Montesquieu on Love: Notes on The Persian Letters

David Kettler

American Political Science Review, 1964, vol. 58, issue 3, 658-661

Abstract: Among students of political philosophy, Montesquieu is chiefly honored as author of The Spirit of the Laws. His earlier important work, The Persian Letters, is more often cited than read and is considered primarily as a collection of fragments, some of which may be useful for clearing up some disputed point or other in the interpretation of the magnum opus. In these notes I propose to treat it as a meaningful whole—as a book which in fact has the theme which it purports to have, the theme of love and its relation to social institutions. This is not an altogether novel approach, even among political scientists. The late Franz Neumann, for example, has pointed out the importance of this theme in his introduction to the Hafner edition of The Spirit of the Laws. Nevertheless, I believe that Montesquieu's conception of love is sufficiently important and the implications of his conception sufficiently interesting, so that a closer analysis will not be redundant.

Date: 1964
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