Living as we do in a time of widespread uncertainty about the future of liberalism, we can easily forget how different the mood was a few short years ago. Instead of expressing anxiety about the survival of liberal democratic institutions in the United States and Western Europe, commentators during the 1990s and 2000s were debating how to spread such institutions across the globe. Within the field of political theory, a prevailing concern was that liberalism had been too successful. Intellectual movements such as communitarianism and civic republicanism flourished during this period with the aim of preserving virtue and community in the face of inevitable liberal hegemony.
This came to mind as I read Keegan Callanan's very fine new book on the Baron de Montesquieu. One imagines that Montesquieu's Liberalism and the Problem of Universal Politics was conceived in the era when liberalism seemed invincible, for its purpose is to chasten and moderate triumphalist liberals. The timing doesn't seem great, but it would be a shame if this work were overlooked. Callanan's is one of the most interesting accounts of Montesquieu's thought to appear in recent years.
A Distinctive Understanding of Liberty
Born in 1689, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu shaped 18th century political ideas like no other figure. His masterpiece, The Spirit of the Laws, published in 1748, offered nothing less than a comprehensive theory of political and social life, and one which would profoundly influence the American and French Revolutions—as well as the emerging fields of history, political economy, sociology, and international law. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Emile Durkheim were among the many thinkers who drew explicitly from “the celebrated Montesquieu.”
For Callanan, an assistant professor of political science at Middlebury College, the great achievement of Montesquieu was to produce a liberal political theory that was genuinely universal—that held certain moral and institutional principles traditionally associated with liberalism to be ideal for human beings—while also doing full justice to the particular. Montesquieuan liberals will be skeptical about forcing liberal ideals on other nations. They will also value the particular religious and cultural traditions that have arisen in their own nations, even when these traditions stem from sources other than liberalism. However, this will in no way detract from their commitment to liberal principles. Callanan argues that in Montesquieu's theory, commitment to the universal ideal of liberty actually yields skepticism about a universalizing politics.
The reason for this is Montesquieu's distinctive understanding of liberty. In The Spirit of the Laws, he initially defines political liberty as the condition of living in a state governed by law, where “power…[is] a check to power.” However, he goes on to define liberty psychologically: It is the “tranquility of spirit” that individuals feel when they believe themselves secure in their person and property.
We might assume that these two conceptions go together—that by living in a constitutional state, one comes to feel secure from arbitrary coercion. But Callanan emphasizes the possibility (suggested by Montesquieu) that these two aspects of liberty do not automatically align. According to Callahan, once we take seriously its psychological character, the very idea of spreading liberty through force becomes self-contradictory:
When a people is not culturally and socially prepared to receive free political institutions, direct attempts to erect such institutions will likely produce an experience of political disquiet and fear comparable to the psychological experience of men and women in truly tyrannical states. Under these conditions, free institutions are no longer liberal in effect, for they fail to yield the tranquility of spirit that constitutes the “liberty of the citizen.” This train of reasoning constitutes what can best be described as a liberal critique of political universalism.
Put simply, a people only acquires the benefits of “free political institutions” when they are rooted in that people's own context and culture. According to Callanan, this yields two implications: First, free political institutions can take multiple forms; monarchies, republics, and mixed constitutions like England all may potentially qualify as free. Second, despotisms should not be overturned by foreign states in the name of liberty. Rather, despotisms should be slowly reformed from within.
Read Full Article »