Skip to content

Category Archives: Montesquieu

Barbarians, Old and New

On May 19th at 9:00 AM in a room yet to be announced, I’ll be giving the first public presentation on my work on barbarians and savages, drawing upon Hobbes and Montesquieu as examples. Apparently my session is entitled “Fundamentalisms” (I’m not sure why!) as one other person is doing a paper on Israeli fundamentalism [...]

Naming

I’ve adopted the term “aristocratic political theory” to describe eighteenth century French thought that opposed itself to both the king and the bourgeoisie. Montesquieu, of course, is the most famous example, but there are a number of other people we’d want to include in this list: Fenelon, Saint-Simon, Boulainvilliers, and Mably, at the very least, [...]