At Law & Liberty, Will Salinger (University College London, History) reviews Keegan Callanan's book Montesquieu’s Liberalism and the Problem of Universal Politics (Cambridge University Press 2018): Correcting Our View of Montesquieu. From the introduction:
Living as we do in a time of widespread uncertainty about the future of liberalism, we can easily forget how different the mood was a few short years ago. Instead of expressing anxiety about the survival of liberal democratic institutions in the United States and Western Europe, commentators during the 1990s and 2000s were debating how to spread such institutions across the globe. Within the field of political theory, a prevailing concern was that liberalism had been too successful. Intellectual movements such as communitarianism and civic republicanism flourished during this period with the aim of preserving virtue and community in the face of inevitable liberal hegemony.
This came to mind as I read Keegan Callanan’s very fine new book on the Baron de Montesquieu. One imagines that Montesquieu’s Liberalism and the Problem of Universal Politics was conceived in the era when liberalism seemed invincible, for its purpose is to chasten and moderate triumphalist liberals. The timing doesn’t seem great, but it would be a shame if this work were overlooked. Callanan’s is one of the most interesting accounts of Montesquieu’s thought to appear in recent years.
And in conclusion:
As I noted at the outset, this book was written not merely to offer a new interpretation of Montesquieu, but also to intervene in contemporary debates. By reconsidering Montesquieu, Callanan hoped to chasten the universalist aspirations of post-Cold War American liberalism. Today, as I said, there seems to be little need for that since the idea of spreading liberal democracy across the globe is decisively out of fashion. Meanwhile, the revolt against liberal social and political norms that Trump and his followers are waging in the name of cultural and national particularity has gone far beyond the imagination of any 1990s communitarian.
The question of why the post-Cold War liberal order has proven unsatisfactory to so many people is now the subject of countless books and articles. But if Callanan missed his opportunity to chasten American liberalism, he may still have the chance to educate American liberals—and anybody else interested in Montesquieu’s landmark contribution to Western political thought.
Posted at 6:45 AM