Interpretation Of Montesquieu's Sociological Thoughts

Montesquieu is an admirable scholar who studies very hard. He was born in a French feudal aristocratic and bureaucratic family in the 18 th Century. His masterpiece, the spirit of the law, not only caused a great sensation in France at that time, but also had a prolonged and profound influence after so many years. Montesquieu's works is often interpreted from the perspective of literature, law, political philosophy and history, but few people study his sociology of law. Although Montesquieu believes to rational people as the foundation of natural law, he still uses the sociology method, climate, geography, land and the population material conditions and social factors that affects on the law and legal system, which is regarded as the spirit of the law. For this reason, Montesquieu is regarded as a pioneer of the sociology of law. In this paper we mainly refers to the spirit of the laws and related information, to Montesquieu's ideas of Sociology of law to make a analysis and summary of the essence as hard as possible for showing the ideas of Sociology of law.In the first chapter, the author discusses the background of Montesquieu's Sociology of law, the first part is the author's life experience, including Montesquieu's study, social, and go to a lot of experience. The second part is about the background of the times. In eighteenth Century, the autocratic monarchy development to the peak and the decline of the old system in the transition period of France. The old system is facing a comprehensive crisis because of the development of capitalism. The third part is about the ideological background. Because of the development of natural science, people rushed out of the shackles of the feudal theology and the rational thought was widely spread. The second chapter discusses the research method of Montesquieu. The first part introduces the concept of the overall thinking and how Montesquieu used the overall thinking to connect the law with other factors and further analysis the relationship between them. The second part discusses the concept of the comparative research method and how to use the comparative research method in the discussion of Montesquieu. The third part discusses the historical research methods and the specific application of Montesquieu in this method. In the third chapter, the paper discusses the main contents of Montesquieu's sociology of law, including Montesquieu`s definition about the concept of law and the core of the theory of Sociology of law which means " the spirit of the laws ". At last, we analysis the embodiment of the spirit of the law from the three aspects as the method and theory of constitution, law and theory of freedom, law and theory of climate. The fourth chapter is the analysis of Montesquieu's thought of Sociology of law, where we summed up his thoughts on the contribution to the future generations and pointed out that the inspiration and valuable reference for learning.