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Distance Learning: Political Education in the Persian Letters
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2021
Abstract
Montesquieu's Persian Letters offers a remarkable guide into the methods and substance of political education, and especially political education at a distance. In two particular series of epistolary exchanges between distant letter writers and recipients we are shown a talented educator in action, one especially adept on two fronts. First, in these exchanges Usbek shows himself to be uniquely sensitive to the concerns of his interlocutors. Second, his sensitivity to these concerns shapes not only the methods by which he presents his political teaching but also its substance. This paper argues that Usbek's political education speaks, by design, to the inclinations of its recipients, and that this political education is itself grounded on the teaching that the best regime in practice is that which most effectively responds to the inclinations of its inhabitants.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of University of Notre Dame
Footnotes
For comments and suggestions on and discussions of earlier versions of this article, the author is extremely grateful to Robert Bartlett, Christopher Kelly, Ralph Lerner, Diana Schaub, John Scott, and Susan Shell.
References
1 An important exception is Andrea Radasanu, “Polishing Barbarous Mores: Montesquieu on Liberalism and Civic Education,” in Civic Education and the Future of American Citizenship, ed. Elizabeth K. Busch and Jonathan W. White (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013).
2 See esp. Orest Ranum, “Personality and Politics in the Persian Letters,” Political Science Quarterly 84 (1969): 606–27; Nannerl Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 398ff.; Boesche, Roger, “Fearing Monarchs and Merchants: Montesquieu's Two Theories of Despotism,” Western Political Quarterly 43 (1990): 741–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Recent contributions to this long-standing debate over whether Montesquieu is best understood through the lens of liberalism or the lens of republicanism include Douglass, Robin, “Montesquieu and Modern Republicanism,” Political Studies 60 (2012): 703–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Céline Spector, “Was Montesquieu Liberal? The Spirit of the Laws in the History of Liberalism,” in French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present Day, ed. Raf Geenens and Helena Rosenblatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 57–75; and Dijn, Annalien de, “Was Montesquieu a Liberal Republican?,” Review of Politics 76 (2014): 21–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 See esp. Istvan Hont, “The Early Enlightenment Debate on Commerce and Luxury,” in The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, ed. Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 404–9.
5 See esp. Curley, Edwin, “From Locke's Letter to Montesquieu's Lettres,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 26 (2002): 280–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kessler, Sanford, “Religion and Liberalism in Montesquieu's Persian Letters,” Polity 15 (1983): 380–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 See esp. Jean Starobinski, Blessings in Disguise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 60–83; Roxanne Euben, Journeys to the Other Shore (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 134–73; Fred Dallmayr, In Search of the Good Life (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2007), 95–115; and Lloyd, Genevieve, “Imagining Distance: Cosmopolitanism in Montesquieu's Persian Letters,” Constellations 19 (2012): 480–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 See Kettler, David, “Montesquieu on Love: Notes on the Persian Letters,” American Political Science Review 58 (1964): 658–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mosher, Michael, “The Judgmental Gaze of European Women: Gender, Sexuality, and the Critique of Republican Rule,” Political Theory 22 (1994): 25–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and esp. Diana Schaub, Erotic Liberalism: Women and Revolution in Montesquieu's “Persian Letters” (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995).
8 On the tension between Usbek the philosopher and Usbek the master of the seraglio, see Stewart, Philip, “Toujours Usbek,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 11 (1999): 141–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jean Ehrard, “Un roman politique: Les Lettres persanes,” in L'invention littéraire au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1997), 31; Euben, Journeys to the Other Shore, 146–47; Starobinski, Blessings in Disguise, esp. 69, 74; and Stuart Warner, “Montesquieu's Literary Art,” in Persian Letters, ed. and trans. Stuart Warner and Stéphane Douard (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's, 2017), xi–xii, xv.
9 My reading of the Persian Letters owes much to scholars such as Seth Benardete who have developed this approach in different contexts. Genevieve Lloyd is rare among readers of the text in attending to “the interaction of philosophical content and literary form” (“Imagining Distance,” 480).
10 Schaub, Erotic Liberalism, 145; see also 19.
11 Usbek does not address Mirza as his friend in his reply, which, as Schaub notes, suggests “some disproportion in the relationship” (Erotic Liberalism, 36). Citations to Persian Letters [PL] are to letter number; citations to Spirit of the Laws [SL] are to book and chapter number. In both cases references also include the volume and page number of the text as printed in the Pléiade Œuvres complètes [OC] edited by Roger Caillois (Paris: Gallimard, 1945–51). Translations are my own, but I am deeply indebted to the experience of teaching Warner's excellent new translation.
12 Mirza's question is framed as a choice between the familiar poles of Mandeville and Epicureanism or Shaftesbury and Stoicism. On the ways in which these influences shape the Persian Letters, see, e.g., Crisafulli, Alessandro, “Montesquieu's Story of the Troglodytes: Its Background, Meaning, and Significance,” PMLA 58 (1943): 372–92Google Scholar; Hont, “The Early Enlightenment Debate,” 404; Gonthier, Ursula, “Persians, Politics, and Politeness: Montesquieu Reads Shaftesbury,” Nottingham French Studies 48 (2009): 8–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Cf. Curley, “From Locke's Letter to Montesquieu's Lettres,” 296.
14 Herein lies another reason to attend to the “Reflections” beyond their notorious allusion to the “secret chain,” on which see, e.g., Theodore Braun, “Montesquieu, Lettres persanes, and Chaos,” in Disrupted Patterns, ed. Theodore Braun and John McCarthy (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000); and Swaine, Lucas, “The Secret Chain: Justice and Self-Interest in Montesquieu's Persian Letters,” History of Political Thought 22 (2001): 84–105Google Scholar.
15 Helpful studies of the Troglodyte sequence include Crisafulli, “Montesquieu's Story of the Troglodytes”; and Richard Sher, “From Troglodytes to Americans: Montesquieu and the Scottish Enlightenment on Liberty, Virtue, and Commerce,” in Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society, 1649–1776, ed. David Wootton (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 368–402.
16 See Thomas Pangle, Montesquieu's Philosophy of Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 57–58, 72; and Paul Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), esp. 71–72, 99, 119.
17 On the sentiment of humanity in Montesquieu, see Pangle, Montesquieu's Philosophy of Liberalism, 5; and esp. Clifford Orwin, “Montesquieu's Humanité and Rousseau's Pitié,” in Montesquieu and His Legacy, ed. Rebecca Kingston (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), 139–48.
18 See Boesche, “Fearing Monarchs and Merchants,” 744–45.
19 Cf. Crisafulli, “Montesquieu's Story of the Troglodytes,” 389–91.
20 On this claim, see Radasanu, “Polishing Barbarous Mores,” 54–56; and Spector, “Was Montesquieu Liberal?,” 69. Keohane helpfully connects this passage to themes of Letter 80, discussed below; see Philosophy and the State, 411.
21 Usbek soon offers a different explanation for his decision to travel west: not to seek wisdom, but to flee enemies made at court (PL 8 [OC 1:140–41])—an early glimpse into his different sides.
22 See Pangle, Montesquieu's Philosophy of Liberalism, 249–59; and Robert Bartlett, The Idea of Enlightenment (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), esp. 30, 38.
23 Cf. SL 14.7 [OC 3:480–81]; SL 23.10 [OC 2:688–69]; SL 25.4 [OC 2:739–40].
24 See esp. Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty, which rightly calls attention to PL 80 as evidence for the claim that “political moderation is, in a sense, Montesquieu's cause” (75) and explicitly connects PL 80 and SL 1.3 to note that “in the interim, [Montesquieu] had not changed his mind one whit” (216).
25 Cf. Leo Strauss, “Seminar on Montesquieu, Spring Quarter 1966,” ed. Pangle, 261–64, available at https://wslamp70.s3.amazonaws.com/leostrauss/s3fs-public/Montesquieu%2C%20spring%201966.pdf.
26 See, e.g., de Dijn, “Was Montesquieu a Liberal Republican?,” 34.
27 For helpful statements of the issue, see David Lowenthal, “Montesquieu,” in History of Political Philosophy, ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1972), 490; Todorov, Tzvetan, “Réflexions sur les Lettres persanes,” Romanic Review 74 (1983): 310Google Scholar; Isaiah Berlin, “Montesquieu,” in Against the Current (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 143, 157–58; Sher, “From Troglodytes to Americans,” 374–75, 390; Dallmayr, In Search of the Good Life, 97. For a nuanced effort to solve this problem by squaring Montesquieu's commitments to both liberal universalism and political particularism, see Keegan Callanan, Montesquieu's Liberalism and the Problem of Universal Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
28 See, e.g., Kessler, “Religion and Liberalism,” 390.
29 Ehrard, “Un roman politique,” 21. Though not examined here given this paper's focus on political education, Rica's letters and their artful use of description and imagery deserve attention in their own right.
30 See esp. Schaub, Erotic Liberalism, 16, 136; Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty, 47.
31 Montesquieu's own estimation of Venice evolved; see Ranum, “Personality and Politics,” 623; Ehrard, “Un roman politique,” 23; and esp. Carrithers, David, “Not So Virtuous Republics: Montesquieu, Venice, and the Theory of Aristocratic Republicanism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 52 (1991): 263ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
32 See Boesche, “Fearing Monarchs and Merchants,” esp. 756.
33 See, e.g., Starobinski, Blessings in Disguise, 82; Strauss, “Seminar on Montesquieu,” 291.
34 Compare PL 106 to SL 5.6 [OC 2:280]; see also Hont, “The Early Enlightenment Debate,” 406.
35 Helpful accounts of Montesquieu's reservations include Boesche, “Fearing Monarchs and Merchants,” 753–55; Spector, “Was Montesquieu Liberal?,” 68; Sher, “From Troglodytes to Americans,” 378ff.; Keohane, Philosophy and the State, 416–18; and Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty, esp. 118–19, 175–76.
36 See Young, David, “Libertarian Demography: Montesquieu's Essay on Depopulation in the Lettres persanes,” Journal of the History of Ideas 36 (1975): 669–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
37 On the peculium see also SL 15.2 [OC 2:491] and SL 15.17 [OC 2:506].
38 And the seraglio's collapse that is the focus of the last letters of the novel in the order in which they are presented (Letters 147–61) parallels the story of the collapse of the French financial system that is the focus of the last letters of the novel in the order in which they were written (Letters 142–46). See esp. Schaub, Erotic Liberalism, 86, 133–34; Stewart, “Toujours Usbek,” 147–49; Warner, “Montesquieu's Literary Art,” xxxiii.