoactive substances? I recently heard (in that anti-American al Jazeera 4th of July video) that…
on “The Problem of Artificial Willpower” ↗Almost all modern systems of separation of power are modelled to various extent on the principles set out by Montesquieu. Montesquieu formalised the tripartite system in The Spirit of the Laws published in 1748, describing a model of separation of powers into a judiciary, executive and legislative based on the Roman Republic and the British constitution [1]. He also formulated the principle…
on “Coup attempt underway in Turkey” ↗…the Commonwealth of England had a concept of separation of powers between the legislative and executive. Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1690), and the 1777 English translation of Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws use the actual term "executive power" dozens of times each. This is consistent with Article III, which mentions the “judicial power,” but doesn’t mention most of the functions of a court. It doesn’t…
on “Supreme Court lets Fed Governor Cook keep job pending oral argument in January” ↗…https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism points out that: > During the Age of Enlightenment, many philosophers wrote pamphlets against slavery and its moral and economical justifications, including Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws (1748) or in the Encyclopédie. In 1788, Jacques Pierre Brissot founded the Society of the Friends of the Blacks (Société des Amis des Noirs) to work for abolition of slavery. Revolutionary France, based…