Early modern · 1689–1755
Who influenced Montesquieu?
Influences and legacy
Read laws as climates and customs, and gave constitutionalism its separation of powers.
Montesquieu was influenced by Ibn Khaldun, Niccolò Machiavelli and John Locke, and went on to influence Auguste Comte and Alexis de Tocqueville. That is 5 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: After Jacques-Antoine Dassier, Public domain See the whole map
Who was Montesquieu?
Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, was a French jurist, historian and political philosopher. He is the main source of the theory of the separation of powers, which many constitutions around the world put into practice, and he brought the term "despotism" into the modern political vocabulary.
His Spirit of the Laws (1748), first published anonymously, was well received in Britain and the American colonies, where it influenced the Founding Fathers as they drafted the US Constitution.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced Montesquieu?
3 direct influences on this map, earliest first.
- Ibn Khaldun 1332–1406
- Niccolò Machiavelli 1469–1527
- John Locke 1632–1704
Who did Montesquieu influence?
2 thinkers on this map draw directly on Montesquieu.
- Auguste Comte 1798–1857
- Alexis de Tocqueville 1805–1859
The line of teachers behind Montesquieu
The longest documented line of influence ending at Montesquieu runs 16 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
Two steps away from Montesquieu
Indirect influences
- Through Niccolò Machiavelli: Cicero, Plutarch
- Through Ibn Khaldun: Aristotle
- Through John Locke: René Descartes
The second generation
- Through Auguste Comte: John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer
Contemporaries of Montesquieu
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Montesquieu, with no direct line between them.
- George Berkeley 1685–1753
- Voltaire 1694–1778
- Christian Wolff 1679–1754
- Émilie du Châtelet 1706–1749
- Giambattista Vico 1668–1744
- Thomas Reid 1710–1796
- David Hume 1711–1776
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712–1778
Montesquieu by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 3
- Direct followers
- 2
- Thinkers upstream
- 59
- Thinkers downstream
- 27
- Wikipedia languages
- 109 — #15 of 36 among early modern philosophers
- Card rarity
- Legendary
Questions about Montesquieu
- Who influenced Montesquieu?
- Ibn Khaldun, Niccolò Machiavelli and John Locke.
- Who did Montesquieu influence?
- Auguste Comte and Alexis de Tocqueville.
- When did Montesquieu live?
- 1689–1755. The map files Montesquieu under the early modern period.
- How rare is the Montesquieu card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Montesquieu in 109 languages, which makes it a Legendary card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More early modern philosophers
- René Descartes 1596–1650
- Immanuel Kant 1724–1804
- Voltaire 1694–1778
- Adam Smith 1723–1790
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712–1778
- Niccolò Machiavelli 1469–1527
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1646–1716
- John Locke 1632–1704