Posted on 12/23/2009 11:44:26 AM PST by hillsdale1
Every once in a while one gets an insight into the sad state of higher education in the United States.
Back in 2008, when my agent was attempting to market the manuscript of what recently appeared in two companion volumes under the titles Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic and Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect, he ran into an unexpected snag.
None of the editors at the trade presses he approached had ever even heard of Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu.
That came as a shock to me; and when I repeated the story to other students of the eighteenth century, they expressed amazement and dread.
Book editors are a well-educated lot. They have to be if they are to succeed in their profession. If they have not a clue who Montesquieu was, then the same can be said for our intellectual elite as a whole – and that is not just a shame. It is a scandal.
There was a time when Montesquieu’s was a name to be conjured with, for the author of The Spirit of Laws bestrode the second half of the eighteenth century like a colossus. In fact, every major work that Montesquieu ushered into print quickly found a wide audience.
By 1800, his Persian Letters, which first appeared in 1721, had been published in ninety-three editions and had been translated into English, Dutch, German, Polish, and Russian – while his Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline, which was first published in 1734, had appeared in sixty-two editions and had been translated into English, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Polish, Russian, and Greek.
Neither of these bore comparison with Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws. This last work was in a self-evident way serious, and enormous it was as well. One purchased it expecting instruction and not diversion – diverting though it might be. And yet, from the moment of its release in the Fall of 1748, it sold like hotcakes.
By the end of the century, it had been published in one hundred twenty-eight editions, and it had been translated into English, Italian, German, Latin, Danish, Dutch, Polish, and Russian. To this one can add that, in the period stretching from 1748 to 1800, these three books were published together in editions of Montesquieu’s complete works no fewer than thirty-six times.
The Spirit of Laws was a publishing phenomenon, and it was much, much more. As the eventful second half of the eighteenth century began, Montesquieu’s great work became the political Bible of learned men and would-be statesmen everywhere in Europe, and beyond.
In Britain, it shaped the thinking of Edmund Burke, Edward Gibbon, William Blackstone, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, John Robertson, John Millar, Lord Kames, and Dugald Stewart among others.
In America, it inspired the Framers of the Constitution to embrace federalism and the separation of powers, and it provided their opponents, the Anti-Federalists, with ammunition as well.
In Italy, it had a profound effect on Cesare Beccaria, and in Germany, it was fundamental for Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
In France, it was the starting point for all subsequent political thought. Its impact can hardly be overestimated.
If Montesquieu was so often consulted and cited by men of consequence in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, if no political writer was more often mentioned and none was thought to be of greater authority in the era of the American and French revolutions, it was largely because, in The Spirit of Laws, he had announced his discovery, on the very doorstep of his native France, of a new form of government more conducive to liberty and graced with greater staying power than any polity theretofore even imagined.
Students of the form of political liberty peculiar to modern republics may still, then, have much to learn from considering what Montesquieu had to say a quarter of a millennium ago concerning the constitution of England – for, James Madison to the contrary notwithstanding, Montesquieu did not profess for “the particular government of England” an “admiration bordering on idolatry.”
He was a profound critic as well as an admirer, as sensitive to the imperfections inherent in the English form of government as he was to its many virtues; and the defects he and his intellectual heirs discerned in that polity and the propensities that arise therefrom are pertinent to understanding the political psychology of all modern republics and to tracing the sources of our present discontents.
If undergraduates at our colleges and universities are seldom now introduced to Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws, it is a profound loss and an indication that they have been denied the intellectual tools requisite for understanding our country, its Constitution, and the parlous times in which we live.
And so it goes. A college professor is surprised about the state of American education.
There is a huge vacuum in higher education for someone who wants to offer something better.
THis one gets a pass though. He is a Professor at Hillsdale College. Its a great conservative college and They do teach this there. I am very excited because my son was accepted there for next September.
I have a friend who has 2 or 3 of his kids going there.
We are very happy.. almost as happy as he. Your friends must be very happy times 3.
My daughter has applied for entrance next fall and is very excited about the type of education offered by Hillsdale. She and I will be visiting the campus from our home in Califronia at the end of January. We are both very hopeful about the opportunity.
Can anyone comment about the track record regarding employability by grads of this great college?
Wow. I can’t be that old.
When I was an undergraduate student at American University, we read “The Spirit of the Laws” in our classes. This was in 1975 and 1976. I’m absolutely floored that I know about Montesquieu, and I’m just an English teacher at a little high school in the Alaska Bush, while the supposed elite know nothing about him - assuming that this article was accurate.
On the other hand, I’ve been in and out of college most of my adult life, and the last time I took classes for any appreciable length of time was two years back in the master’s program at the University of Alaska’s school of education. In my lifetime I’ve watched the rigor of coursework deteriorate until those master’s courses were laughably simple compared to the Constitutional law classes back at American. Then there were those profs who taught according to ideology and race. One prof, a Latina with a Klannish attitude, was up front about treating some people better than others based on your background and gender, so much so that I quit the program. I don’t suppose she would be interested in bringing in literature from white males, either.
It’s so sad to watch my culture and country collapse so quickly.
I can’t help you on that aspect but I can tell you we and our son made the visit from South Texas in October and we fell in love with the campus, atmosphere, students and faculty. You will as well.
I glanced at your profile and your past employer, did you used to be in downtown DSM with WF?
There is a huge vacuum in American education at all levels.
I’m here in the DSM area; and that was seemed to the one area that suffered in the merger.
WFF jobs were gained in every sector except auto here.
Well I don’t have a job anymore but at least it’s 80 degrees out and I am not cold. LOL
Thanks for posting this. The Baron of Montesquieu is a name that sounded vaguely familiar to me so I looked it up. The man created the ideas upon which this nation was built and I never knew it until now! (I went to public schools in California during the 60’s )
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