Montesquieu’s Theory Of Liberty

Not only liberty is the pursuit of the Enlightenment Movement, but also is Montesquieu’ s pursuit. The Spirit of the Laws which is gathered his twenty years of painstaking was evenly known as the "Rational and Liberty’s Code". However, due to times and individuality, liberty was deeply hidden in large quantities of the empirical material by Montesquieu, so that caused people various misunderstandings. In this paper, large quantities of empirical material in The Spirit of the Laws have been renewed teased, so as to find out the logic of the Montesquieu’s liberty theory.There are two paths for interpreting liberty theory in the history of thought, one is transcendental, and another is empirical. The transcendental liberty theory is starting from a rational point of view, through the deductive method to discuss human liberty, and attempts to construct an unshakable in logic foundation for human liberty from rationality. And empirical liberty is starting from the experience of the world we are dealing with, using transcendental inductive method to investigate people’s actual rights and liberty in the social life, which is the citizens, have in the political and social life. Montesquieu believes that the "law" is not only transcendental but also empirical. "Law" comes out together with things, and it is the nature of things possess. Through the re-interpretation of "law", Montesquieu communicated the transcendental liberty and empirical liberty, which laid a foundation for the logic of liberty, and demonstrated human liberty from the empirical perspective through mounts of material."Law" has two aspects of the meaning of liberty. From a negative point of view, it limits liberty and scope; from the positive point of view, it guarantees the right to liberty in the scope. "Law" is divided into "natural law" and "positive law"; accordingly, liberty also can be divided into "natural liberty" and "human liberty". Natural liberty is composed and guaranteed by natural law, which is the most basic rights originated from human nature; Human liberty is a kind of liberty and security required by human law, after people transiting from the natural state to social status."Positive law" can be divided into the basic law, which is related to political system, and civil law, which is related to citizen. Accordingly, we name it "constitutional liberty" that’s related to political liberty, and call it "civil liberty" that’s related to the citizen. After entering the society from the state of nature, human came out from the weak individual state into powerful states. State power makes mankind hurt others to obtain benefits. And the unlimited power became the root of hurting human liberty. So Montesquieu thought the authority must have be balanced, otherwise it would lead to slavery only which was definitely hurt human liberty. Through the study of the British form of government, Montesquieu established the principle of separation of three powers, and considered that the country is the most worth of pursuing only that take the liberty as the final goal.