Introduction
The spirit of the Enlightenment shaped Montesquieu, and he shaped it. In the spirit of the times, he attacks despotism; he employs passions for political ends; he promotes security, champions the separation of powers, and encourages commerce.Footnote 1 Central to the Enlightenment was the hope that popularizing reason could cure ignorance, thereby, as Jonathan Israel notes, “[conferring] enormous benefits to mankind.”Footnote 2 Dan Edelstein adds that the philosophes’ goal “was to demolish Scholastic prejudices and idées reçues,” which they hoped would improve society.Footnote 3 Montesquieu too proclaims his hope to destroy prejudices in the Preface to The Spirit of the Laws. He demands that we understand prejudice’s role in his work. He opens the Laws by tying his happiness to enlightenment: “I would consider myself the happiest of mortals if I could make it so that men were able to cure themselves of their prejudices.”Footnote 4 On his deathbed, when his confessor asked him on “what principle [he] had expressed in his works ideas which cast doubt on the faith,” he “replied that it was from his desire to rise above prejudice and accepted maxims.”Footnote 5
I argue that Montesquieu’s modest view of popular reason’s capacities leads him to employ salutary prejudices for liberty. He defines “prejudice” as “what makes one unaware of oneself.”Footnote 6 Prejudices conceal human nature, especially our natural desire for liberty. By demonstrating that two well-known features of his project concern salutary prejudices—reinterpreting Christianity and encouraging commerce—this article shows the centrality of salutary prejudices in his efforts for political reform.
Though scholars have noticed that Montesquieu’s political project concerns removing prejudices and promoting salutary ones, they have not excavated his use of the latter. Diana Schaub notes that “curing … prejudice is absolutely central to Montesquieu’s enterprise” and that “some prejudices … may be salutary; they form the gears that drive the dynamic equilibrium of liberty.”Footnote 7 Thomas Pangle adds that because “certain communal prejudices are so powerful that they can erase from humans, on a wide scale, even the feeling for their underlying nature … Montesquieu chiefly targets [these] for removal, as much as possible.”Footnote 8 Elsewhere, Pangle remarks that he “did not feel it was possible to dispense entirely with salutary moral prejudices. Some remnant was needed to preserve order and cooperation.”Footnote 9 This article builds on Schaub and Pangle’s work by explaining the reciprocal relationship between prejudices and despotism, identifying the beneficial prejudices, showing how Montesquieu weaponizes them against despotic ones, and explaining how this strategy fits into his moral psychology. This is the article’s first contribution.
While scholars have not fully explained prejudice’s place in Montesquieu’s thought, they are clearer on a related subject—whether he thought popular enlightenment could found rational politics. Prejudice and rational politics are intertwined: The rational society will be unprejudiced. Scholars fall into two groups on this topic. The dominant group argues that he had moderate expectations of reason, which led him to be cautious about rational, universal political solutions and willing to use multiple tactics for liberty that cohere with his complex moral psychology. This group includes Keegan Callanan,Footnote 10 Cecil Courtney,Footnote 11 Nathaniel Gilmore,Footnote 12 and Céline Spector.Footnote 13 Dennis Rasmussen summarizes this position well: Montesquieu “stressed the limits and fallibility of human understanding and advocated a cautious reformism in politics.”Footnote 14 I add that his promotion of salutary prejudices also flows from his moderate expectations of reason. This article is concerned with his understanding of popular reason.
The second group argues that Montesquieu thought popular enlightenment and rational society were possible. This group, which consists of Pangle,Footnote 15 Schaub,Footnote 16 Robert Bartlett,Footnote 17 and Timothy Brennan,Footnote 18 holds that he had a higher opinion of human reason, which is why he attempted to make politics more rational, especially by overcoming religious ideas. His condemnation of prejudice in the Preface underpins this view: He attacks prejudices to improve politics.Footnote 19 His proclamation is why, despite extensive evidence to the contrary, some still argue that he thought popular enlightenment was possible. The article’s second contribution is to show how his attitude towards prejudices is compatible with a moderate view of reason, thereby removing the Preface’s statements as a support for this group’s view.
This article has two parts. The first reveals Montesquieu’s double strategy regarding prejudices: He seeks to destroy them because they have a reciprocally causal relationship with despotism, but he also employs salutary prejudices to combat despotic ones. He considers prejudices salutary when they are milder than other alternatives or support moderate regimes and ideas. The second part argues that salutary prejudices are integral to his efforts for political reform.
Prejudice against prejudice
Montesquieu’s manifest goal is to conquer prejudices.Footnote 20 Prejudices are erroneous ideas that make us unaware of ourselves, of which superstitions are the worst kind.Footnote 21 Prejudices are often propagated by religion but can also be engendered by activities and passions, which, by fostering particular dispositions, mislead people about what human nature is. All societies have prejudices, but what society can do to people varies. Mild prejudices obscure human nature without smothering the fundamental need for liberty, while despotic prejudices pervert human nature so much that they oppress that crucial natural desire. I extend Jean Starobinski’s general argument that poisons can be transformed into cures to Montesquieu’s use of prejudices.Footnote 22
Montesquieu aims to destroy prejudices because they support despotism, which, as scholars have observed, is the summum malum that orients the Laws. Footnote 23 Despotism is the supreme evil because it makes liberty, which is the opinion of security and the greatest political good, impossible.Footnote 24 As Pangle has shown, seeking security is integral to human beings.Footnote 25 But despotism does not make its subjects feel secure. Because despotism is the government of one “without law and without rule,” it dominates with fear.Footnote 26
Though Pangle has noted that the prejudices Montesquieu intends to remove are religious prejudices, which “emerge out of and reflect existence under despotism,”Footnote 27 I add that two religious prejudices also make despotism possible. The despot may claim divine descent or the local religion may worship despotic fatherly authorities, which prepare the people to accept an earthly counterpart.Footnote 28 Montesquieu reveals both kinds of prejudices in his discussion of the native Louisianans, who suffer from the first.Footnote 29 They worship the sun, and their despot, who claims to be the sun’s brother, rules them. They reveal the second despotic prejudice by analogy. The Louisianan king is an implicit reference to King Louis XIV, another sun king. The Louisianan despot is “like the Grand Seigneur,” the Turkish emperor,Footnote 30 and, as Shackleton has noted, Montesquieu compared Louis XIV and the Turkish emperor in the Persian Letters. Footnote 31 Seigneur is also an eighteenth-century name for God.Footnote 32 As worshipping the sun prepares the Louisianan people for despotism, worshipping God prepares the French for Louis XIV, who revived the aspiration for a universal monarchy, which, as Mark Hulliung notes, invites despotism.Footnote 33 Though Brennan also noticed this analogy, he neither explicitly identifies that there are two religious prejudices supporting despotism nor adds that Montesquieu’s use of the term seigneur strengthens the comparison.Footnote 34 Montesquieu calls the prejudices that make despotism possible “superstitions.”Footnote 35 Christianity even encourages the religious to act despotically.Footnote 36 The hope to convert souls drove slavery, and the religion gave monarchs a model for universal rule.Footnote 37 As Vickie Sullivan writes, “These barbaric practices of the Christians, in fact, bring despotism to Europe.”Footnote 38
Prejudice in despotism
The relationship between prejudices and despotisms is reciprocal, which is why Montesquieu aims to conquer both.Footnote 39 Not only do prejudices cause despotisms, but despotisms also spread prejudices, which make human beings forget three of the four natural laws that are integral to human nature and describe natural feelings, pursuits, and the original bonds that prompt human beings to enter society.Footnote 40 As Michael Zuckert remarks, society can “transform [human beings] in such a way that the original natural laws are nearly effaced.”Footnote 41 In the state of nature, there are four laws. The human being seeks peace because her weakness motivates her to preserve herself; she eats; she is attracted to her own kind, a feeling tied to familial love and sexual pleasure; and she desires to live with others, which the pursuit of knowledge stimulates.Footnote 42 While the state of nature is not the only normative standard that Montesquieu uses to evaluate regimes, its principles, as KrauseFootnote 43 and ZuckertFootnote 44 note, still guide his thought. This section builds on the work of Gilmore,Footnote 45 Krause,Footnote 46 Pangle,Footnote 47 and ZuckertFootnote 48 by arguing that the effects of despotism are prejudices that conceal human nature by making human beings forget the natural laws, except for the second.
Despotisms efface the first law, which is peace. As noted above, human beings naturally seek security, but, as Zuckert writes, despotism creates “a false sort of peace … The fear under a despotism only imperfectly secures what the law of nature provides—namely, preservation of the individual and the species.”Footnote 49 Despotism perverts the third law of nature, which is the pleasure human beings feel around each other. While Montesquieu presents this pleasure as primarily sexual, as Pangle has argued, it also seems to encompass familial love.Footnote 50 As Gilmore adds, because despotism uses fear to enforce obedience, it perverts love.Footnote 51 When the despot demands, the subject will even sacrifice her loved ones.Footnote 52 Despotism also twists the fourth law, “the desire to live in society,” which two bonds promote: The feelings of self-preservation and pleasure that draw human beings to each other and knowledge.Footnote 53 Though Montesquieu is ambiguous about what kind of knowledge people seek and whether they do obtain it in society, he is clear that the human being has the capacity to gain knowledge, which is why she enters society. As Krause has shown, despotism, however, causes ignorance.Footnote 54 Because despotism demands “extreme obedience,” the subject’s education consists of fear and knowing a few religious principles.Footnote 55 Because the despot rules on his whims, neither does he need “to deliberate, to doubt, or to reason; he has only to want.”Footnote 56 While it treats subjects as subhuman, despotism convinces princes that that they are more than human.Footnote 57 And as Pangle has argued, despotism also makes human beings ignorant by cultivating a psychological need for religious prejudices.Footnote 58
Monarchy and prejudice
In his presentation of honor, the monarchic principle, Montesquieu reveals that there are salutary prejudices in the Laws that he endorses because they preserve liberty. As previously noted, salutary prejudices conceal human beings from themselves, but they do not obscure the desire for liberty, the most fundamental human need. These salutary prejudices sustain moderate regimes. When Montesquieu introduces honor, he identifies it as a prejudice and compares it to virtue, the principle of participatory republics, which supports liberty. “HONOR, that is, the prejudice of each person and each condition, takes the place of the political virtue of which I have spoken and represents it everywhere.”Footnote 59 As Krause,Footnote 60 Michael Mosher,Footnote 61 and Paul RaheFootnote 62 argue, honor uses the desire for ambitious self-distinction for high ends. I add that honor is a prejudice because it makes individuals esteem themselves to be better than they are, but it is salutary because the nobility’s desire for honor protects liberty from the monarch, who tries to expand his power by eroding their privileges.Footnote 63
By praising honor, Montesquieu indicates that he does not aim to destroy all prejudices. He seeks to conquer only the worst that promote despotism, which requires encouraging salutary ones that support liberty. His evaluation of honor makes this standard clear: “Speaking philosophically, it is true that the honor that guides all the parts of the state is a false honor, but this false honor is as useful to the public as the true one would be to the individuals who could have it.”Footnote 64 Since he introduces honor by comparing it to political virtue, he implies that the latter is also a salutary prejudice.Footnote 65 By demanding that the citizen prefer “the public interest over one’s own,” virtue requires an unnatural “renunciation of oneself,” which is why “the full power of education is needed.”Footnote 66 Despite its unnatural severity, virtue still protected liberty. Though PangleFootnote 67 and RaheFootnote 68 have noticed that political virtue is harsh, it has not been shown that virtue’s strict demands and positive effects indicate that it is a salutary prejudice. Pangle remarks that Montesquieu does not prefer participatory republics because of virtue’s severity.Footnote 69 Rahe adds that virtue demands an “unnatural” self-discipline.Footnote 70
By employing honor to preserve liberty, Montesquieu indicates that philosophic knowledge includes understanding that prejudices may sometimes benefit liberty more than popular enlightenment. Even though honor promotes false vanity and human beings are not honor-seeking by nature, honor preserves human beings from despotism, which, as noted above, severely twists them. He therefore employs salutary prejudices, such as honor, if they protect human beings from despotism and the worst prejudices, which prepare human beings to cede their liberty. Though he never calls himself a philosopher in the Laws, his discussion of honor is the only time he “speaks philosophically” in the whole work. Philosophy recognizes that false honor obscures self-knowledge, but his political aims lead him to promote a prejudice for liberty. When he speaks philosophically, he reveals that there are prejudices he will endorse but not identify as such. Since he does not speak philosophically again, he leaves the task of identifying useful prejudices to his reader, which is consistent with his general view on writing.Footnote 71 To use prejudices effectively against despotism, Montesquieu must attack them but also conceal the prejudicial nature of those he endorses. Honor is a feasible safeguard for liberty only if the nobility believes in their inflated self-worth. For this end, he pairs his use of prejudice with criticisms of them.
Montesquieu’s revelation that honor is a prejudice, however, does not undermine his aim. Honor admires playful boldness, and his claim that honor is a prejudice without regard for the consequences is boldly honest.Footnote 72 Truth in speech is desirable “because a man accustomed to speaking the truth appears to be daring and free.”Footnote 73 In addition, revealing honor’s prejudicial nature is less blasphemous than suggesting religion is a prejudice, which is a view he also holds.
Prejudices, moderation, and the general spirit
Montesquieu’s use of salutary prejudices is consistent with moderation, the principle that guides his thought. Moderation informs both his modest assessment of reason and his recommendation that political reforms be tailored to the needs and customs of specific places, which is also what the general spirit demands. Even though his proclamation of his hopes to enlighten men and dispel prejudices in the Preface initially seems to reveal an immoderate belief that popular reason could dispel ignorance, to conclude from these sentences that he unequivocally hated prejudices ignores his instructions for reading the Laws. Footnote 74 Readers should “not judge by a moment’s reading the work of twenty years … If one wants to seek the design of the author, one can find it only in the design of the work.”Footnote 75 The work’s design indicates that he hopes to cure the worst prejudices that support despotisms, yet, paradoxically, to weaken despotisms he must also use salutary prejudices that better fit the general spirit of the peoples he seeks to help. His hopes for what his work will accomplish are therefore more ambiguous than they first appear in the Preface. Though he aims to make people more knowledgeable about their fundamental need for security, this does not include dispelling all prejudices that make us unaware of ourselves.
In Montesquieu’s view, the general spirit hinders popular enlightenment and guides his efforts for political reform, which is why he employs salutary prejudices for liberty. As Catherine Volpilhac-Auger remarks, the general spirit “is a complex composite of climate, but also, and especially, of the history of nations, their political regime, their institutions, laws, behaviors, etc.”Footnote 76 The general spirit facilitates the existence of prejudices, which always exist in society because the human being is “that flexible being who adapts himself in society to the thoughts and impressions of others.”Footnote 77 Because the general spirit tends to conceal us from ourselves, Montesquieu thinks that the Enlightenment hope to rid society of prejudices entirely is immoderate. He even acknowledges that he is not immune to prejudices. Opposing prejudice and nature, he notes, “I did not draw my principles from my prejudices but from the nature of things.”Footnote 78 Despite the apparent discord between nature and prejudice, the nature of things, including that of human society, requires him to employ useful prejudices. Each society’s general spirit provides unique opportunities that can be leveraged for liberty and therefore become salutary prejudices.
Montesquieu’s hopes to improve society are tempered by his concern for moderation, which, as Aurelian Craiutu notes, is the legislator’s highest virtue.Footnote 79 In the Preface, Montesquieu’s declaration of his hopes is paired with his worry about the Enlightenment’s immoderation in correcting old abuses, which is caused by overestimating human reason’s capacities. The falsely enlightened who are confident in their own knowledge inadvertently blunder in their reforms because they do not see the interconnectedness of the society that they seek to improve. Only “those who are born fortunate enough to fathom by a stroke of genius the whole of a state’s constitution” will propose the right changes.Footnote 80 True enlightenment, which moderation informs, leads Montesquieu to make three related recommendations for proper political reform: First, to consider possible evils that result from correcting abuses, which is why the legislator ought to preserve a lesser good that exists instead of reaching for one that may introduce new evils.Footnote 81 Second, to advise reforms that are tailored to the local conditions.Footnote 82 And third, because human beings are “very attached to their customs,” it is preferable either to revise existing customs to support liberty or to “engage the people to change them themselves” rather than to coerce change.Footnote 83
These recommendations inform Montesquieu’s use of salutary prejudices. Though honor is a prejudice because it encourages a false sense of esteem, he would be immoderate to undermine a liberty-supporting institution woven into the French spirit. As Krause has noticed, “Honor is embedded in a social and historical order.”Footnote 84 Montesquieu remarks that honor originates from Germanic judicial combat, a method to resolve disputes.Footnote 85 While settling lawsuits by dueling is of questionable merit, an unreasonable practice can be well executed: “Men who are fundamentally reasonable place even their prejudices under rules. Nothing was more contrary to common sense than judicial combat, but once this point was granted, it was executed with a certain prudence.”Footnote 86
Montesquieu’s support for salutary prejudices is a reason why he supports moderate governments. I agree with Callanan,Footnote 87 Gilmore,Footnote 88 Rasmussen,Footnote 89 and Paul Carrese,Footnote 90 who argue that he is convinced about the worst regime but flexible regarding the best—whether it be virtuous republics, honorable monarchies, or commercial republics. Each regime cultivates a unique political psychology that the local spirit shapes, and though all regimes are flawed because they distort human nature, these disadvantages do not disqualify them as choiceworthy regimes for particular nations. Scholars who think Montesquieu prefers only one mode often note his critiques of the others. Pangle,Footnote 91 Rahe,Footnote 92 Schaub,Footnote 93 Pierre Manent,Footnote 94 and Andrea RadasanuFootnote 95 argue that he prefers commercial republics and support their claim by criticizing the other moderate regimes. Against virtuous republics, Pangle remarks that “republican self-devotion is … always a restraint, a distortion of human nature.”Footnote 96 Manent adds that republicanism’s oppressive rule “makes a man neither wise nor happy.”Footnote 97 Radasanu criticizes monarchies as “inherently unstable … always teetering on the brink of despotism.”Footnote 98 KrauseFootnote 99 and Annelien de Dijn,Footnote 100 in contrast, argue that Montesquieu prefers monarchy, which is why, according to Krause, England “is not … the simply best regime for [him]” because of “the predominance of material interest.”Footnote 101 De Dijn adds that he “could be quite disparaging of the city-states of antiquity.”Footnote 102 But Montesquieu’s criticisms of a regime do not mean that it is not preferable for its moderation, especially when compared to despotism. Political knowledge, which he cultivates in his legislator, entails seeing these regimes’ flaws and trying to balance them under specific local conditions partly by using the prejudices that are part of each society’s general spirit.
Salutary prejudices
As noted above, salutary prejudices are central to Montesquieu’s efforts for political reform. They guide some of his most prominent efforts for liberty, especially reinterpreting Christianity and encouraging commerce. While his reinterpretation of Christianity is itself a prejudice, commerce promotes a particular prejudicial idea, namely that human beings are acquisitive beings for whom procuring material goods is key to their wellbeing. Though this idea can cure despotic religious prejudices, it can also undermine liberty.
Christianity
Montesquieu views religions as politically useful prejudices whose teachings legislators can reinterpret to support liberty by emphasizing their more humane ideas. Though his revisions of Christianity are well-known, this article reveals that his view of prejudices is integral to understanding this tactic for promoting liberty. His view of prejudices is why he chooses to reform Christianity rather than immediately eliminate it or oppress the religious, which would result in a tyranny that invites despotism. Further, his assessment of prejudices explains why he evaluates religions on their utility—as salutary prejudices, religious ideas may be false but useful. He pushes a beneficial but still prejudiced interpretation of Christianity as a humane religion that prizes gentleness. His reinterpretation undermines a despotic prejudice, which is the severe religiosity that the Spanish Inquisition exemplifies. My argument therefore aligns me with the views of Sullivan,Footnote 103 Rasmussen,Footnote 104 and Clifford Orwin.Footnote 105 As Sullivan remarks, “Although Christian ideas have remediated barbarities, they have also introduced their own form of barbarism to Europe.”Footnote 106 Orwin adds that Montesquieu wanted his audience “to value Christianity above all for its accomplishments in this world, but also to grasp the necessity of further reforms.”Footnote 107
Montesquieu’s mixed assessment of Christianity gives rise to two additional views. Scholars also argue, though in opposing directions, that he had a less ambivalent view of Christianity than those discussed above. Bartlett,Footnote 108 Brennan,Footnote 109 Pangle,Footnote 110 and SchaubFootnote 111 argue that he hoped to destroy traditional Christian piety because it prevents rational politics. Though Pangle notes that Montesquieu may not have sought to destroy Christianity entirely, he primarily sees him as antagonistic toward it.Footnote 112 “Montesquieu’s project cannot succeed unless he can show the way to a destruction or emasculating transformation of Christianity.”Footnote 113 Similarly, though Schaub acknowledges that Montesquieu “seeks to alter Christian sensibilities without needlessly antagonizing them,” elsewhere she emphasizes that Christianity must be thoroughly transformed by stating that “a real dose of the feminine is his cure for Christianity’s effeminization.”Footnote 114 Other scholars argue that Montesquieu was friendly to Christianity because of its good political effects. According to Shackleton, “[Christianity] opposes despotism.”Footnote 115 Callanan adds that “it was a source of moral restraint that freed the state to govern mildly.”Footnote 116 Even though my argument that Montesquieu revised Christianity to make it a salutary prejudice seems to disagree with those who argue that he sought to destroy it entirely, these two positions can be compatible. Moderating religion by promoting good prejudices can cohere with the possibility that he hopes Christianity will eventually cease to exist. And some scholars would agree that Montesquieu encouraged Christianity’s gentler teachings. Pangle remarks that he “seeks to contribute to this process of the liberalizing and humanizing modern-day evolution of Christianity.”Footnote 117 For Schaub, he “seeks to alter Christian sensibilities without needlessly antagonizing them.”Footnote 118
For Montesquieu, human beings are not religious by nature. Organized religions are, as we have seen, prejudices that can conceal or twist human nature. Though he acknowledges that the desire to know one’s creator is “the first of the natural laws in importance,” he does not include it among the four natural laws that summarize our original human nature.Footnote 119 The militant Christianity, of which the Spanish Inquisition is his premier example, is a prejudice because it contravenes three of the four natural laws. The Inquisition threatens security by examining heresy; it demands that religious devotion come before all, including familial love; and, by convincing its adherents that saving souls should be their primary goal, Christianity rejects that the proper knowledge we need concerns liberty.Footnote 120 As Gilmore and Sullivan explain, “Montesquieu depicts a form of Christianity, persisting in his own day, that maintains itself by inflicting the most severe punishments on those who do not maintain the religion’s purity.”Footnote 121
Since Montesquieu generally sees religions as prejudices, he is concerned with their political usefulness and not their verity. “Among the false religions [one can] seek the ones that are the most in conformity with the good of society, the ones that … can most contribute to their happiness in this [life].”Footnote 122 His standard of political utility, which is the happiness in this life that constitutes the good of society, guides his treatment of religions and is consistent with his view of salutary prejudices as false but useful ideas. As Schaub notes, the truth of a religion does not necessarily correlate with its political utility.Footnote 123 Well-implemented but false religions can make people happy.Footnote 124
Montesquieu’s reinterpretation of Christianity follows his general guidelines for promoting salutary prejudices as discussed above. Because the beneficial prejudices that he advances are either part of the general spirit or modify one of its constituent elements, he facilitates their adoption and refrains from contravening the general spirit. While defying the general spirit is tyrannical and detrimental to liberty, promoting beneficial prejudices that draw on the general spirit is not.Footnote 125 Since Christianity is widely established, Montesquieu cannot attack it without broadly undermining liberty in Europe. Further, imposing a new religion is tyrannical, while “open irreligion,” as Schaub notes, risks fanaticism.Footnote 126 A successful moderation of Christianity therefore requires reinterpretation and, because Christianity is widely established, his reinterpretative work can be adopted across Europe to support liberty.
Second, Montesquieu judges prejudices to be salutary when they support moderate governments better than other alternatives. Even though Christianity is not his preferred religion because of its despotic tendencies, it is advantageous because, in contrast to other religions, it can promote liberty.Footnote 127 Revising Christianity so that it better supports moderate government is especially advantageous because Montesquieu fears that destroying it leaves a vacuum for Islam, which in his view is even less compatible with liberty.Footnote 128 His recognition of the probable consequence of destroying Christianity is why he praises it most highly when considering Islam: “From the character of the Christian religion and that of the Mohammedan religion, one should, without further examination, embrace the one and reject the other.”Footnote 129
As previously noted, religions best preserve liberty when they encourage people to be humane and moderate. The religions that Montesquieu prefers follow this general standard, which his praise of the Stoics expresses well: “There has never been one [religion] whose principles were more worthy of men and more appropriate for forming good men than that of the Stoics,” who “were occupied only in working for men’s happiness and in exercising the duties of society.”Footnote 130 To make Christianity more like his preferred religions, Montesquieu exhorts people to act as Christ would.Footnote 131 In a fictional letter to Iberian inquisitors, he promotes his new religious prejudice, a humane Christianity. The letter writer, incensed at the Inquisitors’ recent auto-da-fé, argues that they do not embody Christian virtues. He appeals to Christ’s example: “We entreat you, not by the powerful god we both serve, but by the Christ that you tell us took on the human condition in order to give you examples you could follow; we entreat you to act with us as he himself would act if he were still on earth. You want us to be Christians, and you do not want to be Christian yourselves.”Footnote 132
Commerce
Commerce “cures destructive prejudices” and destroys despotisms by “[spreading] knowledge of the mores of all nations everywhere.”Footnote 133 Scholars generally agree that Montesquieu praised commerce but held some reservations. They disagree, however, on the gravity of those reservations. Commerce’s capacity to engender a prejudice explains his ambivalent stance toward it. Engaging in commercial activity can make human beings prize the accumulation of material wealth to an unnatural extent such that monetary exchange dominates their relationships and interactions. They come to believe that procuring material goods is crucial to their wellbeing, even more than their natural need for liberty, which can encourage despotism. Because this misconception of our fundamental needs can cure religious prejudices, thereby weakening despotisms, it can also promote liberty, which is why Montesquieu also encourages commerce.
In general, scholars stake out two positions on Montesquieu’s view of commerce. Bartlett,Footnote 134 Brennan,Footnote 135 Pangle,Footnote 136 Rahe,Footnote 137 and SchaubFootnote 138 argue that he promoted commerce because it best attacked despotism. As Pangle argues, “The outstanding benefit brought by commerce is that it enlightens and thereby ‘softens’ men … Men are enlightened about their common insecurity and weakness.”Footnote 139 Bartlett adds that, by spreading material comfort, commerce weakens traditional piety, a source of despotic ideas.Footnote 140 Though PangleFootnote 141 and RaheFootnote 142 acknowledge Montesquieu’s reservations about commerce, in general, they argue that he enthusiastically promoted commerce because of its utility in securing moderate government. The second group, which consists of Krause,Footnote 143 Spector,Footnote 144 Roger Boesche,Footnote 145 and Emily Nacol and Constantine Vassiliou,Footnote 146 argues that, while he praised commerce, he had serious reservations about it. Krause explains, “Commercial ambition cannot fully supply the defect of higher motives because ‘if the spirit of commerce unites nations, it does not unite individuals in the same way’ (XX.2) … While Montesquieu welcomes commerce and approves of its salutary effects, he is not blind on its limits.”Footnote 147 Spector suggests that to read him as a simple proponent of commerce would be to reduce him to a simple democrat who cares only about creature comforts.Footnote 148
Both groups have neglected Montesquieu’s judgment that commerce engenders a salutary prejudice. Human beings are not commercial by nature, which is to say that monetary exchange neither originally dominates nor ought to dominate human relationships and interactions. Commerce encourages the idea that we can put a price on everything for personal gain. “We see that in countries where one is affected only by the spirit of commerce, there is traffic in all human activities and all moral virtues; the smallest things, those required by humanity, are done or given for money.”Footnote 149 The priority, however, that human beings place on material wealth is useful. Their reliance on wealth undermines the religious prejudices that underpin despotisms. Montesquieu encourages commerce because “the comforts of life” are “a more certain way to attack religion.”Footnote 150 And commerce is especially useful because, similar to Christianity, it is not a principle tied to a particular regime. Commerce can spread because it is a part of human life more generally as it is one of the universal, primary relations that constitute “the spirit of the laws” but can have varying influence in different nations.Footnote 151
Montesquieu’s reservations about commerce are rooted in its capacity to obscure human nature in two ways, which can support despotism. First, the commercial prejudice weakens and even destroys the natural affection that people feel for each other, which is the basis of the third natural law. As Pangle notes, while commerce can promote humanity by undermining despotisms, it also contravenes it by encouraging an “exact justice.”Footnote 152 Albert Hirschmann adds, “[Montesquieu] regrets the way in which commerce brings with it a monetization of all human relations.”Footnote 153 Montesquieu’s example is hospitality, which is rare in commercial countries because hotels are more profitable than hosting guests.Footnote 154 His premier example of how commerce can destroy our humanity is the Spanish, whose commerce extended despotism to the New World. As Rahe has noticed, Spanish commerce’s ill effects concerned Montesquieu even 20 years before the publication of the Laws. Footnote 155 While it is usually true “that everywhere there is commerce, there are gentle mores,” Spain is an exception to this “almost general rule.”Footnote 156 Because commerce makes the Spanish believe that the “prodigious” “quantity of gold and silver” is real wealth, commerce seduced them. The Spanish desired to obtain it, which led them to treat people inhumanely.Footnote 157 They used commerce to enlarge their despotic empire. The American colonies were “in a kind of dependence of which there are very few examples among the ancient colonies.”Footnote 158 Because of commerce, the Spanish destroyed others by slavery, and they destroyed themselves by vice.
The second way in which commerce can advance despotism concerns the proper ranking of goods. As noted above, commerce can encourage human beings to love wealth more than security, so that they forget their nature as liberty-seeking beings, which the first natural law describes. The love for material comfort prepares them for despotism’s sole consolation: “In despotic governments … one decides to act only in anticipation of the comforts of life, the prince who gives rewards has only silver to give.”Footnote 159 While Montesquieu might view comfort to be a natural desire, it is unnatural for human beings to want comfort at liberty’s expense, which commerce encourages. As Krause remarks, commerce “can cause individuals to prefer their profits, or their comforts, to their liberties … In a commercial society, where the motive of material interest predominates, subjects may be gratified into submission by a despot who successfully supplies their needs even while denying their liberties.”Footnote 160
Conclusion
Prejudices are central to Montesquieu’s political project. He seeks to destroy them because they support despotisms and twist human nature. But to avoid employing immoderate, tyrannical remedies that contravene the general spirit, he also uses existing, salutary prejudices to help liberty take root. Because the human being is flexible and society makes her lose sight of her nature, even the best political solutions conceal who she is. This strategy is consistent with moderation, the principle that guides Montesquieu’s political thought and project. This article contributes to the literature by identifying the salutary prejudices that he uses to support liberty and showing how his use of prejudices coheres with a moderate view of human reason.
Acknowledgements
I thank Dr Ruth Abbey and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, which have improved this article. I also thank Nathaniel Gilmore for his comments and Beckett Rueda for his thoughts.
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