Professor Iván Szelényi: Okay, I have a lot to talk about today, and we move one century, and we move into another culture. Both are very important. We move from seventeenth century England to eighteenth century France. We move from a situation which was dominated by civil war, chaos and a yearning for a clear sovereign, and we move in a century, you can call it of Enlightenment – that’s where the term Enlightenment comes from, the French context – and a century of decadence. Eventually it leads to a revolution, but before the revolution there is a lot of fairly juicy decadence.
So two different epochs and two different cultures. British individualism: Hobbes and Locke were methodological individualists. They thought the analysis should start always with the individual. You remember Hobbes – individual drives and fears – and then he builds up that society is starting always from the individual. Not the French. The French are methodological collectivists. They believe there is such a thing as society which is more than the sum total of the individuals, and somehow they know how to grasp it. So these are the changes, what you will see today, Thursday and next Tuesday, when we will be discussing Montesquieu and Jean Jacques Rousseau, before we return to British individualism, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. Don’t ask me why this difference between the two cultures, but there is a lasting difference.
Today’s topic is Montesquieu, and I have a lot of fun stories to tell, but I’ll try to limit my anecdotes so I can focus enough on the text and do not run out of time by the end. Okay, so that was Montesquieu. He was born as Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède – was born in 1689 near Bordeaux. His father was from a noble family, but because he was a younger son he had to become a mercenary, and, in fact, he was fighting Turks in Hungary. He received a law degree nevertheless,
from the University of Bordeaux, and in 1715 he did what many aristocrats did; he married a wealthy woman, Jeanne de Lartigue, which was helpful for him because he was not all that very wealthy, though he was a nobleman. His uncle was Baron de Montesquieu, and when he passed away Charles-Louis received his title, he became Montesquieu, and inherited his office, the presidency of the Parliament of Bordeaux. Don’t think about it, it was not a very big deal and certainly did not offer income for a luxurious life – was not particularly affluent stuff and was not particularly powerful stuff.
Now a bit about the times. Well here it is, Louis XIV, the heights of French absolutism. Well he was called the Sun King. And here is his emblem, the sun; he’s shining like the sun. Well he actually claimed – that’s a famous sentence, and important to understand Montesquieu – “L’état c’est moi,” I am the state. Well it was kind of an over-statement – not quite. He pretended to be more powerful than he actually was. The French absolutism did show already cracks, and the bourgeoisie was becoming already quite powerful under the times of Louis XIV. But he had the notion of French gloire, the glory, and he built this wonderful Palace of Versailles, showing what gloire or glory is. President de Gaulle also emphasized the French gloire. The French are very fond of it.
Okay, the eighteenth century was the Century of Enlightenment, called de Siècle of Lumière; lumière means the light.
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