Montesquieu and Rousseau: Constitutionalism and the Social Contract

Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, first made his name with "Persian Letters" (1721), a social satire narrated by fictional Persian travelers that included a veiled critique of the absolutism of Louis XIV. His major and most influential work, "The Spirit of the Laws" (1748), proposed the separation of powers into legislative, executive, and judicial branches as a safeguard against despotism and the abuse of power, and it classified governments into republics, monarchies, and despotisms, each animated by its own distinctive principle — virtue, honor, and fear, respectively — while carefully distinguishing between a government's formal "nature" and the sentiment, or "principle," that sustains it.