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ID:
114153
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The article examines the extent to which Montesquieu's doux commerce thesis, which claims that commerce leads to softening of manners and therefore favours international peace, presents a challenge to democratic peace theory. It argues that Montesquieu's claim that peace may be due to commerce, and not democracy, provides a theoretical challenge to those scholars who argue that there is a Kantian virtuous triangle of democracy. The practical implication of this theoretical challenge concerns the way democratic peace theory has influenced the practice of international politics, especially American foreign policy. The article argues that Montesquieu's doux commerce thesis mediates between the contending claims of realism and liberal internationalism over the merits of democratisation as an essential means for securing peace.
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| 2 |
ID:
145623
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The liberal claim to decency is flimsy. In fact, the liberal norm is indecency. The Muslim case is symptomatic of this reality. The suffering of Muslims is extensive in liberal locales. The threat to Muslim security is intrinsic in liberal theory. It is the liberal genre of exclusion. In this article, I unravel anti-Muslim antipathy in Kant, Mill, and Montesquieu (KMM). I dissect their specious claims about the Muslims and the Orient. I stress KMM's formative influence on liberal academe. I conclude with the criticism of liberal Jewish attacks on Muslims/Arabs/Palestinians.
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| 3 |
ID:
103753
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2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This essay draws attention to the importance of Montesquieu's earliest and unpublished writings on liberty for our understanding of the famous eleventh book of the Spirit of the Laws. Montesquieu's investigation of the nature and preconditions of liberty, the author argues, was much more polemical than it is usually assumed. As an analysis of his notebooks shows, Montesquieu set out to wrest control over the concept of liberty from the republican admirers of classical antiquity, a faction that he believed to be dangerously populist and revolutionary. In order to do so, Montesquieu came up with a redefinition of the concept of liberty that allowed him to argue that monarchical subjects could be just as free as republican citizens. This conclusion has important implications not just for our understanding of Montesquieu's writings but also and more broadly for our understanding of the intellectual history of liberalism.
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