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In these two volumes, Paul A. Rahe sets out to understand how and why modern democracies have veered from their fundamental roots by drawing on the work of Montesqueiu, Rousseau and Tocqueville. There are good reasons for seeking guidance from these authors: "We live today in the world first discovered by Voltaire and Montesquieu. We profit from the accomplishments of liberal, commercial republicanism, and we grapple with the difficulties first discerned in turn by Montesquieu, Rousseau and Tocquevilleâ[euro] (Soft Despotism, p. 273). The result is an absorbing diagnosis of contemporary liberal democracy, its character, propensities, and vulnerabilities. The analysis seeks to effect a shift in the way we think about liberal modernity, to reverse the tide of soft despotism, and to formulate a better conception of liberalism. Just as important, the footnotes in the two books add up to about 150 pages of insightful observations and trenchant reflections on the state of learned professions and public intellectuals and are a provocative study on the practice of Anglophone scholarship in their own right.
As befits a historian, Rahe is a master storyteller about events and people. He successfully recreates, for the reader, the time and place contingencies experienced by Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Tocqueville and the responses they developed. Their insights went beyond their own conditions, thereby shaping future thoughts and deeds. Rahe's portrait of the character, personality, and life experience of these thinkers is effective in giving added meaning to their thoughts and actions.
The first volume under review is a study of Montesquieu. To be sure, Rahe is not the first author since the authors of The Federalist to turn to Montesquieu for insights into constitutionalism, representative government and, commercial republicanism. A recent collection of essays edited by Rebecca E. Kingston on Montesquieu and His Legacy (2009) has brought together many scholars who individually have tackled different aspects of Montesquieu's thought. The truth is that Montesquieu has not sat well among the great liberal thinkers; the scholarship on such figures as Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau over the years far exceeds that on Montesquieu, whose writing style seems to have deterred many Anglophone efforts at treating his political thought in all its depth. Working with primary texts that...